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anything intresting happen

anything interesting happen during Supergirl's revitalization?

Supergirl (Kara Zor-El)

After long-time Superman family editor Mort Weisinger retired in 1971, the character underwent revitalization under editor Joe Orlando and artist Mike Sekowsky. Wearing a series of new outfits, leaving her adopted foster home with the Danvers family, Linda goes on to San Francisco where she works for KSF-TV as a camera operator and develops a crush on her boss, Geoffrey Anderson. These stories introduced Supergirl's most memorable villain from this period: Lex Luthor's niece Nasthalthia, or Nasty. Nasty had made two appearances towards the end of Linda's college years, then pursued her to KSF-TV, trying to secure proof of her dual identity. Supergirl starred in her first solo eponymous monthly series beginning in 1972 until October 1974, when her monthly title merged with Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane, and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen to produce a new title: then-highest DC selling series called The Superman Family, where she eventually became the steady lead story. Linda worked as a student advisor at New Athens Experimental School, before leaving for New York to follow a career in acting with daytime soap Secret Hearts. In 1982 Supergirl received a second monthly solo series titled The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl, relocating the character to Chicago as Linda became a mature student of Psychology. Industry legend, and former DC Publisher, Carmine Infantino provided the pencilled art (Bob Oksner inked). With issue 13 the title was revamped, with a new costume design (sporting a red headband) and the title shortened to just Supergirl. The series ran until sudden cancellation in 1984, only two months before the character's debut in a big-budget Hollywood film starring Helen Slater. In the Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985) the greatest heroes from Earth-One, Earth-Two, Earth-Four, Earth-S, and Earth-X join forces in order to defeat the Anti-Monitor. When Superman comes face to face with the Anti-Monitor and is knocked unconscious, Supergirl rushes to save him before he is killed. She is able to fight him off long enough for Dr. Light to carry her cousin to a safe distance, but is killed by the Anti-Monitor. A public memorial service for Supergirl takes place in Chicago, where Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) delivers the eulogy. In her remarks she states "Kara is a hero. She will not be forgotten." Superman then gives his late cousin burial by taking her corpse to Rokyn/New Krypton to Zor-El and Allura. A Superman issue the next month reveals that Kara had experienced a premonition about her own passing. However, when the universe is rebooted, the timeline is altered. Kara Zor-El and all memory of her is erased from existence. CANNOTANSWER

leaving her adopted foster home with the Danvers family, Linda goes on to San Francisco where she works for KSF-TV as a camera operator

Kara Zor-El, also known by her adoptive names of Linda Lee Danvers, Kara Kent, Linda Lang, and Kara Danvers, and the superhero name of Supergirl, is a superheroine appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. She was created by Otto Binder and designed by Al Plastino. Danvers first appeared in Action Comics #252 (May 1959)'s "The Supergirl from Krypton" story. Kara is the biological cousin of Kal-El, who went on to adopt the name of Clark Kent and the superhero Superman. During the 1980s and the revolution of the Modern Age of Comics, Superman editors believed the character's history had become too convoluted, thus killing Supergirl during the 1985 Crisis on Infinite Earths event and retconning her out of existence. DC Comics Senior Vice President Dan DiDio re-introduced the character in 2004 along with editor Eddie Berganza and writer Jeph Loeb, with her the Superman/Batman storyline "The Supergirl from Krypton". As the current Supergirl, Kara stars in her own monthly comic book series. With DC's The New 52 relaunch, Kara, like most of the DC Universe, was revamped. DC relaunched the Supergirl comic in August 2016 as part of their DC Rebirth initiative. In live-action, Supergirl appeared in the 1984 film based on her character and was portrayed by Helen Slater. She also appeared in the series Smallville, played by actress Laura Vandervoort. In 2015, the live-action Arrowverse series Supergirl debuted on CBS and then moved to The CW after the first season. Supergirl was portrayed by Melissa Benoist on the show and also appeared on other Arrowverse shows. Sasha Calle will appear as Supergirl in the upcoming DC Extended Universe film The Flash (2022). Publication history Early life Although Kara Zor-El was the first character to use the name "Supergirl," DC Comics tested three different female versions of Superman prior to her debut. The first story to feature a female counterpart to Superman was "Lois Lane – Superwoman," which was published in Action Comics #60 (May 1943). In the story, a hospitalized Lois Lane dreams she has gained superpowers thanks to a blood transfusion from the Man of Steel. She begins her own career as "Superwoman", complete with a version of Superman's costume. In the Superboy #78 story entitled "Claire Kent, Alias Super-Sister", Superboy saves the life of an alien woman named Shar-La, who turns Superboy into a girl, in retaliation for his disparaging thoughts about women drivers which she picked up telepathically. In Smallville, Clark claims to be Claire Kent, an out-of-town relative who is staying with the Kents. When in costume, he appears as Superboy's sister, Super-Sister, and claims the two have exchanged places. Once Superboy has learned his lesson about feeling more respect for women, Shar-La reveals the episode to be a dream which she projected into Superboy's mind. In Superman #123 (August 1958), Jimmy Olsen uses a magic totem to wish a "Super-Girl" into existence as a companion and aid to Superman; however, the two frequently get in each other's way until she is fatally injured protecting Superman from a Kryptonite meteor. At her insistence, Jimmy wishes the dying girl out of existence. DC used this story to gauge public response to the concept of a completely new super-powered female counterpart to Superman. The Kara Zor-El version of Supergirl finally appeared in Action Comics #252 (May 1959). Otto Binder wrote and Al Plastino illustrated her début story, in which Kara was born and raised in Argo City (unnamed until later issues), a fragment of Krypton that survived destruction. When the city is doomed by a meteor shower, Kara is sent to Earth by her parents, Zor-El and Alura (the latter unnamed until later issues), to be raised by her cousin Kal-El, known as Superman. Supergirl adopted the secret identity of an orphan "Linda Lee", and made Midvale Orphanage her home. Supergirl promised Superman that she would keep her existence on Earth a secret, so that he may use her as a "secret weapon", but that didn't stop Supergirl from exploring her new powers covertly. Action Comics #255 published reader's letters-of-comment to Supergirl's first appearance; she had allegedly generated a sizeable and mostly positive reaction. Supergirl, from her debut onwards, became a regular backup strip in Action Comics. She joined the Legion of Super-Heroes, like her cousin had done as a teenager, and in Action Comics #279 (July 1961) she was adopted by Fred and Edna Danvers, becoming "Linda Lee Danvers". Supergirl acted for three years as Superman's secret weapon, and her adventures during that time have been compared to contemporary developments in feminist thinking in work such as Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. She was at last introduced by her super-powered cousin to an unsuspecting world in Action Comics #285 (February 1962). During her first quarter of a century, Linda Danvers would have many professions, from student to student advisor, to actor, and even TV camera operator. She shared Action Comics with Superman until transferring to the lead in Adventure Comics at the end of the 1960s. In 1972 she finally moved to her own short-lived eponymous magazine, before DC merged its Supergirl, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen titles into a single anthology title named The Superman Family. In 1982 Supergirl was relaunched into her own magazine. Death during Crisis on Infinite Earths In 1985, the maxi-series Crisis on Infinite Earths was conceived as a way to reduce DC continuity to a single universe in which all characters maintained a single history. Despite Supergirl's continued popularity and status as a central member of the "Superman Family", the editors at DC Comics and the creators of the maxi-series decided to kill Supergirl off during the Crisis. According to Marv Wolfman, writer of Crisis on Infinite Earths: The idea of killing Supergirl was first conceived by DC's vice president/executive editor Dick Giordano, who lobbied for the death to DC's publishers. He later said he has never had any regrets about this, explaining, "Supergirl was created initially to take advantage of the high Superman sales and not much thought was put into her creation. She was created essentially as a female Superman. With time, writers and artists improved upon her execution, but she never did really add anything to the Superman mythos—at least not for me." The poor initial reception of the 1984 film Supergirl was also blamed by some sources. In 1989, in the tale "Christmas with the Super-Heroes" the soul of Kara appears to Boston "Deadman" Brand, cheers him up, and then disappears from continuity until 2001 (see below). Several characters unrelated to Superman soon took on the Supergirl persona, including the Matrix (a shapeshifting genetically engineered life-form that 'defaulted' as Supergirl), Linda Danvers (the result of Matrix merging with the dying Linda Danvers and becoming an Earth-bound angel of fire), and Cir-El (Superman's apparent daughter from a possible future). A heroine resembling the Pre-Crisis Kara would later appear in Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds #5, along with an entire army of Legionnaires gathered from alternate worlds, times, and realities, to battle the Time Trapper. Two Supergirls meet Prior to the post-Crisis introduction of Kara Zor-El into mainstream continuity, the pre-Crisis Kara Zor-El made an appearance in Peter David's Supergirl: Many Happy Returns. The then-current Supergirl series, at the time starring Linda Danvers, was in danger of cancellation and Peter David thought a story arc involving Kara Zor-El would be enough to revitalize the series. In an interview with Cliff Biggers of Newsarama, David states: In the Linda Danvers' Supergirl series issues 49 and 50 (October and November 2000), the original dead Kara appears as Linda's "guardian angel". Then in issues 75 to 80, "Many Happy Returns", a young Kara appears from an earlier time long before the Crisis. The paradox becomes a moral crisis for Linda who tries to take her place as the Crisis sacrifice, living for years in a Silver Age universe where "no one swears, the villains are always easy to defeat, and everything's very, very clean", eventually marrying the Silver Age Superman and having a daughter with him, before she is forced to return to her universe by the Spectre when he reveals that her efforts to replace Kara as the sacrifice will not succeed. This run was illustrated by Ed Benes who had also illustrated Gail Simone's Birds of Prey which had a similar whimsical camaraderie between its female leads. Linda's inability to ultimately save Kara, coupled with the loss of her daughter, is so devastating that it ends her own career as Supergirl, Linda leaving a note for Superman where she explains that she feels that she has failed to live up to the standards of a true Supergirl and choosing to go somewhere she cannot be found. This story arc is usually cited as one of the best Supergirl stories ever written. The series ended with issue 80. Revival After the launch of the Superman/Batman comic book series, executive editor Dan DiDio had been looking for a way to simplify the Supergirl character from her convoluted post-Crisis history; the simplest version, of course, was Superman's cousin. Jeph Loeb and editor Eddie Berganza found an opening to reintroduce the character following the conclusion of the first story arc of Superman/Batman. Loeb states: The modern version of Kara Zor-El made her debut in Superman/Batman #8 (2004). Kara takes the mantle of Supergirl at the conclusion of the storyline. The Supergirl comic book series would later be relaunched, now starring Kara Zor-El as "The Girl of Steel". The first arc of the new series was written by Jeph Loeb and illustrated by Ian Churchill. Loeb would later describe the appeal of writing for Supergirl: As the character continued to be reinvented, steps towards regarding the iconic character were some of the most prominent changes. Artist Jamal Igle and editor Matt Idleson moved to transition the character away from red panties under her skirt to biker shorts, feeling such a change was a logical progression and "more respectable." The New 52 In September 2011, DC Comics began The New 52, in which it canceled all of its monthly superhero titles and relaunched 52 new ones, wiping out most of its past continuity in the process. One of the new titles was a new Supergirl series (Volume 6) that featured a new origin for Kara and was published between 2011 and 2015. Artist Mahmud Asrar designed a new costume for the character which strongly deviated from her classic, "cheerleader" suit, a change which generated criticism from some readers. DC Rebirth The 2016 DC Comics title relaunch Rebirth incorporates several elements (such as the costume, the name, the setting, and some characters) from the Supergirl television series. The DC Rebirth initiative undid the New 52's modern recreations, bringing DC's heroes back to their more classic iterations. Supergirl's new series (Volume 7) was titled Supergirl: Rebirth, written by Steven Orlando. The first arc was penciled by Brian Ching, who also redesigned Supergirl's costume in reference to a more classic look. In April 2018, it was announced that the title would be canceled after issue #20, only to be revived in August that year under a new creative team, with new writer Marc Andreyko and artist Kevin Maguire. The series ended with its 42nd issue. Future State: Kara Zor-El, Superwoman The Future State comics propose a possible future for Kara Zor-El, now an adult and having taken the alias of Superwoman. She leaves Earth to become a guardian of the Moon, which has become a refugee colony for aliens from the entire universe. The series was written by Marguerite Bennet and penciled by Marguerite Sauvage. Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow Under the Infinite Frontier brand, Kara's next series Woman of Tomorrow debuted in June 2021, written by Tom King and penciled by Brazilian artists Bilquis Evely and Mat Lopes. The arc introduces Supergirl to new character grounds as she begins the story as a young woman, celebrating her 21st birthday and helping a young alien in her quest for revenge. The "mentor-mentee journey on revenge" plot is, according to King, inspired by the original novel and both versions of True Grit. In this series, the creators paid homage to Linda Danvers, as Kara manifests flame wings and powers after taking a red kryptonite drug, in order to save her space bus crew from a Karpane dragon. Fictional character biography Silver Age In her debut story, Kara Zor-El is the last survivor of Argo City of the planet Krypton. Although Argo, which had survived the explosion of the planet, drifted through space as a self-sustaining environment, the soil of the colony eventually turned into Kryptonite; and though Kara's father Zor-El placed lead sheeting above the ground to protect the citizens from radiation, meteorites pierced the sheeting, and the Kryptonians died of radiation poisoning instead of replacing the metal. In Supergirl's subsequent backup feature in Action Comics drawn by artist Jim Mooney for ten years until 1968, Supergirl adopts the identity of Linda Lee, an orphan at Midvale Orphanage presided over by headmistress Miss Hart. She disguises herself by hiding her blond hair beneath a brunette wig; Supergirl interacts with humans on a person-to-person basis performing good deeds and saving the world by helping one person at a time, and she also devises clever schemes as "Superman's Secret Weapon," saving him many times and avoiding adoption before Superman can introduce her publicly. While temporarily powerless due to the scheming of Kandorian scientist Lesla-Lar, who is out to supplant her on Earth, Linda allows herself to be adopted by engineer and rocket scientist Fred Danvers and his wife, Edna. In time, she reveals her secret identity to her adoptive parents on the same day her cousin Superman finally introduces her to the world in the finale of then-DC's longest playing series ever (eight chapters) aptly called "The World's Greatest Heroine". When frequent dreams about her parents being alive turn out to be real, she builds a machine aided by her engineer father's talent, and brings them both back alive from the "Survival Zone" where they had both teleported during Argo City's final moments. Zor-El and Allura eventually end up living in Kandor, and when the city in the bottle is enlarged, they both go on to live in Rokyn/New Krypton, where they have the sad duty of receiving her mortal remains after "Crisis" for burial. Graduating from high school in 1965, Linda Lee goes to college on a scholarship and stays in Stanhope College until she graduates in 1971. During this era, she is helped by her pet cat Streaky, her Super-Horse pet Comet, and befriends Lena Thorul, who had first appeared in the Lois Lane series. Kara is also a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes, where she becomes close to Brainiac 5. In addition, Linda has boyfriends from the orphanage (Richard "Dick" Malverne) and from Atlantis (Jerro the merboy). In 1967, Supergirl meets Batgirl for the first time in World's Finest Comics. Developing a strong friendship, the two characters teamed up many times again, as in Superman Family #171, or Adventure #381. In 1969, Supergirl left Action Comics and became a featured character in Adventure Comics beginning with issue #381 (June 1969). During the 1970s, Supergirl's costume changed frequently, as did her career in her civilian life. In her secret identity as Linda Lee Danvers, Kara Zor-El took a variety of jobs including graduate student in acting, television camera operator, and student counselor, and finally became an actress on the TV soap Secret Hearts. Bronze Age After long-time Superman family editor Mort Weisinger retired in 1971, the character underwent revitalization under editor Joe Orlando and artist Mike Sekowsky. Wearing a series of new outfits, leaving her adopted foster home with the Danvers family, Linda goes on to San Francisco where she works for KSF-TV as a camera operator and develops a crush on her boss, Geoffrey Anderson. These stories introduced Supergirl's most memorable villain from this period: Lex Luthor's niece Nasthalthia, or Nasty. Nasty had made two appearances towards the end of Linda's college years, then pursued her to KSF-TV, trying to secure proof of her dual identity. Supergirl starred in her first solo eponymous monthly series beginning in 1972 until October 1974, when her monthly title merged with Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane, and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen to produce a new title: then-highest DC selling series called The Superman Family, where she eventually became the steady lead story. Linda worked as a student advisor at New Athens Experimental School, before leaving for New York to follow a career in acting with daytime soap Secret Hearts. In 1982 Supergirl received a second monthly solo series titled The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl, relocating the character to Chicago as Linda became a mature student of Psychology. Industry legend, and former DC Publisher, Carmine Infantino provided the penciled art (Bob Oksner inked). With issue 13 the title was revamped, with a new costume design (sporting a red headband) and the title shortened to just Supergirl. The series ran until sudden cancellation in 1984, only two months before the character's debut in a big-budget Hollywood film starring Helen Slater. In the Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985), the greatest heroes from Earth-One, Earth-Two, Earth-Four, Earth-S, and Earth-X join forces in order to defeat the Anti-Monitor. When Superman comes face to face with the Anti-Monitor and is knocked unconscious, Supergirl rushes to save him before he is killed. She is able to fight him off long enough for Dr. Light to carry her cousin to a safe distance, but is killed by the Anti-Monitor. A public memorial service for Supergirl takes place in Chicago, where Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) delivers the eulogy. In her remarks, she states "Kara is a hero. She will not be forgotten." Superman then gives his late cousin burial by taking her corpse to Rokyn/New Krypton to Zor-El and Allura. A Superman issue the next month reveals that Kara had experienced a premonition about her own passing. However, when the universe is rebooted, the timeline is altered. Kara Zor-El and all memory of her is erased from existence. Echoes After these events, the soul of Kara Zor-El made another appearance in continuity three years later in a story titled "Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot" in Christmas with the Super-Heroes #2 (1989). Within the story, Boston "Deadman" Brand tries to feel the warmth of Christmas by possessing revelers' bodies. Feeling guilty upon the realization that he has been stealing others' Christmases, he flies off feeling sorry for himself for being denied a reward after a year of helping people. A warmly dressed blonde woman approaches Brand, startling him. Somehow seeing the normally invisible Brand, she converses with him, reminding him, She reminds Brand that even though he is dead, he is still human, and he should rejoice because it means his spirit is still alive. As the woman leaves, Brand asks her who she is, to which she replies, "My name is Kara. Though I doubt that will mean anything to you." The story, written by Alan Brennert and penciled by Dick Giordano, is dedicated to Otto Binder and Jim Mooney, adding: "We still remember." Finally, the soul of Kara Zor-El appeared twice during Peter David's run, specifically in issues #48 and #49 when she appears before a defeated and imprisoned then-Supergirl, Linda Danvers from Earth, and comforts her. Linda acknowledges she has been helped three times by her phantom-friend, and when she asks her name she is told by the smiling figure: "I have gone by many names, but the one I am most fond of is: Kara!" Modern Age In 2004, Jeph Loeb reintroduced Kara Zor-El into post-Zero Hour (Birthright timeline) continuity during a storyline in the series Superman/Batman. She is the biological cousin of Superman, and although chronologically older than him, the ship in which she traveled to Earth was caught in a large green Kryptonite meteorite which held her in a state of suspended animation for much of the journey, making her have the appearance of a 16-year-old girl. Still, Supergirl sometimes saw Superman as a child, due to last carrying him as a baby. DC Comics relaunched the Supergirl, the first story arc of which was written by Loeb. showcases Supergirl on a journey of self-discovery. Along her journey, she encounters Power Girl (Kara Zor-El's counterpart from another universe), the Teen Titans, the Outsiders, the Justice League of America, and arch-villain Lex Luthor. During the company-wide crossover series Infinite Crisis (2005), a sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths, Supergirl is transported to the 31st century, where she is revered as a member of the Superman family and joins the Legion of Super-Heroes. DC Comics renamed the monthly series Legion of Super-Heroes to Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes. Beginning with issue #16. In the limited series 52, which chronicles the events that took place during the missing year after the end of Infinite Crisis, Donna Troy recalls the original Kara Zor-El and her sacrifice to save the universe. Supergirl returns to the 21st century during the course of 52. After briefly filling in for a temporarily depowered Superman as guardian of Metropolis, she assumes the identity of Flamebird to fight crime in the bottle city of Kandor with Power Girl as Nightwing in Greg Rucka's arc Supergirl: Kandor. In 2007, Supergirl appeared in the miniseries Amazons Attack! That same year, she joined the Teen Titans for five issues. Conversations with other heroes who maintain secret identities lead Kara to the conclusion that she needs to make a deeper connection with human beings. She accepts Lana Lang's proposal to present her to the Daily Planet staff as "Linda Lang", Lana's teenaged niece. In the 2008–2009 "New Krypton" story arc, in which Superman discovers and frees the real Kandor and a large number of its citizens, Supergirl is reunited with her father, Zor-El and mother, Alura, though Zor-El is killed by the villain Reactron. When a planet is formed that the Kryptonians call New Krypton, Kara is torn between her life on Earth, and her obligation to her mother, eventually joining the New Krypton Science Guild. Supergirl subsequently appears in the 2009 miniseries Justice League: Cry for Justice, and the 2009–2010 storyline "Blackest Night". The New Krypton storyline would later be resolved in the "World of New Krypton", "Superman: Last Stand of New Krypton", "War of the Supermen" storylines, resulting in the destruction of New Krypton and seeing Supergirl mourn her people. Supergirl subsequently appears in the 2010 "Brightest Day" storyline, the follow up to "Blackest Night"., where she joins the Justice League along with Jesse Quick & Jade. The New 52 In this continuity, Kara's ship lands in Smallville, Kansas but hurtles through the Earth and emerges in Siberia. Kara has no memory of the destruction of Krypton, and believes it is only three days since her spacecraft was launched. She learns the truth about Krypton's destruction from Superman, and later journeys through a wormhole to Argo City, which she finds in orbit around a blue sun. She finds the city in ruins, with no explanation of how it met that fate, and is attacked by a female Worldkiller named Reign before the city plummets into the sun. When Reign and her fellow Worldkiller plan to enslave the Earth, Supergirl returns there to defeat them, and thus adopts Earth as her new home. After several battles with supervillains, including the Worldkillers, superweapons of Kryptonian design, she accepts Krypton's destruction, but continues to grapple with her grief. Her desire to restore Krypton results in her being manipulated into nearly destroying the Earth by another Kryptonian whom she falls in love with. Upon realizing his manipulation, she kills him by driving Kryptonite through his heart, and succumbs to Kryptonite poisoning. Following her poisoning, Supergirl departs the Earth to die alone. While adrift in interstellar space, she encounters a planet under attack by monsters, and quickly intervenes to save them, unaware that the entire planet is a trap by Brainiac. She is captured and restrained by Cyborg Superman, but after a struggle, manages to escape both Brainiac and Cyborg Superman. Returning to Earth, she is sent into the past by the Oracle alongside Superman and Superboy, where she ensures that a resurrected H'el cannot save Krypton, and sacrifices the planet and her family in order to save the universe. Back on Earth, she encounters the assassin Lobo. Initially eager for a peaceful resolution, seeing a kind of kinship with him in their both being lone survivors of their respective worlds (although not truly aware of Lobo's circumstances), Kara's encounter with the Czarnian would reveal deep mental wounds, resulting in the unleashing of her rage and transformation into a Red Lantern. Driven insane by rage, Kara wanders space, attacking everyone in her way, until captured by several Green Lanterns and brought to Hal Jordan. Immediately recognizing a Kryptonian and unable to remove the power ring without killing her, he brings her to Guy Gardner, the leader of one of the two Red Lantern factions, who manages to restore her sanity. After some time under Guy Gardner's tutelage and protecting the galaxy as a Red Lantern, after being discharged from the Red Lantern Corps (because Guy did not want for her to die needlessly against Atrocitus' splinter group), on her way back to Earth, Kara encounters the leader of the Worldkillers, who are revealed to be parasitic suits of armor. He attempts to assimilate Kara as his host, but she voluntarily subjects herself to Kryptonite poisoning in order to stop him, and eventually flies into the Sun and removes her power ring, killing her and removing him from her body. However, Kara is revealed to be immortal while in the Sun's core, and is restored to life without the power ring or any Kryptonite poisoning, immediately destroying the Worldkiller. She later helps Guy against Atrocitus and his Red Lantern splinter group. Convergence and return of the Pre-Crisis version During the Convergence story arc, the original Kara Zor-El who had sacrificed her life during Crisis on Infinite Earths makes an appearance on the amalgamated planet of Telos. At the end of the saga she volunteers herself to once again fight the Anti-Monitor but this time, with the help of her timeline's Barry Allen, the Pre-Flashpoint Superman (in tow with his pregnant wife, Lois Lane), and a repentant Parallax (Zero Hour Hal Jordan), vows to defeat him for the sake of the multiverse's continued existence. Without it being seen, those left on Telos discover the group was successful and all previous timelines (with the mysterious exception of the pre-Flashpoint/pre-New 52 DC universe) from DC history had been re-established, though the fate of the original Kara Zor-El and her fellows went unmentioned. A few more details of the battle against the Anti-Monitor are later revealed during the New 52 comic mini-series (leading into DC's Rebirth event). After the defeat of Anti-Monitor, Pre-New 52 Clark and Lois decide to start life anew in the closest universe they can find (mysteriously yet unable to see their old universe even though the rest of the multiverse had been restored) while Pre-Crisis Kara Zor-El, along with her contemporary Barry Allen and Zero Hour Parallax/Hal Jordan, decide to find their place in the universe and go off to do so. Her fate as of that story arc is yet to be revealed. DC Rebirth After the events that led to the death of the New 52 version of Superman, 16-year-old Kara lives in National City with her adoptive parents, D.E.O. agents Jeremiah and Eliza Danvers, where she attends high school and works with the agency as led by Cameron Chase. As part of her civilian identity, Kara receives special glasses that darken her blond hair when posing as Kara Danvers. Kara also goes on an internship at Cat Grant's CATCO alongside Ben Rubel, whom she befriends. In her opening arc "The Reign of the Cyborg Supermen", Kara discovers that the cyborg Zor-El, whom she had battled in her New 52 title, is still active and has rebuilt other Kryptonians (her mother Alura included), planning to take over Earth. Supergirl defeats them but vows to help her father regardless of his actions. After National City discovers Supergirl has kept Zor-El's "living" status a secret, they become untrustful of her. Director Bones takes advantage of the heroine's impopularity and, after taking control of the D.E.O., sends villains in an attempt to bring Kara down. She defeats all of them and regains trust from National City with Ben's help. The Supergirl Who Laughs Kara is later infected by The Batman Who Laughs toxin, causing her to turn evil and joining other infected as part of Laughs Secret Six before later being cured. She is fired from CatCo by Cat Grant and starts working at S.T.A.R. Labs. Woman of Tomorrow Journeying throughout the universe with Krypto, Kara celebrates her 21st birthday alone on a distant planet. Drunk in a bar, she is approached by a little girl named Ruthye and is asked to kill Krem (her father's murderer) in vengeance. Supergirl refuses but, when she is about to leave the planet, Krem attacks and severely wounds both her and Krypto, fleeing in Kara's ship. Kara begins her journey alongside Ruthye and, powerless, saves her space bus crew from a Karpane dragon by taking a red kryptonite drug which causes her to manifest flame wings. Powers and abilities Like all Kryptonians under a yellow sun, the current version of Kara Zor-El possesses virtually unlimited strength, stamina, and durability. She is able to fly and with super speed that she can also use on foot, similar to Superman and The Flash. Also like Superman, Supergirl possesses super senses, super-breath, and freeze breathe, as well as multiple forms of supervision (including X-Ray, Infrared, Telescopic, and Microscopic). Kara also has a bio-electric aura that enhances her near invulnerability and also protects her skin and her costume from dirt and tear; as such, Kara is perpetually clean. The Sun also provides Kara with a longer lifespan than that of a human being, to the point that she is effectively a biological immortal. Kara doesn't require food, water, or sleep to survive. She is also immune to most diseases, mental and physical, and would require a very strong strain to have a chance at affecting her. In the rare instances that Kara is harmed by someone matching her strength or by the use of one of her weaknesses, she can heal almost instantaneously. Her power surpasses most other beings, though she can be overpowered by those who rival her strength such as Black Adam, Darkseid, Despero, Doomsday, Bizarro, Wonder Woman, and Superman. In reality, Kara is actually older than her cousin, Clark, and spent time on Krypton before its destruction. As such (unlike Superman), she possesses memories of Kryptonian culture as well as her cousin's parents. Continued exposure to a yellow Sun will slowly increase abilities. Many characters in the DC Universe have noted that Supergirl appears, at times, to be even more powerful than Superman himself. In answer to this, Superman states that this is because he has spent his entire life subconsciously suppressing his full powers in order to avoid hurting others, having been absorbing solar radiation since his infancy. Kara, not having such practice or experience, simply uses the full magnitude of her powers. Abilities Unlike her cousin, Kara was taught to fight in Krypton as part of her tests, and at the Crucible Academy, being adept at various Kryptonian fighting styles like Klurkor and Torquasm Rao. Supergirl also learned the art of Bagua under I-Ching's instructions. She practiced how to manipulate her Chi or Qi in order to gain better control of her powers due to them becoming overwhelmed after her conflict with the Fatal Five. Superman recommended guardianship with I-Ching to Supergirl first. In addition to training in Krypton, Kara was trained by Batman in advanced martial arts and trained with the Amazons in Themyscira in unarmed and armed combat, Amazonas martial arts, fencing, Shield handling, and other Amazon weapons. She trained with Wonder Woman and Artemis extensively. Other versions There are numerous alternate versions of Supergirl. The most notable is Power Girl (real name Kara Zor-L, also known as Karen Starr) who first appeared in All Star Comics #58 (January/February 1976). Power Girl is the Earth-Two counterpart of Supergirl and the first cousin of Kal-L, Superman of the pre-Crisis Earth-Two. The infant Power Girl's parents enabled her to escape the destruction of Krypton. Although she left the planet at the same time that Superman did, her ship took much longer to reach Earth-Two. She has superhuman strength and the ability to fly and is the first chairwoman of the Justice Society of America. She sports a bob of blond hair; wears a distinctive white, red, and blue costume; and has an aggressive fighting style. Throughout her early appearances in All Star Comics, she is often at odds with Wildcat because his penchant for talking to her as if she were an ordinary human female rather than a superpowered Kryptonian annoys her. She also fought alongside the Sovereign Seven team, replacing Rampart after his death though that series is not considered to be part of canon in the DC universe. The 1985 limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths eliminated Earth-Two, causing her origin to change; she became the granddaughter of the Atlantean sorcerer Arion. However, story events culminating in the 2005–2006 Infinite Crisis limited series restored her status as a refugee from the Krypton of the destroyed pre-Crisis Earth-Two universe. Like the original Kara's Streaky, Power Girl has a cat, featured in a story by Amanda Conner in Wonder Woman #600. Reception This version of Supergirl is ranked as the 153rd-greatest comic book character of all time by Wizard magazine. IGN also ranked this version of Supergirl as the 94th-greatest comic book superhero, stating "for a character born of the Silver Age that saw everything from a Super Baby to a Super Monkey, Kara Zor-El grew into something much more than simply another marketing ploy to slap an 'S' on." In 2013 IGN ranked Supergirl as the 17th-greatest DC comic superhero, stating "she was an early example of a female sidekick developing a large fanbase in her own right", and "Supergirl has been one of DC's most powerful heroes, and a standard to hold other female heroes against." Appearances Pre-Crisis 1959 to 1969: Action Comics #252 to #376. 1969 to 1972: Adventure Comics #381 to #424. 1972 to 1974: Supergirl #1 to #10. 1974 to 1982: Her comic merges with Jimmy Olsen's and Lois Lane's to become Superman Family #164 to #222. 1982 to 1984: The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl #1 to #13, Supergirl (vol. 2) #14 to #23. 2015: Convergence Kara Zor-El appeared in over 750 stories published by DC from 1959 to 1985. Post-Crisis 2004 to 2005: Superman/Batman #8 to #13 and #19 2005 to 2011: Supergirl (vol. 5) #0 to #67 2006 to 2008: Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5) #16 to #37 2007: Action Comics #850 2008: Final Crisis 2011 to 2015: New 52: Supergirl (vol. 6) #1 to #40 2016 to current: Rebirth: Supergirl (vol. 7) #1 to current Kara Zor-El also appears as a supporting character in several issues of other DC Comics, including Superman, Action Comics, Teen Titans, Amazons Attack, World War III, and Wonder Girl. She has also appeared in many issues of Superman, Action Comics, and Superman New Krypton starting with the World Without Superman event in 2009, and continuing with the World Against Superman event going into 2010. Collected editions Listed in chronological order. All ages titles are not in continuity with the original or modern Kara. In other media Television Live-action Smallville Prior to the seventh season (2007–2008) of the WB/CW show Smallville where she is introduced into the cast and is portrayed by Laura Vandervoort, a woman claiming to be Kara (portrayed by Adrianne Palicki) is briefly introduced in the season 3 finale. It is later revealed her real name is Lindsey Harrison, and had been given false memories and powers by the artificial intelligence of Clark Kent's (Tom Welling) father Jor-El as part of a series of tests. Vandervoort portrays the real Kara, Clark's cousin whose spaceship had been trapped in stasis until the events of the season 6 finale. Much of season 7 is concerned with Kara's attempts to adjust to life on Earth, especially after learning of Krypton's destruction. Her storyline sees her simultaneously become the object of Lex Luthor's (Michael Rosenbaum) obsessions and Jimmy Olsen's (Aaron Ashmore) affections, suffer a bout of amnesia, discover her father's (Christopher Heyerdahl) sinister motives and become a target of evil android Brainiac (James Marsters). The season finale sees Kara become trapped in the Phantom Zone. Starting with season 8, Vandervoort ceases to feature as a series regular, but reprises the role three more times. In her first guest appearance, "Bloodline," Kara is freed from the Phantom Zone and later departs Clark's hometown of Smallville to search for Kandor, her birthplace, as it is rumored to have survived their home planet's destruction. She appears again in the season 10 episode "Supergirl", in which she formally adopts her superhero moniker. Her off-screen adventures are alluded to thereafter. Vandervoort makes a final appearance in the show's penultimate episode, "Prophecy", in which she helps Green Arrow (Justin Hartley) locate the "Bow of Orion" to use against Darkseid. She is then called to the Fortress of Solitude, where she learns from Jor-El that her job on Earth is done. Using a Legion of Super-Heroes flight ring, she travels to the future to seek her own destiny. The Season Eleven comic book continuation of the show later depicts Kara's continued story in the 31st century, subsequent return to the present and joining the Justice League. Arrowverse In September 2014, a 22-episode television series centered around Supergirl was in development at Warner Bros. Television, set to premiere on CBS with a January 2015 air date. Melissa Benoist was cast as the titular character. In May 2016, the series moved to The CW and was later integrated into the Arrowverse, a shared universe consisting of shows including Arrow, The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. In the series, Kara Zor-El was sent to Earth to protect her cousin Kal-El, following her homeworld Krypton's destruction. However, she is knocked into the Phantom Zone, where she is stranded for 24 years. She eventually crash lands on Earth and is found by her already grown-up cousin Kal, now known to the world as the iconic superhero "Superman". Superman brings Kara into the custody of Jeremiah Danvers, director of the Department of Extranormal Operations (D.E.O.), and his daughter Alex. Growing up, Kara struggles to maintain her Kryptonian abilities as well as balancing her relationship with her adoptive sister. Eventually, the two bond when Kara's powers are exposed. However, Jeremiah decides it's best to isolate her abilities. As an adult, Kara is forced to use her powers again when her sister's plane almost crashes. She is later dubbed "Supergirl" by the media and dons a costume like her cousin. Kara decides to use her abilities to fight alien invaders such as Kara's aunt Astra and her husband Non, Mon-El's rogue parents, the Worldkiller Reign, anti-alien activist Ben Lockwood, and later the shadowy organization Leviathan, with the help of her sister Alex, now an agent of the D.E.O., her best friend and tech-expert Winn Schott, last of the Green Martians J'onn J'onzz / Martian Manhunter, and Kal's best friend Jimmy Olsen. She is later joined by Lex Luthor's sister Lena, Prince of Daxam Mon-El, former Legion of Superheroes member Querl "Brainy" Dox / Brainiac 5, Nia Nal / Dreamer, James' younger sister Kelly, and reporter Willam Dey face against these rival forces. After joining the Arrowverse, which contain annual crossover, Kara assists Barry Allen, Oliver Queen and the Legends of Tomorrow against threats on their designated earth "Earth-1" while Kara’s is designated as "Earth-38. Later, Kara is selected by The Monitor as the Paragon of Hope to participate in the coming crisis and fight against the Anti-Monitor, whose goal is to destroy the multiverse. After doing so, the Paragons are sent to the Vanishing Point where Oliver, now a Spectre, helps them escape. The Paragons appear at the dawn of time in the anti-matter universe where they have their final confrontation with the Anti-Monitor. Eventually, Oliver sacrifices himself to kill the Anti-Monitor, and as a result, a new multiverse is born with Earth-38 and Earth-1 merged into "Earth-Prime". Following the crisis, Kara is forced to deal the after-effects of Crisis which include working with Lex, now owning the D.E.O. while Leviathan continue their covert operations under Gamemnae. The sixth season sees Kara and her allies expose Lex's crimes, but are then forced to deal with Nyxlygsptlnz, a fifth-dimensional imp who tricked the heroes into releasing her from the Phantom Zone. Eventually Nyxlygsptlnz joins forces with Lex Luthor and the two kill William, but Kara's assembled allies are able to defeat the two, culminating in Lex and Nyxlygsptlnz being trapped in the Phantom Zone when one of their own plans backfires. The series concludes with Kara revealing her dual identity so that she can live a full life as one person. Animation DC Nation Shorts Supergirl appears with Batgirl and Wonder Girl in Super Best Friends Forever, voiced by Nicole Sullivan. DC Super Hero Girls Supergirl appears as a central protagonist in the web series DC Super Hero Girls voiced by Anais Fairweather, and is a student at Super Hero High, is very kind and caring and extremely powerful but she's also very clumsy. She also appears as a central protagonist in the 2019 TV series, with Nicole Sullivan reprising her role from the Super Best Friends Forever shorts. In this version, she is also a rebel and is known as the "cool kid" in school. She may be tough but she can easily express her emotions and is very open-minded as well. She can be a cool friend and a helpful one, but she can also be jealous sometimes and she dislikes her cousin's prominence. Justice League Action Supergirl appears in Justice League Action, voiced by Joanne Spracklen. She has the appearance of a wide-eyed human teenager with blonde hair and wears her traditional costume except that it has thigh-high boots and a pleated skirt. As a person, she is youthful, responsible, and shows much affection for her cousin Superman. In "Party Animal", she appears as a cameo at this Christmas party with the Justice League. In "Keeping up with the Kryptonians", Supergirl becomes a star of the popular reality show "That's So Kara", and Superman a Kasnian who rules from one place to another on Earth, all being a reality caused by Mister Mxyzptlk. In "Unleashed", Supergirl accompanies Justice League in stopping Red Lantern Corps, unaware that it was a distraction made by Dex-Starr to invade Earth, until it was ultimately resolved by Krypto, Streaky, and Plastic Man. In a short "The Goddess Must Be Crazy", Supergirl trains with Wonder Woman in Paradise Island, until she is possessed by Felix Faust, to destroy the island. Film Superman film series A live action depiction of Supergirl first appears in the eponymous 1984 film starring Helen Slater as Supergirl. The film is a spin-off from the Superman film series starring Christopher Reeve, to which it is connected by Marc McClure's character of Jimmy Olsen. DC Extended Universe Kara Zor-El / Linda Danvers / Supergirl exists within the DC Extended Universe, as she was referenced in Man of Steel when Kal-El / Clark Kent / Superman discovers an empty pod within the Kryptonian scout spaceship. Though Zack Snyder confirmed in August 2018 that even though the character does exist, that pod was not intended for her. In August 2018, a film centered around the character was announced to be in development, with Oren Uziel hired as screenwriter for the project. The studio intends to hire a female director, with Reed Morano—who has expressed interest in the project—being its top choice. Filming was expected to start production in early 2020. Sasha Calle will play Supergirl for the DC Extended Universe in The Flash. Animation Summer Glau voices the post-Crisis version of Kara Zor-El in Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, which is based on the Superman/Batman storyline "The Supergirl from Krypton". Despite this, it was confirmed by director Lauren Montgomery that Supergirl's name was removed from the title due to the much slower sales of the previous Wonder Woman animated movie, and the character was not permitted to appear on the cover in her trademark outfit. Molly Quinn voices Supergirl in Superman: Unbound. Supergirl appears in Lego DC Comics Super Heroes: Justice League: Cosmic Clash, voiced by Jessica DiCicco. Video games Supergirl appears in DC Universe Online, voiced by Adriene Mishler. In the villain campaign, the players help Doctor Psycho capture Supergirl using Kryptonite. In the hero campaign, the players fight Doctor Psycho to save Supergirl. Under the thrall of Brainiac, she must be defeated in the Fortress of Solitude: Power Core raid. Supergirl is unlockable in Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, voiced by Bridget Hoffman. Supergirl makes a cameo appearance in the IOS version of Injustice: Gods Among Us as a support card. Supergirl appears as a playable character in Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham, voiced by Kari Wahlgren. She is playable in her default variant which is designed after her appearance in The New 52 and in her Classic attire. Her Classic variant is unlocked in a VR Mission while her New 52 variant is unlocked in a Hub Quest in Nok where she requests players to defeat a number of enemies she accidentally releases from their cells. Supergirl appears as a playable character in Infinite Crisis, voiced by Camilla Luddington. Supergirl appears as a playable character and the central protagonist in Injustice 2 by NetherRealm Studios, the sequel to Injustice: Gods Among Us, voiced by Laura Bailey. Here her origin is much like in the comics where she is sent along with her cousin Kal-El to Earth by her mother after Krypton is destroyed but on separate pods where hers veers off-course after sustaining significant damage, stranding her in space for many years until she lands on Earth, unaged. When the main storyline starts, she is residing on Black Adam's kingdom of Khandaq, apparently under his and Wonder Woman's protection. When Brainiac who was responsible for Krypton's destruction attacks, she, Wonder Woman, and Black Adam attempt to free Superman and the remaining members of the Regime, while being interrupted in their efforts by new Insurgency recruits Blue Beetle and Firestorm until Batman himself arrives and releases Superman, leading to a temporary alliance between the Regime and Insurgency against the alien warlord. Over the course of the story, she learns the truth about her cousin's tyranny and at the end of the game sides with Batman, Green Lantern and Flash in letting Brainiac live in order to restore the lost cities but is defeated. In Batman's ending, she laments her cousin's tyranny and sees him leave to be imprisoned in the Phantom Zone and is offered membership by Batman in his Justice League. In Superman's ending, she is imprisoned aboard Brainiac's ship and to her shock discovers her cousin has bonded with it and when she refuses his offer to join him in leading his new legion of imprisoned species. He attempts to coerce her by revealing a brainwashed Batman, who had also been captured, further shocking her. Supergirl appears as a limited-distribution minifigure for the toys-to-life video game Lego Dimensions, with Kari Wahlgren reprising her role. She has the ability to transform between her classic and Red Lantern forms. Supergirl appears as a playable character in DC Unchained. Supergirl appears in the PSP version of Justice League Heroes. Supergirl appears as a playable character in the DC TV Super-Heroes DLC pack in Lego DC Super-Villains. See also Alternative versions of Supergirl Laurel Gand References External links DC Comics Pre-Crisis Supergirl Chronology Supergirl Characters created by Otto Binder Comics characters introduced in 1958 Comics characters introduced in 1959 DC Comics aliens DC Comics American superheroes DC Comics characters who can move at superhuman speeds DC Comics characters with accelerated healing DC Comics characters with superhuman strength DC Comics deities DC Comics female superheroes DC Comics film characters DC Comics television characters DC Comics extraterrestrial superheroes Female characters in television Fictional characters with superhuman senses Fictional actors Fictional extraterrestrial–human hybrids Fictional orphans Fictional photographers Fictional refugees Fictional reporters Fictional school counselors Fictional American secret agents Fictional waiting staff Kryptonians Superheroes who are adopted Vigilante characters in comics

C_eaa7329c3ac14b8bb4aaea61d8fa517d_1

what else happened

what else happened during Supergirl's revitalization other than leaving her adopted foster home?

Supergirl (Kara Zor-El)

After long-time Superman family editor Mort Weisinger retired in 1971, the character underwent revitalization under editor Joe Orlando and artist Mike Sekowsky. Wearing a series of new outfits, leaving her adopted foster home with the Danvers family, Linda goes on to San Francisco where she works for KSF-TV as a camera operator and develops a crush on her boss, Geoffrey Anderson. These stories introduced Supergirl's most memorable villain from this period: Lex Luthor's niece Nasthalthia, or Nasty. Nasty had made two appearances towards the end of Linda's college years, then pursued her to KSF-TV, trying to secure proof of her dual identity. Supergirl starred in her first solo eponymous monthly series beginning in 1972 until October 1974, when her monthly title merged with Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane, and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen to produce a new title: then-highest DC selling series called The Superman Family, where she eventually became the steady lead story. Linda worked as a student advisor at New Athens Experimental School, before leaving for New York to follow a career in acting with daytime soap Secret Hearts. In 1982 Supergirl received a second monthly solo series titled The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl, relocating the character to Chicago as Linda became a mature student of Psychology. Industry legend, and former DC Publisher, Carmine Infantino provided the pencilled art (Bob Oksner inked). With issue 13 the title was revamped, with a new costume design (sporting a red headband) and the title shortened to just Supergirl. The series ran until sudden cancellation in 1984, only two months before the character's debut in a big-budget Hollywood film starring Helen Slater. In the Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985) the greatest heroes from Earth-One, Earth-Two, Earth-Four, Earth-S, and Earth-X join forces in order to defeat the Anti-Monitor. When Superman comes face to face with the Anti-Monitor and is knocked unconscious, Supergirl rushes to save him before he is killed. She is able to fight him off long enough for Dr. Light to carry her cousin to a safe distance, but is killed by the Anti-Monitor. A public memorial service for Supergirl takes place in Chicago, where Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) delivers the eulogy. In her remarks she states "Kara is a hero. She will not be forgotten." Superman then gives his late cousin burial by taking her corpse to Rokyn/New Krypton to Zor-El and Allura. A Superman issue the next month reveals that Kara had experienced a premonition about her own passing. However, when the universe is rebooted, the timeline is altered. Kara Zor-El and all memory of her is erased from existence. CANNOTANSWER

These stories introduced Supergirl's most memorable villain from this period: Lex Luthor's niece Nasthalthia, or Nasty.

Kara Zor-El, also known by her adoptive names of Linda Lee Danvers, Kara Kent, Linda Lang, and Kara Danvers, and the superhero name of Supergirl, is a superheroine appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. She was created by Otto Binder and designed by Al Plastino. Danvers first appeared in Action Comics #252 (May 1959)'s "The Supergirl from Krypton" story. Kara is the biological cousin of Kal-El, who went on to adopt the name of Clark Kent and the superhero Superman. During the 1980s and the revolution of the Modern Age of Comics, Superman editors believed the character's history had become too convoluted, thus killing Supergirl during the 1985 Crisis on Infinite Earths event and retconning her out of existence. DC Comics Senior Vice President Dan DiDio re-introduced the character in 2004 along with editor Eddie Berganza and writer Jeph Loeb, with her the Superman/Batman storyline "The Supergirl from Krypton". As the current Supergirl, Kara stars in her own monthly comic book series. With DC's The New 52 relaunch, Kara, like most of the DC Universe, was revamped. DC relaunched the Supergirl comic in August 2016 as part of their DC Rebirth initiative. In live-action, Supergirl appeared in the 1984 film based on her character and was portrayed by Helen Slater. She also appeared in the series Smallville, played by actress Laura Vandervoort. In 2015, the live-action Arrowverse series Supergirl debuted on CBS and then moved to The CW after the first season. Supergirl was portrayed by Melissa Benoist on the show and also appeared on other Arrowverse shows. Sasha Calle will appear as Supergirl in the upcoming DC Extended Universe film The Flash (2022). Publication history Early life Although Kara Zor-El was the first character to use the name "Supergirl," DC Comics tested three different female versions of Superman prior to her debut. The first story to feature a female counterpart to Superman was "Lois Lane – Superwoman," which was published in Action Comics #60 (May 1943). In the story, a hospitalized Lois Lane dreams she has gained superpowers thanks to a blood transfusion from the Man of Steel. She begins her own career as "Superwoman", complete with a version of Superman's costume. In the Superboy #78 story entitled "Claire Kent, Alias Super-Sister", Superboy saves the life of an alien woman named Shar-La, who turns Superboy into a girl, in retaliation for his disparaging thoughts about women drivers which she picked up telepathically. In Smallville, Clark claims to be Claire Kent, an out-of-town relative who is staying with the Kents. When in costume, he appears as Superboy's sister, Super-Sister, and claims the two have exchanged places. Once Superboy has learned his lesson about feeling more respect for women, Shar-La reveals the episode to be a dream which she projected into Superboy's mind. In Superman #123 (August 1958), Jimmy Olsen uses a magic totem to wish a "Super-Girl" into existence as a companion and aid to Superman; however, the two frequently get in each other's way until she is fatally injured protecting Superman from a Kryptonite meteor. At her insistence, Jimmy wishes the dying girl out of existence. DC used this story to gauge public response to the concept of a completely new super-powered female counterpart to Superman. The Kara Zor-El version of Supergirl finally appeared in Action Comics #252 (May 1959). Otto Binder wrote and Al Plastino illustrated her début story, in which Kara was born and raised in Argo City (unnamed until later issues), a fragment of Krypton that survived destruction. When the city is doomed by a meteor shower, Kara is sent to Earth by her parents, Zor-El and Alura (the latter unnamed until later issues), to be raised by her cousin Kal-El, known as Superman. Supergirl adopted the secret identity of an orphan "Linda Lee", and made Midvale Orphanage her home. Supergirl promised Superman that she would keep her existence on Earth a secret, so that he may use her as a "secret weapon", but that didn't stop Supergirl from exploring her new powers covertly. Action Comics #255 published reader's letters-of-comment to Supergirl's first appearance; she had allegedly generated a sizeable and mostly positive reaction. Supergirl, from her debut onwards, became a regular backup strip in Action Comics. She joined the Legion of Super-Heroes, like her cousin had done as a teenager, and in Action Comics #279 (July 1961) she was adopted by Fred and Edna Danvers, becoming "Linda Lee Danvers". Supergirl acted for three years as Superman's secret weapon, and her adventures during that time have been compared to contemporary developments in feminist thinking in work such as Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. She was at last introduced by her super-powered cousin to an unsuspecting world in Action Comics #285 (February 1962). During her first quarter of a century, Linda Danvers would have many professions, from student to student advisor, to actor, and even TV camera operator. She shared Action Comics with Superman until transferring to the lead in Adventure Comics at the end of the 1960s. In 1972 she finally moved to her own short-lived eponymous magazine, before DC merged its Supergirl, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen titles into a single anthology title named The Superman Family. In 1982 Supergirl was relaunched into her own magazine. Death during Crisis on Infinite Earths In 1985, the maxi-series Crisis on Infinite Earths was conceived as a way to reduce DC continuity to a single universe in which all characters maintained a single history. Despite Supergirl's continued popularity and status as a central member of the "Superman Family", the editors at DC Comics and the creators of the maxi-series decided to kill Supergirl off during the Crisis. According to Marv Wolfman, writer of Crisis on Infinite Earths: The idea of killing Supergirl was first conceived by DC's vice president/executive editor Dick Giordano, who lobbied for the death to DC's publishers. He later said he has never had any regrets about this, explaining, "Supergirl was created initially to take advantage of the high Superman sales and not much thought was put into her creation. She was created essentially as a female Superman. With time, writers and artists improved upon her execution, but she never did really add anything to the Superman mythos—at least not for me." The poor initial reception of the 1984 film Supergirl was also blamed by some sources. In 1989, in the tale "Christmas with the Super-Heroes" the soul of Kara appears to Boston "Deadman" Brand, cheers him up, and then disappears from continuity until 2001 (see below). Several characters unrelated to Superman soon took on the Supergirl persona, including the Matrix (a shapeshifting genetically engineered life-form that 'defaulted' as Supergirl), Linda Danvers (the result of Matrix merging with the dying Linda Danvers and becoming an Earth-bound angel of fire), and Cir-El (Superman's apparent daughter from a possible future). A heroine resembling the Pre-Crisis Kara would later appear in Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds #5, along with an entire army of Legionnaires gathered from alternate worlds, times, and realities, to battle the Time Trapper. Two Supergirls meet Prior to the post-Crisis introduction of Kara Zor-El into mainstream continuity, the pre-Crisis Kara Zor-El made an appearance in Peter David's Supergirl: Many Happy Returns. The then-current Supergirl series, at the time starring Linda Danvers, was in danger of cancellation and Peter David thought a story arc involving Kara Zor-El would be enough to revitalize the series. In an interview with Cliff Biggers of Newsarama, David states: In the Linda Danvers' Supergirl series issues 49 and 50 (October and November 2000), the original dead Kara appears as Linda's "guardian angel". Then in issues 75 to 80, "Many Happy Returns", a young Kara appears from an earlier time long before the Crisis. The paradox becomes a moral crisis for Linda who tries to take her place as the Crisis sacrifice, living for years in a Silver Age universe where "no one swears, the villains are always easy to defeat, and everything's very, very clean", eventually marrying the Silver Age Superman and having a daughter with him, before she is forced to return to her universe by the Spectre when he reveals that her efforts to replace Kara as the sacrifice will not succeed. This run was illustrated by Ed Benes who had also illustrated Gail Simone's Birds of Prey which had a similar whimsical camaraderie between its female leads. Linda's inability to ultimately save Kara, coupled with the loss of her daughter, is so devastating that it ends her own career as Supergirl, Linda leaving a note for Superman where she explains that she feels that she has failed to live up to the standards of a true Supergirl and choosing to go somewhere she cannot be found. This story arc is usually cited as one of the best Supergirl stories ever written. The series ended with issue 80. Revival After the launch of the Superman/Batman comic book series, executive editor Dan DiDio had been looking for a way to simplify the Supergirl character from her convoluted post-Crisis history; the simplest version, of course, was Superman's cousin. Jeph Loeb and editor Eddie Berganza found an opening to reintroduce the character following the conclusion of the first story arc of Superman/Batman. Loeb states: The modern version of Kara Zor-El made her debut in Superman/Batman #8 (2004). Kara takes the mantle of Supergirl at the conclusion of the storyline. The Supergirl comic book series would later be relaunched, now starring Kara Zor-El as "The Girl of Steel". The first arc of the new series was written by Jeph Loeb and illustrated by Ian Churchill. Loeb would later describe the appeal of writing for Supergirl: As the character continued to be reinvented, steps towards regarding the iconic character were some of the most prominent changes. Artist Jamal Igle and editor Matt Idleson moved to transition the character away from red panties under her skirt to biker shorts, feeling such a change was a logical progression and "more respectable." The New 52 In September 2011, DC Comics began The New 52, in which it canceled all of its monthly superhero titles and relaunched 52 new ones, wiping out most of its past continuity in the process. One of the new titles was a new Supergirl series (Volume 6) that featured a new origin for Kara and was published between 2011 and 2015. Artist Mahmud Asrar designed a new costume for the character which strongly deviated from her classic, "cheerleader" suit, a change which generated criticism from some readers. DC Rebirth The 2016 DC Comics title relaunch Rebirth incorporates several elements (such as the costume, the name, the setting, and some characters) from the Supergirl television series. The DC Rebirth initiative undid the New 52's modern recreations, bringing DC's heroes back to their more classic iterations. Supergirl's new series (Volume 7) was titled Supergirl: Rebirth, written by Steven Orlando. The first arc was penciled by Brian Ching, who also redesigned Supergirl's costume in reference to a more classic look. In April 2018, it was announced that the title would be canceled after issue #20, only to be revived in August that year under a new creative team, with new writer Marc Andreyko and artist Kevin Maguire. The series ended with its 42nd issue. Future State: Kara Zor-El, Superwoman The Future State comics propose a possible future for Kara Zor-El, now an adult and having taken the alias of Superwoman. She leaves Earth to become a guardian of the Moon, which has become a refugee colony for aliens from the entire universe. The series was written by Marguerite Bennet and penciled by Marguerite Sauvage. Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow Under the Infinite Frontier brand, Kara's next series Woman of Tomorrow debuted in June 2021, written by Tom King and penciled by Brazilian artists Bilquis Evely and Mat Lopes. The arc introduces Supergirl to new character grounds as she begins the story as a young woman, celebrating her 21st birthday and helping a young alien in her quest for revenge. The "mentor-mentee journey on revenge" plot is, according to King, inspired by the original novel and both versions of True Grit. In this series, the creators paid homage to Linda Danvers, as Kara manifests flame wings and powers after taking a red kryptonite drug, in order to save her space bus crew from a Karpane dragon. Fictional character biography Silver Age In her debut story, Kara Zor-El is the last survivor of Argo City of the planet Krypton. Although Argo, which had survived the explosion of the planet, drifted through space as a self-sustaining environment, the soil of the colony eventually turned into Kryptonite; and though Kara's father Zor-El placed lead sheeting above the ground to protect the citizens from radiation, meteorites pierced the sheeting, and the Kryptonians died of radiation poisoning instead of replacing the metal. In Supergirl's subsequent backup feature in Action Comics drawn by artist Jim Mooney for ten years until 1968, Supergirl adopts the identity of Linda Lee, an orphan at Midvale Orphanage presided over by headmistress Miss Hart. She disguises herself by hiding her blond hair beneath a brunette wig; Supergirl interacts with humans on a person-to-person basis performing good deeds and saving the world by helping one person at a time, and she also devises clever schemes as "Superman's Secret Weapon," saving him many times and avoiding adoption before Superman can introduce her publicly. While temporarily powerless due to the scheming of Kandorian scientist Lesla-Lar, who is out to supplant her on Earth, Linda allows herself to be adopted by engineer and rocket scientist Fred Danvers and his wife, Edna. In time, she reveals her secret identity to her adoptive parents on the same day her cousin Superman finally introduces her to the world in the finale of then-DC's longest playing series ever (eight chapters) aptly called "The World's Greatest Heroine". When frequent dreams about her parents being alive turn out to be real, she builds a machine aided by her engineer father's talent, and brings them both back alive from the "Survival Zone" where they had both teleported during Argo City's final moments. Zor-El and Allura eventually end up living in Kandor, and when the city in the bottle is enlarged, they both go on to live in Rokyn/New Krypton, where they have the sad duty of receiving her mortal remains after "Crisis" for burial. Graduating from high school in 1965, Linda Lee goes to college on a scholarship and stays in Stanhope College until she graduates in 1971. During this era, she is helped by her pet cat Streaky, her Super-Horse pet Comet, and befriends Lena Thorul, who had first appeared in the Lois Lane series. Kara is also a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes, where she becomes close to Brainiac 5. In addition, Linda has boyfriends from the orphanage (Richard "Dick" Malverne) and from Atlantis (Jerro the merboy). In 1967, Supergirl meets Batgirl for the first time in World's Finest Comics. Developing a strong friendship, the two characters teamed up many times again, as in Superman Family #171, or Adventure #381. In 1969, Supergirl left Action Comics and became a featured character in Adventure Comics beginning with issue #381 (June 1969). During the 1970s, Supergirl's costume changed frequently, as did her career in her civilian life. In her secret identity as Linda Lee Danvers, Kara Zor-El took a variety of jobs including graduate student in acting, television camera operator, and student counselor, and finally became an actress on the TV soap Secret Hearts. Bronze Age After long-time Superman family editor Mort Weisinger retired in 1971, the character underwent revitalization under editor Joe Orlando and artist Mike Sekowsky. Wearing a series of new outfits, leaving her adopted foster home with the Danvers family, Linda goes on to San Francisco where she works for KSF-TV as a camera operator and develops a crush on her boss, Geoffrey Anderson. These stories introduced Supergirl's most memorable villain from this period: Lex Luthor's niece Nasthalthia, or Nasty. Nasty had made two appearances towards the end of Linda's college years, then pursued her to KSF-TV, trying to secure proof of her dual identity. Supergirl starred in her first solo eponymous monthly series beginning in 1972 until October 1974, when her monthly title merged with Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane, and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen to produce a new title: then-highest DC selling series called The Superman Family, where she eventually became the steady lead story. Linda worked as a student advisor at New Athens Experimental School, before leaving for New York to follow a career in acting with daytime soap Secret Hearts. In 1982 Supergirl received a second monthly solo series titled The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl, relocating the character to Chicago as Linda became a mature student of Psychology. Industry legend, and former DC Publisher, Carmine Infantino provided the penciled art (Bob Oksner inked). With issue 13 the title was revamped, with a new costume design (sporting a red headband) and the title shortened to just Supergirl. The series ran until sudden cancellation in 1984, only two months before the character's debut in a big-budget Hollywood film starring Helen Slater. In the Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985), the greatest heroes from Earth-One, Earth-Two, Earth-Four, Earth-S, and Earth-X join forces in order to defeat the Anti-Monitor. When Superman comes face to face with the Anti-Monitor and is knocked unconscious, Supergirl rushes to save him before he is killed. She is able to fight him off long enough for Dr. Light to carry her cousin to a safe distance, but is killed by the Anti-Monitor. A public memorial service for Supergirl takes place in Chicago, where Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) delivers the eulogy. In her remarks, she states "Kara is a hero. She will not be forgotten." Superman then gives his late cousin burial by taking her corpse to Rokyn/New Krypton to Zor-El and Allura. A Superman issue the next month reveals that Kara had experienced a premonition about her own passing. However, when the universe is rebooted, the timeline is altered. Kara Zor-El and all memory of her is erased from existence. Echoes After these events, the soul of Kara Zor-El made another appearance in continuity three years later in a story titled "Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot" in Christmas with the Super-Heroes #2 (1989). Within the story, Boston "Deadman" Brand tries to feel the warmth of Christmas by possessing revelers' bodies. Feeling guilty upon the realization that he has been stealing others' Christmases, he flies off feeling sorry for himself for being denied a reward after a year of helping people. A warmly dressed blonde woman approaches Brand, startling him. Somehow seeing the normally invisible Brand, she converses with him, reminding him, She reminds Brand that even though he is dead, he is still human, and he should rejoice because it means his spirit is still alive. As the woman leaves, Brand asks her who she is, to which she replies, "My name is Kara. Though I doubt that will mean anything to you." The story, written by Alan Brennert and penciled by Dick Giordano, is dedicated to Otto Binder and Jim Mooney, adding: "We still remember." Finally, the soul of Kara Zor-El appeared twice during Peter David's run, specifically in issues #48 and #49 when she appears before a defeated and imprisoned then-Supergirl, Linda Danvers from Earth, and comforts her. Linda acknowledges she has been helped three times by her phantom-friend, and when she asks her name she is told by the smiling figure: "I have gone by many names, but the one I am most fond of is: Kara!" Modern Age In 2004, Jeph Loeb reintroduced Kara Zor-El into post-Zero Hour (Birthright timeline) continuity during a storyline in the series Superman/Batman. She is the biological cousin of Superman, and although chronologically older than him, the ship in which she traveled to Earth was caught in a large green Kryptonite meteorite which held her in a state of suspended animation for much of the journey, making her have the appearance of a 16-year-old girl. Still, Supergirl sometimes saw Superman as a child, due to last carrying him as a baby. DC Comics relaunched the Supergirl, the first story arc of which was written by Loeb. showcases Supergirl on a journey of self-discovery. Along her journey, she encounters Power Girl (Kara Zor-El's counterpart from another universe), the Teen Titans, the Outsiders, the Justice League of America, and arch-villain Lex Luthor. During the company-wide crossover series Infinite Crisis (2005), a sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths, Supergirl is transported to the 31st century, where she is revered as a member of the Superman family and joins the Legion of Super-Heroes. DC Comics renamed the monthly series Legion of Super-Heroes to Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes. Beginning with issue #16. In the limited series 52, which chronicles the events that took place during the missing year after the end of Infinite Crisis, Donna Troy recalls the original Kara Zor-El and her sacrifice to save the universe. Supergirl returns to the 21st century during the course of 52. After briefly filling in for a temporarily depowered Superman as guardian of Metropolis, she assumes the identity of Flamebird to fight crime in the bottle city of Kandor with Power Girl as Nightwing in Greg Rucka's arc Supergirl: Kandor. In 2007, Supergirl appeared in the miniseries Amazons Attack! That same year, she joined the Teen Titans for five issues. Conversations with other heroes who maintain secret identities lead Kara to the conclusion that she needs to make a deeper connection with human beings. She accepts Lana Lang's proposal to present her to the Daily Planet staff as "Linda Lang", Lana's teenaged niece. In the 2008–2009 "New Krypton" story arc, in which Superman discovers and frees the real Kandor and a large number of its citizens, Supergirl is reunited with her father, Zor-El and mother, Alura, though Zor-El is killed by the villain Reactron. When a planet is formed that the Kryptonians call New Krypton, Kara is torn between her life on Earth, and her obligation to her mother, eventually joining the New Krypton Science Guild. Supergirl subsequently appears in the 2009 miniseries Justice League: Cry for Justice, and the 2009–2010 storyline "Blackest Night". The New Krypton storyline would later be resolved in the "World of New Krypton", "Superman: Last Stand of New Krypton", "War of the Supermen" storylines, resulting in the destruction of New Krypton and seeing Supergirl mourn her people. Supergirl subsequently appears in the 2010 "Brightest Day" storyline, the follow up to "Blackest Night"., where she joins the Justice League along with Jesse Quick & Jade. The New 52 In this continuity, Kara's ship lands in Smallville, Kansas but hurtles through the Earth and emerges in Siberia. Kara has no memory of the destruction of Krypton, and believes it is only three days since her spacecraft was launched. She learns the truth about Krypton's destruction from Superman, and later journeys through a wormhole to Argo City, which she finds in orbit around a blue sun. She finds the city in ruins, with no explanation of how it met that fate, and is attacked by a female Worldkiller named Reign before the city plummets into the sun. When Reign and her fellow Worldkiller plan to enslave the Earth, Supergirl returns there to defeat them, and thus adopts Earth as her new home. After several battles with supervillains, including the Worldkillers, superweapons of Kryptonian design, she accepts Krypton's destruction, but continues to grapple with her grief. Her desire to restore Krypton results in her being manipulated into nearly destroying the Earth by another Kryptonian whom she falls in love with. Upon realizing his manipulation, she kills him by driving Kryptonite through his heart, and succumbs to Kryptonite poisoning. Following her poisoning, Supergirl departs the Earth to die alone. While adrift in interstellar space, she encounters a planet under attack by monsters, and quickly intervenes to save them, unaware that the entire planet is a trap by Brainiac. She is captured and restrained by Cyborg Superman, but after a struggle, manages to escape both Brainiac and Cyborg Superman. Returning to Earth, she is sent into the past by the Oracle alongside Superman and Superboy, where she ensures that a resurrected H'el cannot save Krypton, and sacrifices the planet and her family in order to save the universe. Back on Earth, she encounters the assassin Lobo. Initially eager for a peaceful resolution, seeing a kind of kinship with him in their both being lone survivors of their respective worlds (although not truly aware of Lobo's circumstances), Kara's encounter with the Czarnian would reveal deep mental wounds, resulting in the unleashing of her rage and transformation into a Red Lantern. Driven insane by rage, Kara wanders space, attacking everyone in her way, until captured by several Green Lanterns and brought to Hal Jordan. Immediately recognizing a Kryptonian and unable to remove the power ring without killing her, he brings her to Guy Gardner, the leader of one of the two Red Lantern factions, who manages to restore her sanity. After some time under Guy Gardner's tutelage and protecting the galaxy as a Red Lantern, after being discharged from the Red Lantern Corps (because Guy did not want for her to die needlessly against Atrocitus' splinter group), on her way back to Earth, Kara encounters the leader of the Worldkillers, who are revealed to be parasitic suits of armor. He attempts to assimilate Kara as his host, but she voluntarily subjects herself to Kryptonite poisoning in order to stop him, and eventually flies into the Sun and removes her power ring, killing her and removing him from her body. However, Kara is revealed to be immortal while in the Sun's core, and is restored to life without the power ring or any Kryptonite poisoning, immediately destroying the Worldkiller. She later helps Guy against Atrocitus and his Red Lantern splinter group. Convergence and return of the Pre-Crisis version During the Convergence story arc, the original Kara Zor-El who had sacrificed her life during Crisis on Infinite Earths makes an appearance on the amalgamated planet of Telos. At the end of the saga she volunteers herself to once again fight the Anti-Monitor but this time, with the help of her timeline's Barry Allen, the Pre-Flashpoint Superman (in tow with his pregnant wife, Lois Lane), and a repentant Parallax (Zero Hour Hal Jordan), vows to defeat him for the sake of the multiverse's continued existence. Without it being seen, those left on Telos discover the group was successful and all previous timelines (with the mysterious exception of the pre-Flashpoint/pre-New 52 DC universe) from DC history had been re-established, though the fate of the original Kara Zor-El and her fellows went unmentioned. A few more details of the battle against the Anti-Monitor are later revealed during the New 52 comic mini-series (leading into DC's Rebirth event). After the defeat of Anti-Monitor, Pre-New 52 Clark and Lois decide to start life anew in the closest universe they can find (mysteriously yet unable to see their old universe even though the rest of the multiverse had been restored) while Pre-Crisis Kara Zor-El, along with her contemporary Barry Allen and Zero Hour Parallax/Hal Jordan, decide to find their place in the universe and go off to do so. Her fate as of that story arc is yet to be revealed. DC Rebirth After the events that led to the death of the New 52 version of Superman, 16-year-old Kara lives in National City with her adoptive parents, D.E.O. agents Jeremiah and Eliza Danvers, where she attends high school and works with the agency as led by Cameron Chase. As part of her civilian identity, Kara receives special glasses that darken her blond hair when posing as Kara Danvers. Kara also goes on an internship at Cat Grant's CATCO alongside Ben Rubel, whom she befriends. In her opening arc "The Reign of the Cyborg Supermen", Kara discovers that the cyborg Zor-El, whom she had battled in her New 52 title, is still active and has rebuilt other Kryptonians (her mother Alura included), planning to take over Earth. Supergirl defeats them but vows to help her father regardless of his actions. After National City discovers Supergirl has kept Zor-El's "living" status a secret, they become untrustful of her. Director Bones takes advantage of the heroine's impopularity and, after taking control of the D.E.O., sends villains in an attempt to bring Kara down. She defeats all of them and regains trust from National City with Ben's help. The Supergirl Who Laughs Kara is later infected by The Batman Who Laughs toxin, causing her to turn evil and joining other infected as part of Laughs Secret Six before later being cured. She is fired from CatCo by Cat Grant and starts working at S.T.A.R. Labs. Woman of Tomorrow Journeying throughout the universe with Krypto, Kara celebrates her 21st birthday alone on a distant planet. Drunk in a bar, she is approached by a little girl named Ruthye and is asked to kill Krem (her father's murderer) in vengeance. Supergirl refuses but, when she is about to leave the planet, Krem attacks and severely wounds both her and Krypto, fleeing in Kara's ship. Kara begins her journey alongside Ruthye and, powerless, saves her space bus crew from a Karpane dragon by taking a red kryptonite drug which causes her to manifest flame wings. Powers and abilities Like all Kryptonians under a yellow sun, the current version of Kara Zor-El possesses virtually unlimited strength, stamina, and durability. She is able to fly and with super speed that she can also use on foot, similar to Superman and The Flash. Also like Superman, Supergirl possesses super senses, super-breath, and freeze breathe, as well as multiple forms of supervision (including X-Ray, Infrared, Telescopic, and Microscopic). Kara also has a bio-electric aura that enhances her near invulnerability and also protects her skin and her costume from dirt and tear; as such, Kara is perpetually clean. The Sun also provides Kara with a longer lifespan than that of a human being, to the point that she is effectively a biological immortal. Kara doesn't require food, water, or sleep to survive. She is also immune to most diseases, mental and physical, and would require a very strong strain to have a chance at affecting her. In the rare instances that Kara is harmed by someone matching her strength or by the use of one of her weaknesses, she can heal almost instantaneously. Her power surpasses most other beings, though she can be overpowered by those who rival her strength such as Black Adam, Darkseid, Despero, Doomsday, Bizarro, Wonder Woman, and Superman. In reality, Kara is actually older than her cousin, Clark, and spent time on Krypton before its destruction. As such (unlike Superman), she possesses memories of Kryptonian culture as well as her cousin's parents. Continued exposure to a yellow Sun will slowly increase abilities. Many characters in the DC Universe have noted that Supergirl appears, at times, to be even more powerful than Superman himself. In answer to this, Superman states that this is because he has spent his entire life subconsciously suppressing his full powers in order to avoid hurting others, having been absorbing solar radiation since his infancy. Kara, not having such practice or experience, simply uses the full magnitude of her powers. Abilities Unlike her cousin, Kara was taught to fight in Krypton as part of her tests, and at the Crucible Academy, being adept at various Kryptonian fighting styles like Klurkor and Torquasm Rao. Supergirl also learned the art of Bagua under I-Ching's instructions. She practiced how to manipulate her Chi or Qi in order to gain better control of her powers due to them becoming overwhelmed after her conflict with the Fatal Five. Superman recommended guardianship with I-Ching to Supergirl first. In addition to training in Krypton, Kara was trained by Batman in advanced martial arts and trained with the Amazons in Themyscira in unarmed and armed combat, Amazonas martial arts, fencing, Shield handling, and other Amazon weapons. She trained with Wonder Woman and Artemis extensively. Other versions There are numerous alternate versions of Supergirl. The most notable is Power Girl (real name Kara Zor-L, also known as Karen Starr) who first appeared in All Star Comics #58 (January/February 1976). Power Girl is the Earth-Two counterpart of Supergirl and the first cousin of Kal-L, Superman of the pre-Crisis Earth-Two. The infant Power Girl's parents enabled her to escape the destruction of Krypton. Although she left the planet at the same time that Superman did, her ship took much longer to reach Earth-Two. She has superhuman strength and the ability to fly and is the first chairwoman of the Justice Society of America. She sports a bob of blond hair; wears a distinctive white, red, and blue costume; and has an aggressive fighting style. Throughout her early appearances in All Star Comics, she is often at odds with Wildcat because his penchant for talking to her as if she were an ordinary human female rather than a superpowered Kryptonian annoys her. She also fought alongside the Sovereign Seven team, replacing Rampart after his death though that series is not considered to be part of canon in the DC universe. The 1985 limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths eliminated Earth-Two, causing her origin to change; she became the granddaughter of the Atlantean sorcerer Arion. However, story events culminating in the 2005–2006 Infinite Crisis limited series restored her status as a refugee from the Krypton of the destroyed pre-Crisis Earth-Two universe. Like the original Kara's Streaky, Power Girl has a cat, featured in a story by Amanda Conner in Wonder Woman #600. Reception This version of Supergirl is ranked as the 153rd-greatest comic book character of all time by Wizard magazine. IGN also ranked this version of Supergirl as the 94th-greatest comic book superhero, stating "for a character born of the Silver Age that saw everything from a Super Baby to a Super Monkey, Kara Zor-El grew into something much more than simply another marketing ploy to slap an 'S' on." In 2013 IGN ranked Supergirl as the 17th-greatest DC comic superhero, stating "she was an early example of a female sidekick developing a large fanbase in her own right", and "Supergirl has been one of DC's most powerful heroes, and a standard to hold other female heroes against." Appearances Pre-Crisis 1959 to 1969: Action Comics #252 to #376. 1969 to 1972: Adventure Comics #381 to #424. 1972 to 1974: Supergirl #1 to #10. 1974 to 1982: Her comic merges with Jimmy Olsen's and Lois Lane's to become Superman Family #164 to #222. 1982 to 1984: The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl #1 to #13, Supergirl (vol. 2) #14 to #23. 2015: Convergence Kara Zor-El appeared in over 750 stories published by DC from 1959 to 1985. Post-Crisis 2004 to 2005: Superman/Batman #8 to #13 and #19 2005 to 2011: Supergirl (vol. 5) #0 to #67 2006 to 2008: Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5) #16 to #37 2007: Action Comics #850 2008: Final Crisis 2011 to 2015: New 52: Supergirl (vol. 6) #1 to #40 2016 to current: Rebirth: Supergirl (vol. 7) #1 to current Kara Zor-El also appears as a supporting character in several issues of other DC Comics, including Superman, Action Comics, Teen Titans, Amazons Attack, World War III, and Wonder Girl. She has also appeared in many issues of Superman, Action Comics, and Superman New Krypton starting with the World Without Superman event in 2009, and continuing with the World Against Superman event going into 2010. Collected editions Listed in chronological order. All ages titles are not in continuity with the original or modern Kara. In other media Television Live-action Smallville Prior to the seventh season (2007–2008) of the WB/CW show Smallville where she is introduced into the cast and is portrayed by Laura Vandervoort, a woman claiming to be Kara (portrayed by Adrianne Palicki) is briefly introduced in the season 3 finale. It is later revealed her real name is Lindsey Harrison, and had been given false memories and powers by the artificial intelligence of Clark Kent's (Tom Welling) father Jor-El as part of a series of tests. Vandervoort portrays the real Kara, Clark's cousin whose spaceship had been trapped in stasis until the events of the season 6 finale. Much of season 7 is concerned with Kara's attempts to adjust to life on Earth, especially after learning of Krypton's destruction. Her storyline sees her simultaneously become the object of Lex Luthor's (Michael Rosenbaum) obsessions and Jimmy Olsen's (Aaron Ashmore) affections, suffer a bout of amnesia, discover her father's (Christopher Heyerdahl) sinister motives and become a target of evil android Brainiac (James Marsters). The season finale sees Kara become trapped in the Phantom Zone. Starting with season 8, Vandervoort ceases to feature as a series regular, but reprises the role three more times. In her first guest appearance, "Bloodline," Kara is freed from the Phantom Zone and later departs Clark's hometown of Smallville to search for Kandor, her birthplace, as it is rumored to have survived their home planet's destruction. She appears again in the season 10 episode "Supergirl", in which she formally adopts her superhero moniker. Her off-screen adventures are alluded to thereafter. Vandervoort makes a final appearance in the show's penultimate episode, "Prophecy", in which she helps Green Arrow (Justin Hartley) locate the "Bow of Orion" to use against Darkseid. She is then called to the Fortress of Solitude, where she learns from Jor-El that her job on Earth is done. Using a Legion of Super-Heroes flight ring, she travels to the future to seek her own destiny. The Season Eleven comic book continuation of the show later depicts Kara's continued story in the 31st century, subsequent return to the present and joining the Justice League. Arrowverse In September 2014, a 22-episode television series centered around Supergirl was in development at Warner Bros. Television, set to premiere on CBS with a January 2015 air date. Melissa Benoist was cast as the titular character. In May 2016, the series moved to The CW and was later integrated into the Arrowverse, a shared universe consisting of shows including Arrow, The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. In the series, Kara Zor-El was sent to Earth to protect her cousin Kal-El, following her homeworld Krypton's destruction. However, she is knocked into the Phantom Zone, where she is stranded for 24 years. She eventually crash lands on Earth and is found by her already grown-up cousin Kal, now known to the world as the iconic superhero "Superman". Superman brings Kara into the custody of Jeremiah Danvers, director of the Department of Extranormal Operations (D.E.O.), and his daughter Alex. Growing up, Kara struggles to maintain her Kryptonian abilities as well as balancing her relationship with her adoptive sister. Eventually, the two bond when Kara's powers are exposed. However, Jeremiah decides it's best to isolate her abilities. As an adult, Kara is forced to use her powers again when her sister's plane almost crashes. She is later dubbed "Supergirl" by the media and dons a costume like her cousin. Kara decides to use her abilities to fight alien invaders such as Kara's aunt Astra and her husband Non, Mon-El's rogue parents, the Worldkiller Reign, anti-alien activist Ben Lockwood, and later the shadowy organization Leviathan, with the help of her sister Alex, now an agent of the D.E.O., her best friend and tech-expert Winn Schott, last of the Green Martians J'onn J'onzz / Martian Manhunter, and Kal's best friend Jimmy Olsen. She is later joined by Lex Luthor's sister Lena, Prince of Daxam Mon-El, former Legion of Superheroes member Querl "Brainy" Dox / Brainiac 5, Nia Nal / Dreamer, James' younger sister Kelly, and reporter Willam Dey face against these rival forces. After joining the Arrowverse, which contain annual crossover, Kara assists Barry Allen, Oliver Queen and the Legends of Tomorrow against threats on their designated earth "Earth-1" while Kara’s is designated as "Earth-38. Later, Kara is selected by The Monitor as the Paragon of Hope to participate in the coming crisis and fight against the Anti-Monitor, whose goal is to destroy the multiverse. After doing so, the Paragons are sent to the Vanishing Point where Oliver, now a Spectre, helps them escape. The Paragons appear at the dawn of time in the anti-matter universe where they have their final confrontation with the Anti-Monitor. Eventually, Oliver sacrifices himself to kill the Anti-Monitor, and as a result, a new multiverse is born with Earth-38 and Earth-1 merged into "Earth-Prime". Following the crisis, Kara is forced to deal the after-effects of Crisis which include working with Lex, now owning the D.E.O. while Leviathan continue their covert operations under Gamemnae. The sixth season sees Kara and her allies expose Lex's crimes, but are then forced to deal with Nyxlygsptlnz, a fifth-dimensional imp who tricked the heroes into releasing her from the Phantom Zone. Eventually Nyxlygsptlnz joins forces with Lex Luthor and the two kill William, but Kara's assembled allies are able to defeat the two, culminating in Lex and Nyxlygsptlnz being trapped in the Phantom Zone when one of their own plans backfires. The series concludes with Kara revealing her dual identity so that she can live a full life as one person. Animation DC Nation Shorts Supergirl appears with Batgirl and Wonder Girl in Super Best Friends Forever, voiced by Nicole Sullivan. DC Super Hero Girls Supergirl appears as a central protagonist in the web series DC Super Hero Girls voiced by Anais Fairweather, and is a student at Super Hero High, is very kind and caring and extremely powerful but she's also very clumsy. She also appears as a central protagonist in the 2019 TV series, with Nicole Sullivan reprising her role from the Super Best Friends Forever shorts. In this version, she is also a rebel and is known as the "cool kid" in school. She may be tough but she can easily express her emotions and is very open-minded as well. She can be a cool friend and a helpful one, but she can also be jealous sometimes and she dislikes her cousin's prominence. Justice League Action Supergirl appears in Justice League Action, voiced by Joanne Spracklen. She has the appearance of a wide-eyed human teenager with blonde hair and wears her traditional costume except that it has thigh-high boots and a pleated skirt. As a person, she is youthful, responsible, and shows much affection for her cousin Superman. In "Party Animal", she appears as a cameo at this Christmas party with the Justice League. In "Keeping up with the Kryptonians", Supergirl becomes a star of the popular reality show "That's So Kara", and Superman a Kasnian who rules from one place to another on Earth, all being a reality caused by Mister Mxyzptlk. In "Unleashed", Supergirl accompanies Justice League in stopping Red Lantern Corps, unaware that it was a distraction made by Dex-Starr to invade Earth, until it was ultimately resolved by Krypto, Streaky, and Plastic Man. In a short "The Goddess Must Be Crazy", Supergirl trains with Wonder Woman in Paradise Island, until she is possessed by Felix Faust, to destroy the island. Film Superman film series A live action depiction of Supergirl first appears in the eponymous 1984 film starring Helen Slater as Supergirl. The film is a spin-off from the Superman film series starring Christopher Reeve, to which it is connected by Marc McClure's character of Jimmy Olsen. DC Extended Universe Kara Zor-El / Linda Danvers / Supergirl exists within the DC Extended Universe, as she was referenced in Man of Steel when Kal-El / Clark Kent / Superman discovers an empty pod within the Kryptonian scout spaceship. Though Zack Snyder confirmed in August 2018 that even though the character does exist, that pod was not intended for her. In August 2018, a film centered around the character was announced to be in development, with Oren Uziel hired as screenwriter for the project. The studio intends to hire a female director, with Reed Morano—who has expressed interest in the project—being its top choice. Filming was expected to start production in early 2020. Sasha Calle will play Supergirl for the DC Extended Universe in The Flash. Animation Summer Glau voices the post-Crisis version of Kara Zor-El in Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, which is based on the Superman/Batman storyline "The Supergirl from Krypton". Despite this, it was confirmed by director Lauren Montgomery that Supergirl's name was removed from the title due to the much slower sales of the previous Wonder Woman animated movie, and the character was not permitted to appear on the cover in her trademark outfit. Molly Quinn voices Supergirl in Superman: Unbound. Supergirl appears in Lego DC Comics Super Heroes: Justice League: Cosmic Clash, voiced by Jessica DiCicco. Video games Supergirl appears in DC Universe Online, voiced by Adriene Mishler. In the villain campaign, the players help Doctor Psycho capture Supergirl using Kryptonite. In the hero campaign, the players fight Doctor Psycho to save Supergirl. Under the thrall of Brainiac, she must be defeated in the Fortress of Solitude: Power Core raid. Supergirl is unlockable in Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, voiced by Bridget Hoffman. Supergirl makes a cameo appearance in the IOS version of Injustice: Gods Among Us as a support card. Supergirl appears as a playable character in Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham, voiced by Kari Wahlgren. She is playable in her default variant which is designed after her appearance in The New 52 and in her Classic attire. Her Classic variant is unlocked in a VR Mission while her New 52 variant is unlocked in a Hub Quest in Nok where she requests players to defeat a number of enemies she accidentally releases from their cells. Supergirl appears as a playable character in Infinite Crisis, voiced by Camilla Luddington. Supergirl appears as a playable character and the central protagonist in Injustice 2 by NetherRealm Studios, the sequel to Injustice: Gods Among Us, voiced by Laura Bailey. Here her origin is much like in the comics where she is sent along with her cousin Kal-El to Earth by her mother after Krypton is destroyed but on separate pods where hers veers off-course after sustaining significant damage, stranding her in space for many years until she lands on Earth, unaged. When the main storyline starts, she is residing on Black Adam's kingdom of Khandaq, apparently under his and Wonder Woman's protection. When Brainiac who was responsible for Krypton's destruction attacks, she, Wonder Woman, and Black Adam attempt to free Superman and the remaining members of the Regime, while being interrupted in their efforts by new Insurgency recruits Blue Beetle and Firestorm until Batman himself arrives and releases Superman, leading to a temporary alliance between the Regime and Insurgency against the alien warlord. Over the course of the story, she learns the truth about her cousin's tyranny and at the end of the game sides with Batman, Green Lantern and Flash in letting Brainiac live in order to restore the lost cities but is defeated. In Batman's ending, she laments her cousin's tyranny and sees him leave to be imprisoned in the Phantom Zone and is offered membership by Batman in his Justice League. In Superman's ending, she is imprisoned aboard Brainiac's ship and to her shock discovers her cousin has bonded with it and when she refuses his offer to join him in leading his new legion of imprisoned species. He attempts to coerce her by revealing a brainwashed Batman, who had also been captured, further shocking her. Supergirl appears as a limited-distribution minifigure for the toys-to-life video game Lego Dimensions, with Kari Wahlgren reprising her role. She has the ability to transform between her classic and Red Lantern forms. Supergirl appears as a playable character in DC Unchained. Supergirl appears in the PSP version of Justice League Heroes. Supergirl appears as a playable character in the DC TV Super-Heroes DLC pack in Lego DC Super-Villains. See also Alternative versions of Supergirl Laurel Gand References External links DC Comics Pre-Crisis Supergirl Chronology Supergirl Characters created by Otto Binder Comics characters introduced in 1958 Comics characters introduced in 1959 DC Comics aliens DC Comics American superheroes DC Comics characters who can move at superhuman speeds DC Comics characters with accelerated healing DC Comics characters with superhuman strength DC Comics deities DC Comics female superheroes DC Comics film characters DC Comics television characters DC Comics extraterrestrial superheroes Female characters in television Fictional characters with superhuman senses Fictional actors Fictional extraterrestrial–human hybrids Fictional orphans Fictional photographers Fictional refugees Fictional reporters Fictional school counselors Fictional American secret agents Fictional waiting staff Kryptonians Superheroes who are adopted Vigilante characters in comics

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Supergirl (Kara Zor-El)

After long-time Superman family editor Mort Weisinger retired in 1971, the character underwent revitalization under editor Joe Orlando and artist Mike Sekowsky. Wearing a series of new outfits, leaving her adopted foster home with the Danvers family, Linda goes on to San Francisco where she works for KSF-TV as a camera operator and develops a crush on her boss, Geoffrey Anderson. These stories introduced Supergirl's most memorable villain from this period: Lex Luthor's niece Nasthalthia, or Nasty. Nasty had made two appearances towards the end of Linda's college years, then pursued her to KSF-TV, trying to secure proof of her dual identity. Supergirl starred in her first solo eponymous monthly series beginning in 1972 until October 1974, when her monthly title merged with Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane, and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen to produce a new title: then-highest DC selling series called The Superman Family, where she eventually became the steady lead story. Linda worked as a student advisor at New Athens Experimental School, before leaving for New York to follow a career in acting with daytime soap Secret Hearts. In 1982 Supergirl received a second monthly solo series titled The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl, relocating the character to Chicago as Linda became a mature student of Psychology. Industry legend, and former DC Publisher, Carmine Infantino provided the pencilled art (Bob Oksner inked). With issue 13 the title was revamped, with a new costume design (sporting a red headband) and the title shortened to just Supergirl. The series ran until sudden cancellation in 1984, only two months before the character's debut in a big-budget Hollywood film starring Helen Slater. In the Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985) the greatest heroes from Earth-One, Earth-Two, Earth-Four, Earth-S, and Earth-X join forces in order to defeat the Anti-Monitor. When Superman comes face to face with the Anti-Monitor and is knocked unconscious, Supergirl rushes to save him before he is killed. She is able to fight him off long enough for Dr. Light to carry her cousin to a safe distance, but is killed by the Anti-Monitor. A public memorial service for Supergirl takes place in Chicago, where Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) delivers the eulogy. In her remarks she states "Kara is a hero. She will not be forgotten." Superman then gives his late cousin burial by taking her corpse to Rokyn/New Krypton to Zor-El and Allura. A Superman issue the next month reveals that Kara had experienced a premonition about her own passing. However, when the universe is rebooted, the timeline is altered. Kara Zor-El and all memory of her is erased from existence. CANNOTANSWER

Nasty had made two appearances towards the end of Linda's college years, then pursued her to KSF-TV, trying to secure proof of her dual identity.

Kara Zor-El, also known by her adoptive names of Linda Lee Danvers, Kara Kent, Linda Lang, and Kara Danvers, and the superhero name of Supergirl, is a superheroine appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. She was created by Otto Binder and designed by Al Plastino. Danvers first appeared in Action Comics #252 (May 1959)'s "The Supergirl from Krypton" story. Kara is the biological cousin of Kal-El, who went on to adopt the name of Clark Kent and the superhero Superman. During the 1980s and the revolution of the Modern Age of Comics, Superman editors believed the character's history had become too convoluted, thus killing Supergirl during the 1985 Crisis on Infinite Earths event and retconning her out of existence. DC Comics Senior Vice President Dan DiDio re-introduced the character in 2004 along with editor Eddie Berganza and writer Jeph Loeb, with her the Superman/Batman storyline "The Supergirl from Krypton". As the current Supergirl, Kara stars in her own monthly comic book series. With DC's The New 52 relaunch, Kara, like most of the DC Universe, was revamped. DC relaunched the Supergirl comic in August 2016 as part of their DC Rebirth initiative. In live-action, Supergirl appeared in the 1984 film based on her character and was portrayed by Helen Slater. She also appeared in the series Smallville, played by actress Laura Vandervoort. In 2015, the live-action Arrowverse series Supergirl debuted on CBS and then moved to The CW after the first season. Supergirl was portrayed by Melissa Benoist on the show and also appeared on other Arrowverse shows. Sasha Calle will appear as Supergirl in the upcoming DC Extended Universe film The Flash (2022). Publication history Early life Although Kara Zor-El was the first character to use the name "Supergirl," DC Comics tested three different female versions of Superman prior to her debut. The first story to feature a female counterpart to Superman was "Lois Lane – Superwoman," which was published in Action Comics #60 (May 1943). In the story, a hospitalized Lois Lane dreams she has gained superpowers thanks to a blood transfusion from the Man of Steel. She begins her own career as "Superwoman", complete with a version of Superman's costume. In the Superboy #78 story entitled "Claire Kent, Alias Super-Sister", Superboy saves the life of an alien woman named Shar-La, who turns Superboy into a girl, in retaliation for his disparaging thoughts about women drivers which she picked up telepathically. In Smallville, Clark claims to be Claire Kent, an out-of-town relative who is staying with the Kents. When in costume, he appears as Superboy's sister, Super-Sister, and claims the two have exchanged places. Once Superboy has learned his lesson about feeling more respect for women, Shar-La reveals the episode to be a dream which she projected into Superboy's mind. In Superman #123 (August 1958), Jimmy Olsen uses a magic totem to wish a "Super-Girl" into existence as a companion and aid to Superman; however, the two frequently get in each other's way until she is fatally injured protecting Superman from a Kryptonite meteor. At her insistence, Jimmy wishes the dying girl out of existence. DC used this story to gauge public response to the concept of a completely new super-powered female counterpart to Superman. The Kara Zor-El version of Supergirl finally appeared in Action Comics #252 (May 1959). Otto Binder wrote and Al Plastino illustrated her début story, in which Kara was born and raised in Argo City (unnamed until later issues), a fragment of Krypton that survived destruction. When the city is doomed by a meteor shower, Kara is sent to Earth by her parents, Zor-El and Alura (the latter unnamed until later issues), to be raised by her cousin Kal-El, known as Superman. Supergirl adopted the secret identity of an orphan "Linda Lee", and made Midvale Orphanage her home. Supergirl promised Superman that she would keep her existence on Earth a secret, so that he may use her as a "secret weapon", but that didn't stop Supergirl from exploring her new powers covertly. Action Comics #255 published reader's letters-of-comment to Supergirl's first appearance; she had allegedly generated a sizeable and mostly positive reaction. Supergirl, from her debut onwards, became a regular backup strip in Action Comics. She joined the Legion of Super-Heroes, like her cousin had done as a teenager, and in Action Comics #279 (July 1961) she was adopted by Fred and Edna Danvers, becoming "Linda Lee Danvers". Supergirl acted for three years as Superman's secret weapon, and her adventures during that time have been compared to contemporary developments in feminist thinking in work such as Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. She was at last introduced by her super-powered cousin to an unsuspecting world in Action Comics #285 (February 1962). During her first quarter of a century, Linda Danvers would have many professions, from student to student advisor, to actor, and even TV camera operator. She shared Action Comics with Superman until transferring to the lead in Adventure Comics at the end of the 1960s. In 1972 she finally moved to her own short-lived eponymous magazine, before DC merged its Supergirl, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen titles into a single anthology title named The Superman Family. In 1982 Supergirl was relaunched into her own magazine. Death during Crisis on Infinite Earths In 1985, the maxi-series Crisis on Infinite Earths was conceived as a way to reduce DC continuity to a single universe in which all characters maintained a single history. Despite Supergirl's continued popularity and status as a central member of the "Superman Family", the editors at DC Comics and the creators of the maxi-series decided to kill Supergirl off during the Crisis. According to Marv Wolfman, writer of Crisis on Infinite Earths: The idea of killing Supergirl was first conceived by DC's vice president/executive editor Dick Giordano, who lobbied for the death to DC's publishers. He later said he has never had any regrets about this, explaining, "Supergirl was created initially to take advantage of the high Superman sales and not much thought was put into her creation. She was created essentially as a female Superman. With time, writers and artists improved upon her execution, but she never did really add anything to the Superman mythos—at least not for me." The poor initial reception of the 1984 film Supergirl was also blamed by some sources. In 1989, in the tale "Christmas with the Super-Heroes" the soul of Kara appears to Boston "Deadman" Brand, cheers him up, and then disappears from continuity until 2001 (see below). Several characters unrelated to Superman soon took on the Supergirl persona, including the Matrix (a shapeshifting genetically engineered life-form that 'defaulted' as Supergirl), Linda Danvers (the result of Matrix merging with the dying Linda Danvers and becoming an Earth-bound angel of fire), and Cir-El (Superman's apparent daughter from a possible future). A heroine resembling the Pre-Crisis Kara would later appear in Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds #5, along with an entire army of Legionnaires gathered from alternate worlds, times, and realities, to battle the Time Trapper. Two Supergirls meet Prior to the post-Crisis introduction of Kara Zor-El into mainstream continuity, the pre-Crisis Kara Zor-El made an appearance in Peter David's Supergirl: Many Happy Returns. The then-current Supergirl series, at the time starring Linda Danvers, was in danger of cancellation and Peter David thought a story arc involving Kara Zor-El would be enough to revitalize the series. In an interview with Cliff Biggers of Newsarama, David states: In the Linda Danvers' Supergirl series issues 49 and 50 (October and November 2000), the original dead Kara appears as Linda's "guardian angel". Then in issues 75 to 80, "Many Happy Returns", a young Kara appears from an earlier time long before the Crisis. The paradox becomes a moral crisis for Linda who tries to take her place as the Crisis sacrifice, living for years in a Silver Age universe where "no one swears, the villains are always easy to defeat, and everything's very, very clean", eventually marrying the Silver Age Superman and having a daughter with him, before she is forced to return to her universe by the Spectre when he reveals that her efforts to replace Kara as the sacrifice will not succeed. This run was illustrated by Ed Benes who had also illustrated Gail Simone's Birds of Prey which had a similar whimsical camaraderie between its female leads. Linda's inability to ultimately save Kara, coupled with the loss of her daughter, is so devastating that it ends her own career as Supergirl, Linda leaving a note for Superman where she explains that she feels that she has failed to live up to the standards of a true Supergirl and choosing to go somewhere she cannot be found. This story arc is usually cited as one of the best Supergirl stories ever written. The series ended with issue 80. Revival After the launch of the Superman/Batman comic book series, executive editor Dan DiDio had been looking for a way to simplify the Supergirl character from her convoluted post-Crisis history; the simplest version, of course, was Superman's cousin. Jeph Loeb and editor Eddie Berganza found an opening to reintroduce the character following the conclusion of the first story arc of Superman/Batman. Loeb states: The modern version of Kara Zor-El made her debut in Superman/Batman #8 (2004). Kara takes the mantle of Supergirl at the conclusion of the storyline. The Supergirl comic book series would later be relaunched, now starring Kara Zor-El as "The Girl of Steel". The first arc of the new series was written by Jeph Loeb and illustrated by Ian Churchill. Loeb would later describe the appeal of writing for Supergirl: As the character continued to be reinvented, steps towards regarding the iconic character were some of the most prominent changes. Artist Jamal Igle and editor Matt Idleson moved to transition the character away from red panties under her skirt to biker shorts, feeling such a change was a logical progression and "more respectable." The New 52 In September 2011, DC Comics began The New 52, in which it canceled all of its monthly superhero titles and relaunched 52 new ones, wiping out most of its past continuity in the process. One of the new titles was a new Supergirl series (Volume 6) that featured a new origin for Kara and was published between 2011 and 2015. Artist Mahmud Asrar designed a new costume for the character which strongly deviated from her classic, "cheerleader" suit, a change which generated criticism from some readers. DC Rebirth The 2016 DC Comics title relaunch Rebirth incorporates several elements (such as the costume, the name, the setting, and some characters) from the Supergirl television series. The DC Rebirth initiative undid the New 52's modern recreations, bringing DC's heroes back to their more classic iterations. Supergirl's new series (Volume 7) was titled Supergirl: Rebirth, written by Steven Orlando. The first arc was penciled by Brian Ching, who also redesigned Supergirl's costume in reference to a more classic look. In April 2018, it was announced that the title would be canceled after issue #20, only to be revived in August that year under a new creative team, with new writer Marc Andreyko and artist Kevin Maguire. The series ended with its 42nd issue. Future State: Kara Zor-El, Superwoman The Future State comics propose a possible future for Kara Zor-El, now an adult and having taken the alias of Superwoman. She leaves Earth to become a guardian of the Moon, which has become a refugee colony for aliens from the entire universe. The series was written by Marguerite Bennet and penciled by Marguerite Sauvage. Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow Under the Infinite Frontier brand, Kara's next series Woman of Tomorrow debuted in June 2021, written by Tom King and penciled by Brazilian artists Bilquis Evely and Mat Lopes. The arc introduces Supergirl to new character grounds as she begins the story as a young woman, celebrating her 21st birthday and helping a young alien in her quest for revenge. The "mentor-mentee journey on revenge" plot is, according to King, inspired by the original novel and both versions of True Grit. In this series, the creators paid homage to Linda Danvers, as Kara manifests flame wings and powers after taking a red kryptonite drug, in order to save her space bus crew from a Karpane dragon. Fictional character biography Silver Age In her debut story, Kara Zor-El is the last survivor of Argo City of the planet Krypton. Although Argo, which had survived the explosion of the planet, drifted through space as a self-sustaining environment, the soil of the colony eventually turned into Kryptonite; and though Kara's father Zor-El placed lead sheeting above the ground to protect the citizens from radiation, meteorites pierced the sheeting, and the Kryptonians died of radiation poisoning instead of replacing the metal. In Supergirl's subsequent backup feature in Action Comics drawn by artist Jim Mooney for ten years until 1968, Supergirl adopts the identity of Linda Lee, an orphan at Midvale Orphanage presided over by headmistress Miss Hart. She disguises herself by hiding her blond hair beneath a brunette wig; Supergirl interacts with humans on a person-to-person basis performing good deeds and saving the world by helping one person at a time, and she also devises clever schemes as "Superman's Secret Weapon," saving him many times and avoiding adoption before Superman can introduce her publicly. While temporarily powerless due to the scheming of Kandorian scientist Lesla-Lar, who is out to supplant her on Earth, Linda allows herself to be adopted by engineer and rocket scientist Fred Danvers and his wife, Edna. In time, she reveals her secret identity to her adoptive parents on the same day her cousin Superman finally introduces her to the world in the finale of then-DC's longest playing series ever (eight chapters) aptly called "The World's Greatest Heroine". When frequent dreams about her parents being alive turn out to be real, she builds a machine aided by her engineer father's talent, and brings them both back alive from the "Survival Zone" where they had both teleported during Argo City's final moments. Zor-El and Allura eventually end up living in Kandor, and when the city in the bottle is enlarged, they both go on to live in Rokyn/New Krypton, where they have the sad duty of receiving her mortal remains after "Crisis" for burial. Graduating from high school in 1965, Linda Lee goes to college on a scholarship and stays in Stanhope College until she graduates in 1971. During this era, she is helped by her pet cat Streaky, her Super-Horse pet Comet, and befriends Lena Thorul, who had first appeared in the Lois Lane series. Kara is also a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes, where she becomes close to Brainiac 5. In addition, Linda has boyfriends from the orphanage (Richard "Dick" Malverne) and from Atlantis (Jerro the merboy). In 1967, Supergirl meets Batgirl for the first time in World's Finest Comics. Developing a strong friendship, the two characters teamed up many times again, as in Superman Family #171, or Adventure #381. In 1969, Supergirl left Action Comics and became a featured character in Adventure Comics beginning with issue #381 (June 1969). During the 1970s, Supergirl's costume changed frequently, as did her career in her civilian life. In her secret identity as Linda Lee Danvers, Kara Zor-El took a variety of jobs including graduate student in acting, television camera operator, and student counselor, and finally became an actress on the TV soap Secret Hearts. Bronze Age After long-time Superman family editor Mort Weisinger retired in 1971, the character underwent revitalization under editor Joe Orlando and artist Mike Sekowsky. Wearing a series of new outfits, leaving her adopted foster home with the Danvers family, Linda goes on to San Francisco where she works for KSF-TV as a camera operator and develops a crush on her boss, Geoffrey Anderson. These stories introduced Supergirl's most memorable villain from this period: Lex Luthor's niece Nasthalthia, or Nasty. Nasty had made two appearances towards the end of Linda's college years, then pursued her to KSF-TV, trying to secure proof of her dual identity. Supergirl starred in her first solo eponymous monthly series beginning in 1972 until October 1974, when her monthly title merged with Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane, and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen to produce a new title: then-highest DC selling series called The Superman Family, where she eventually became the steady lead story. Linda worked as a student advisor at New Athens Experimental School, before leaving for New York to follow a career in acting with daytime soap Secret Hearts. In 1982 Supergirl received a second monthly solo series titled The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl, relocating the character to Chicago as Linda became a mature student of Psychology. Industry legend, and former DC Publisher, Carmine Infantino provided the penciled art (Bob Oksner inked). With issue 13 the title was revamped, with a new costume design (sporting a red headband) and the title shortened to just Supergirl. The series ran until sudden cancellation in 1984, only two months before the character's debut in a big-budget Hollywood film starring Helen Slater. In the Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985), the greatest heroes from Earth-One, Earth-Two, Earth-Four, Earth-S, and Earth-X join forces in order to defeat the Anti-Monitor. When Superman comes face to face with the Anti-Monitor and is knocked unconscious, Supergirl rushes to save him before he is killed. She is able to fight him off long enough for Dr. Light to carry her cousin to a safe distance, but is killed by the Anti-Monitor. A public memorial service for Supergirl takes place in Chicago, where Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) delivers the eulogy. In her remarks, she states "Kara is a hero. She will not be forgotten." Superman then gives his late cousin burial by taking her corpse to Rokyn/New Krypton to Zor-El and Allura. A Superman issue the next month reveals that Kara had experienced a premonition about her own passing. However, when the universe is rebooted, the timeline is altered. Kara Zor-El and all memory of her is erased from existence. Echoes After these events, the soul of Kara Zor-El made another appearance in continuity three years later in a story titled "Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot" in Christmas with the Super-Heroes #2 (1989). Within the story, Boston "Deadman" Brand tries to feel the warmth of Christmas by possessing revelers' bodies. Feeling guilty upon the realization that he has been stealing others' Christmases, he flies off feeling sorry for himself for being denied a reward after a year of helping people. A warmly dressed blonde woman approaches Brand, startling him. Somehow seeing the normally invisible Brand, she converses with him, reminding him, She reminds Brand that even though he is dead, he is still human, and he should rejoice because it means his spirit is still alive. As the woman leaves, Brand asks her who she is, to which she replies, "My name is Kara. Though I doubt that will mean anything to you." The story, written by Alan Brennert and penciled by Dick Giordano, is dedicated to Otto Binder and Jim Mooney, adding: "We still remember." Finally, the soul of Kara Zor-El appeared twice during Peter David's run, specifically in issues #48 and #49 when she appears before a defeated and imprisoned then-Supergirl, Linda Danvers from Earth, and comforts her. Linda acknowledges she has been helped three times by her phantom-friend, and when she asks her name she is told by the smiling figure: "I have gone by many names, but the one I am most fond of is: Kara!" Modern Age In 2004, Jeph Loeb reintroduced Kara Zor-El into post-Zero Hour (Birthright timeline) continuity during a storyline in the series Superman/Batman. She is the biological cousin of Superman, and although chronologically older than him, the ship in which she traveled to Earth was caught in a large green Kryptonite meteorite which held her in a state of suspended animation for much of the journey, making her have the appearance of a 16-year-old girl. Still, Supergirl sometimes saw Superman as a child, due to last carrying him as a baby. DC Comics relaunched the Supergirl, the first story arc of which was written by Loeb. showcases Supergirl on a journey of self-discovery. Along her journey, she encounters Power Girl (Kara Zor-El's counterpart from another universe), the Teen Titans, the Outsiders, the Justice League of America, and arch-villain Lex Luthor. During the company-wide crossover series Infinite Crisis (2005), a sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths, Supergirl is transported to the 31st century, where she is revered as a member of the Superman family and joins the Legion of Super-Heroes. DC Comics renamed the monthly series Legion of Super-Heroes to Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes. Beginning with issue #16. In the limited series 52, which chronicles the events that took place during the missing year after the end of Infinite Crisis, Donna Troy recalls the original Kara Zor-El and her sacrifice to save the universe. Supergirl returns to the 21st century during the course of 52. After briefly filling in for a temporarily depowered Superman as guardian of Metropolis, she assumes the identity of Flamebird to fight crime in the bottle city of Kandor with Power Girl as Nightwing in Greg Rucka's arc Supergirl: Kandor. In 2007, Supergirl appeared in the miniseries Amazons Attack! That same year, she joined the Teen Titans for five issues. Conversations with other heroes who maintain secret identities lead Kara to the conclusion that she needs to make a deeper connection with human beings. She accepts Lana Lang's proposal to present her to the Daily Planet staff as "Linda Lang", Lana's teenaged niece. In the 2008–2009 "New Krypton" story arc, in which Superman discovers and frees the real Kandor and a large number of its citizens, Supergirl is reunited with her father, Zor-El and mother, Alura, though Zor-El is killed by the villain Reactron. When a planet is formed that the Kryptonians call New Krypton, Kara is torn between her life on Earth, and her obligation to her mother, eventually joining the New Krypton Science Guild. Supergirl subsequently appears in the 2009 miniseries Justice League: Cry for Justice, and the 2009–2010 storyline "Blackest Night". The New Krypton storyline would later be resolved in the "World of New Krypton", "Superman: Last Stand of New Krypton", "War of the Supermen" storylines, resulting in the destruction of New Krypton and seeing Supergirl mourn her people. Supergirl subsequently appears in the 2010 "Brightest Day" storyline, the follow up to "Blackest Night"., where she joins the Justice League along with Jesse Quick & Jade. The New 52 In this continuity, Kara's ship lands in Smallville, Kansas but hurtles through the Earth and emerges in Siberia. Kara has no memory of the destruction of Krypton, and believes it is only three days since her spacecraft was launched. She learns the truth about Krypton's destruction from Superman, and later journeys through a wormhole to Argo City, which she finds in orbit around a blue sun. She finds the city in ruins, with no explanation of how it met that fate, and is attacked by a female Worldkiller named Reign before the city plummets into the sun. When Reign and her fellow Worldkiller plan to enslave the Earth, Supergirl returns there to defeat them, and thus adopts Earth as her new home. After several battles with supervillains, including the Worldkillers, superweapons of Kryptonian design, she accepts Krypton's destruction, but continues to grapple with her grief. Her desire to restore Krypton results in her being manipulated into nearly destroying the Earth by another Kryptonian whom she falls in love with. Upon realizing his manipulation, she kills him by driving Kryptonite through his heart, and succumbs to Kryptonite poisoning. Following her poisoning, Supergirl departs the Earth to die alone. While adrift in interstellar space, she encounters a planet under attack by monsters, and quickly intervenes to save them, unaware that the entire planet is a trap by Brainiac. She is captured and restrained by Cyborg Superman, but after a struggle, manages to escape both Brainiac and Cyborg Superman. Returning to Earth, she is sent into the past by the Oracle alongside Superman and Superboy, where she ensures that a resurrected H'el cannot save Krypton, and sacrifices the planet and her family in order to save the universe. Back on Earth, she encounters the assassin Lobo. Initially eager for a peaceful resolution, seeing a kind of kinship with him in their both being lone survivors of their respective worlds (although not truly aware of Lobo's circumstances), Kara's encounter with the Czarnian would reveal deep mental wounds, resulting in the unleashing of her rage and transformation into a Red Lantern. Driven insane by rage, Kara wanders space, attacking everyone in her way, until captured by several Green Lanterns and brought to Hal Jordan. Immediately recognizing a Kryptonian and unable to remove the power ring without killing her, he brings her to Guy Gardner, the leader of one of the two Red Lantern factions, who manages to restore her sanity. After some time under Guy Gardner's tutelage and protecting the galaxy as a Red Lantern, after being discharged from the Red Lantern Corps (because Guy did not want for her to die needlessly against Atrocitus' splinter group), on her way back to Earth, Kara encounters the leader of the Worldkillers, who are revealed to be parasitic suits of armor. He attempts to assimilate Kara as his host, but she voluntarily subjects herself to Kryptonite poisoning in order to stop him, and eventually flies into the Sun and removes her power ring, killing her and removing him from her body. However, Kara is revealed to be immortal while in the Sun's core, and is restored to life without the power ring or any Kryptonite poisoning, immediately destroying the Worldkiller. She later helps Guy against Atrocitus and his Red Lantern splinter group. Convergence and return of the Pre-Crisis version During the Convergence story arc, the original Kara Zor-El who had sacrificed her life during Crisis on Infinite Earths makes an appearance on the amalgamated planet of Telos. At the end of the saga she volunteers herself to once again fight the Anti-Monitor but this time, with the help of her timeline's Barry Allen, the Pre-Flashpoint Superman (in tow with his pregnant wife, Lois Lane), and a repentant Parallax (Zero Hour Hal Jordan), vows to defeat him for the sake of the multiverse's continued existence. Without it being seen, those left on Telos discover the group was successful and all previous timelines (with the mysterious exception of the pre-Flashpoint/pre-New 52 DC universe) from DC history had been re-established, though the fate of the original Kara Zor-El and her fellows went unmentioned. A few more details of the battle against the Anti-Monitor are later revealed during the New 52 comic mini-series (leading into DC's Rebirth event). After the defeat of Anti-Monitor, Pre-New 52 Clark and Lois decide to start life anew in the closest universe they can find (mysteriously yet unable to see their old universe even though the rest of the multiverse had been restored) while Pre-Crisis Kara Zor-El, along with her contemporary Barry Allen and Zero Hour Parallax/Hal Jordan, decide to find their place in the universe and go off to do so. Her fate as of that story arc is yet to be revealed. DC Rebirth After the events that led to the death of the New 52 version of Superman, 16-year-old Kara lives in National City with her adoptive parents, D.E.O. agents Jeremiah and Eliza Danvers, where she attends high school and works with the agency as led by Cameron Chase. As part of her civilian identity, Kara receives special glasses that darken her blond hair when posing as Kara Danvers. Kara also goes on an internship at Cat Grant's CATCO alongside Ben Rubel, whom she befriends. In her opening arc "The Reign of the Cyborg Supermen", Kara discovers that the cyborg Zor-El, whom she had battled in her New 52 title, is still active and has rebuilt other Kryptonians (her mother Alura included), planning to take over Earth. Supergirl defeats them but vows to help her father regardless of his actions. After National City discovers Supergirl has kept Zor-El's "living" status a secret, they become untrustful of her. Director Bones takes advantage of the heroine's impopularity and, after taking control of the D.E.O., sends villains in an attempt to bring Kara down. She defeats all of them and regains trust from National City with Ben's help. The Supergirl Who Laughs Kara is later infected by The Batman Who Laughs toxin, causing her to turn evil and joining other infected as part of Laughs Secret Six before later being cured. She is fired from CatCo by Cat Grant and starts working at S.T.A.R. Labs. Woman of Tomorrow Journeying throughout the universe with Krypto, Kara celebrates her 21st birthday alone on a distant planet. Drunk in a bar, she is approached by a little girl named Ruthye and is asked to kill Krem (her father's murderer) in vengeance. Supergirl refuses but, when she is about to leave the planet, Krem attacks and severely wounds both her and Krypto, fleeing in Kara's ship. Kara begins her journey alongside Ruthye and, powerless, saves her space bus crew from a Karpane dragon by taking a red kryptonite drug which causes her to manifest flame wings. Powers and abilities Like all Kryptonians under a yellow sun, the current version of Kara Zor-El possesses virtually unlimited strength, stamina, and durability. She is able to fly and with super speed that she can also use on foot, similar to Superman and The Flash. Also like Superman, Supergirl possesses super senses, super-breath, and freeze breathe, as well as multiple forms of supervision (including X-Ray, Infrared, Telescopic, and Microscopic). Kara also has a bio-electric aura that enhances her near invulnerability and also protects her skin and her costume from dirt and tear; as such, Kara is perpetually clean. The Sun also provides Kara with a longer lifespan than that of a human being, to the point that she is effectively a biological immortal. Kara doesn't require food, water, or sleep to survive. She is also immune to most diseases, mental and physical, and would require a very strong strain to have a chance at affecting her. In the rare instances that Kara is harmed by someone matching her strength or by the use of one of her weaknesses, she can heal almost instantaneously. Her power surpasses most other beings, though she can be overpowered by those who rival her strength such as Black Adam, Darkseid, Despero, Doomsday, Bizarro, Wonder Woman, and Superman. In reality, Kara is actually older than her cousin, Clark, and spent time on Krypton before its destruction. As such (unlike Superman), she possesses memories of Kryptonian culture as well as her cousin's parents. Continued exposure to a yellow Sun will slowly increase abilities. Many characters in the DC Universe have noted that Supergirl appears, at times, to be even more powerful than Superman himself. In answer to this, Superman states that this is because he has spent his entire life subconsciously suppressing his full powers in order to avoid hurting others, having been absorbing solar radiation since his infancy. Kara, not having such practice or experience, simply uses the full magnitude of her powers. Abilities Unlike her cousin, Kara was taught to fight in Krypton as part of her tests, and at the Crucible Academy, being adept at various Kryptonian fighting styles like Klurkor and Torquasm Rao. Supergirl also learned the art of Bagua under I-Ching's instructions. She practiced how to manipulate her Chi or Qi in order to gain better control of her powers due to them becoming overwhelmed after her conflict with the Fatal Five. Superman recommended guardianship with I-Ching to Supergirl first. In addition to training in Krypton, Kara was trained by Batman in advanced martial arts and trained with the Amazons in Themyscira in unarmed and armed combat, Amazonas martial arts, fencing, Shield handling, and other Amazon weapons. She trained with Wonder Woman and Artemis extensively. Other versions There are numerous alternate versions of Supergirl. The most notable is Power Girl (real name Kara Zor-L, also known as Karen Starr) who first appeared in All Star Comics #58 (January/February 1976). Power Girl is the Earth-Two counterpart of Supergirl and the first cousin of Kal-L, Superman of the pre-Crisis Earth-Two. The infant Power Girl's parents enabled her to escape the destruction of Krypton. Although she left the planet at the same time that Superman did, her ship took much longer to reach Earth-Two. She has superhuman strength and the ability to fly and is the first chairwoman of the Justice Society of America. She sports a bob of blond hair; wears a distinctive white, red, and blue costume; and has an aggressive fighting style. Throughout her early appearances in All Star Comics, she is often at odds with Wildcat because his penchant for talking to her as if she were an ordinary human female rather than a superpowered Kryptonian annoys her. She also fought alongside the Sovereign Seven team, replacing Rampart after his death though that series is not considered to be part of canon in the DC universe. The 1985 limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths eliminated Earth-Two, causing her origin to change; she became the granddaughter of the Atlantean sorcerer Arion. However, story events culminating in the 2005–2006 Infinite Crisis limited series restored her status as a refugee from the Krypton of the destroyed pre-Crisis Earth-Two universe. Like the original Kara's Streaky, Power Girl has a cat, featured in a story by Amanda Conner in Wonder Woman #600. Reception This version of Supergirl is ranked as the 153rd-greatest comic book character of all time by Wizard magazine. IGN also ranked this version of Supergirl as the 94th-greatest comic book superhero, stating "for a character born of the Silver Age that saw everything from a Super Baby to a Super Monkey, Kara Zor-El grew into something much more than simply another marketing ploy to slap an 'S' on." In 2013 IGN ranked Supergirl as the 17th-greatest DC comic superhero, stating "she was an early example of a female sidekick developing a large fanbase in her own right", and "Supergirl has been one of DC's most powerful heroes, and a standard to hold other female heroes against." Appearances Pre-Crisis 1959 to 1969: Action Comics #252 to #376. 1969 to 1972: Adventure Comics #381 to #424. 1972 to 1974: Supergirl #1 to #10. 1974 to 1982: Her comic merges with Jimmy Olsen's and Lois Lane's to become Superman Family #164 to #222. 1982 to 1984: The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl #1 to #13, Supergirl (vol. 2) #14 to #23. 2015: Convergence Kara Zor-El appeared in over 750 stories published by DC from 1959 to 1985. Post-Crisis 2004 to 2005: Superman/Batman #8 to #13 and #19 2005 to 2011: Supergirl (vol. 5) #0 to #67 2006 to 2008: Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5) #16 to #37 2007: Action Comics #850 2008: Final Crisis 2011 to 2015: New 52: Supergirl (vol. 6) #1 to #40 2016 to current: Rebirth: Supergirl (vol. 7) #1 to current Kara Zor-El also appears as a supporting character in several issues of other DC Comics, including Superman, Action Comics, Teen Titans, Amazons Attack, World War III, and Wonder Girl. She has also appeared in many issues of Superman, Action Comics, and Superman New Krypton starting with the World Without Superman event in 2009, and continuing with the World Against Superman event going into 2010. Collected editions Listed in chronological order. All ages titles are not in continuity with the original or modern Kara. In other media Television Live-action Smallville Prior to the seventh season (2007–2008) of the WB/CW show Smallville where she is introduced into the cast and is portrayed by Laura Vandervoort, a woman claiming to be Kara (portrayed by Adrianne Palicki) is briefly introduced in the season 3 finale. It is later revealed her real name is Lindsey Harrison, and had been given false memories and powers by the artificial intelligence of Clark Kent's (Tom Welling) father Jor-El as part of a series of tests. Vandervoort portrays the real Kara, Clark's cousin whose spaceship had been trapped in stasis until the events of the season 6 finale. Much of season 7 is concerned with Kara's attempts to adjust to life on Earth, especially after learning of Krypton's destruction. Her storyline sees her simultaneously become the object of Lex Luthor's (Michael Rosenbaum) obsessions and Jimmy Olsen's (Aaron Ashmore) affections, suffer a bout of amnesia, discover her father's (Christopher Heyerdahl) sinister motives and become a target of evil android Brainiac (James Marsters). The season finale sees Kara become trapped in the Phantom Zone. Starting with season 8, Vandervoort ceases to feature as a series regular, but reprises the role three more times. In her first guest appearance, "Bloodline," Kara is freed from the Phantom Zone and later departs Clark's hometown of Smallville to search for Kandor, her birthplace, as it is rumored to have survived their home planet's destruction. She appears again in the season 10 episode "Supergirl", in which she formally adopts her superhero moniker. Her off-screen adventures are alluded to thereafter. Vandervoort makes a final appearance in the show's penultimate episode, "Prophecy", in which she helps Green Arrow (Justin Hartley) locate the "Bow of Orion" to use against Darkseid. She is then called to the Fortress of Solitude, where she learns from Jor-El that her job on Earth is done. Using a Legion of Super-Heroes flight ring, she travels to the future to seek her own destiny. The Season Eleven comic book continuation of the show later depicts Kara's continued story in the 31st century, subsequent return to the present and joining the Justice League. Arrowverse In September 2014, a 22-episode television series centered around Supergirl was in development at Warner Bros. Television, set to premiere on CBS with a January 2015 air date. Melissa Benoist was cast as the titular character. In May 2016, the series moved to The CW and was later integrated into the Arrowverse, a shared universe consisting of shows including Arrow, The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. In the series, Kara Zor-El was sent to Earth to protect her cousin Kal-El, following her homeworld Krypton's destruction. However, she is knocked into the Phantom Zone, where she is stranded for 24 years. She eventually crash lands on Earth and is found by her already grown-up cousin Kal, now known to the world as the iconic superhero "Superman". Superman brings Kara into the custody of Jeremiah Danvers, director of the Department of Extranormal Operations (D.E.O.), and his daughter Alex. Growing up, Kara struggles to maintain her Kryptonian abilities as well as balancing her relationship with her adoptive sister. Eventually, the two bond when Kara's powers are exposed. However, Jeremiah decides it's best to isolate her abilities. As an adult, Kara is forced to use her powers again when her sister's plane almost crashes. She is later dubbed "Supergirl" by the media and dons a costume like her cousin. Kara decides to use her abilities to fight alien invaders such as Kara's aunt Astra and her husband Non, Mon-El's rogue parents, the Worldkiller Reign, anti-alien activist Ben Lockwood, and later the shadowy organization Leviathan, with the help of her sister Alex, now an agent of the D.E.O., her best friend and tech-expert Winn Schott, last of the Green Martians J'onn J'onzz / Martian Manhunter, and Kal's best friend Jimmy Olsen. She is later joined by Lex Luthor's sister Lena, Prince of Daxam Mon-El, former Legion of Superheroes member Querl "Brainy" Dox / Brainiac 5, Nia Nal / Dreamer, James' younger sister Kelly, and reporter Willam Dey face against these rival forces. After joining the Arrowverse, which contain annual crossover, Kara assists Barry Allen, Oliver Queen and the Legends of Tomorrow against threats on their designated earth "Earth-1" while Kara’s is designated as "Earth-38. Later, Kara is selected by The Monitor as the Paragon of Hope to participate in the coming crisis and fight against the Anti-Monitor, whose goal is to destroy the multiverse. After doing so, the Paragons are sent to the Vanishing Point where Oliver, now a Spectre, helps them escape. The Paragons appear at the dawn of time in the anti-matter universe where they have their final confrontation with the Anti-Monitor. Eventually, Oliver sacrifices himself to kill the Anti-Monitor, and as a result, a new multiverse is born with Earth-38 and Earth-1 merged into "Earth-Prime". Following the crisis, Kara is forced to deal the after-effects of Crisis which include working with Lex, now owning the D.E.O. while Leviathan continue their covert operations under Gamemnae. The sixth season sees Kara and her allies expose Lex's crimes, but are then forced to deal with Nyxlygsptlnz, a fifth-dimensional imp who tricked the heroes into releasing her from the Phantom Zone. Eventually Nyxlygsptlnz joins forces with Lex Luthor and the two kill William, but Kara's assembled allies are able to defeat the two, culminating in Lex and Nyxlygsptlnz being trapped in the Phantom Zone when one of their own plans backfires. The series concludes with Kara revealing her dual identity so that she can live a full life as one person. Animation DC Nation Shorts Supergirl appears with Batgirl and Wonder Girl in Super Best Friends Forever, voiced by Nicole Sullivan. DC Super Hero Girls Supergirl appears as a central protagonist in the web series DC Super Hero Girls voiced by Anais Fairweather, and is a student at Super Hero High, is very kind and caring and extremely powerful but she's also very clumsy. She also appears as a central protagonist in the 2019 TV series, with Nicole Sullivan reprising her role from the Super Best Friends Forever shorts. In this version, she is also a rebel and is known as the "cool kid" in school. She may be tough but she can easily express her emotions and is very open-minded as well. She can be a cool friend and a helpful one, but she can also be jealous sometimes and she dislikes her cousin's prominence. Justice League Action Supergirl appears in Justice League Action, voiced by Joanne Spracklen. She has the appearance of a wide-eyed human teenager with blonde hair and wears her traditional costume except that it has thigh-high boots and a pleated skirt. As a person, she is youthful, responsible, and shows much affection for her cousin Superman. In "Party Animal", she appears as a cameo at this Christmas party with the Justice League. In "Keeping up with the Kryptonians", Supergirl becomes a star of the popular reality show "That's So Kara", and Superman a Kasnian who rules from one place to another on Earth, all being a reality caused by Mister Mxyzptlk. In "Unleashed", Supergirl accompanies Justice League in stopping Red Lantern Corps, unaware that it was a distraction made by Dex-Starr to invade Earth, until it was ultimately resolved by Krypto, Streaky, and Plastic Man. In a short "The Goddess Must Be Crazy", Supergirl trains with Wonder Woman in Paradise Island, until she is possessed by Felix Faust, to destroy the island. Film Superman film series A live action depiction of Supergirl first appears in the eponymous 1984 film starring Helen Slater as Supergirl. The film is a spin-off from the Superman film series starring Christopher Reeve, to which it is connected by Marc McClure's character of Jimmy Olsen. DC Extended Universe Kara Zor-El / Linda Danvers / Supergirl exists within the DC Extended Universe, as she was referenced in Man of Steel when Kal-El / Clark Kent / Superman discovers an empty pod within the Kryptonian scout spaceship. Though Zack Snyder confirmed in August 2018 that even though the character does exist, that pod was not intended for her. In August 2018, a film centered around the character was announced to be in development, with Oren Uziel hired as screenwriter for the project. The studio intends to hire a female director, with Reed Morano—who has expressed interest in the project—being its top choice. Filming was expected to start production in early 2020. Sasha Calle will play Supergirl for the DC Extended Universe in The Flash. Animation Summer Glau voices the post-Crisis version of Kara Zor-El in Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, which is based on the Superman/Batman storyline "The Supergirl from Krypton". Despite this, it was confirmed by director Lauren Montgomery that Supergirl's name was removed from the title due to the much slower sales of the previous Wonder Woman animated movie, and the character was not permitted to appear on the cover in her trademark outfit. Molly Quinn voices Supergirl in Superman: Unbound. Supergirl appears in Lego DC Comics Super Heroes: Justice League: Cosmic Clash, voiced by Jessica DiCicco. Video games Supergirl appears in DC Universe Online, voiced by Adriene Mishler. In the villain campaign, the players help Doctor Psycho capture Supergirl using Kryptonite. In the hero campaign, the players fight Doctor Psycho to save Supergirl. Under the thrall of Brainiac, she must be defeated in the Fortress of Solitude: Power Core raid. Supergirl is unlockable in Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, voiced by Bridget Hoffman. Supergirl makes a cameo appearance in the IOS version of Injustice: Gods Among Us as a support card. Supergirl appears as a playable character in Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham, voiced by Kari Wahlgren. She is playable in her default variant which is designed after her appearance in The New 52 and in her Classic attire. Her Classic variant is unlocked in a VR Mission while her New 52 variant is unlocked in a Hub Quest in Nok where she requests players to defeat a number of enemies she accidentally releases from their cells. Supergirl appears as a playable character in Infinite Crisis, voiced by Camilla Luddington. Supergirl appears as a playable character and the central protagonist in Injustice 2 by NetherRealm Studios, the sequel to Injustice: Gods Among Us, voiced by Laura Bailey. Here her origin is much like in the comics where she is sent along with her cousin Kal-El to Earth by her mother after Krypton is destroyed but on separate pods where hers veers off-course after sustaining significant damage, stranding her in space for many years until she lands on Earth, unaged. When the main storyline starts, she is residing on Black Adam's kingdom of Khandaq, apparently under his and Wonder Woman's protection. When Brainiac who was responsible for Krypton's destruction attacks, she, Wonder Woman, and Black Adam attempt to free Superman and the remaining members of the Regime, while being interrupted in their efforts by new Insurgency recruits Blue Beetle and Firestorm until Batman himself arrives and releases Superman, leading to a temporary alliance between the Regime and Insurgency against the alien warlord. Over the course of the story, she learns the truth about her cousin's tyranny and at the end of the game sides with Batman, Green Lantern and Flash in letting Brainiac live in order to restore the lost cities but is defeated. In Batman's ending, she laments her cousin's tyranny and sees him leave to be imprisoned in the Phantom Zone and is offered membership by Batman in his Justice League. In Superman's ending, she is imprisoned aboard Brainiac's ship and to her shock discovers her cousin has bonded with it and when she refuses his offer to join him in leading his new legion of imprisoned species. He attempts to coerce her by revealing a brainwashed Batman, who had also been captured, further shocking her. Supergirl appears as a limited-distribution minifigure for the toys-to-life video game Lego Dimensions, with Kari Wahlgren reprising her role. She has the ability to transform between her classic and Red Lantern forms. Supergirl appears as a playable character in DC Unchained. Supergirl appears in the PSP version of Justice League Heroes. Supergirl appears as a playable character in the DC TV Super-Heroes DLC pack in Lego DC Super-Villains. See also Alternative versions of Supergirl Laurel Gand References External links DC Comics Pre-Crisis Supergirl Chronology Supergirl Characters created by Otto Binder Comics characters introduced in 1958 Comics characters introduced in 1959 DC Comics aliens DC Comics American superheroes DC Comics characters who can move at superhuman speeds DC Comics characters with accelerated healing DC Comics characters with superhuman strength DC Comics deities DC Comics female superheroes DC Comics film characters DC Comics television characters DC Comics extraterrestrial superheroes Female characters in television Fictional characters with superhuman senses Fictional actors Fictional extraterrestrial–human hybrids Fictional orphans Fictional photographers Fictional refugees Fictional reporters Fictional school counselors Fictional American secret agents Fictional waiting staff Kryptonians Superheroes who are adopted Vigilante characters in comics

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did she ever get the proof needed to prove dual identy

did Supergirl ever get the proof needed to prove dual identy of Nasty?

Supergirl (Kara Zor-El)

After long-time Superman family editor Mort Weisinger retired in 1971, the character underwent revitalization under editor Joe Orlando and artist Mike Sekowsky. Wearing a series of new outfits, leaving her adopted foster home with the Danvers family, Linda goes on to San Francisco where she works for KSF-TV as a camera operator and develops a crush on her boss, Geoffrey Anderson. These stories introduced Supergirl's most memorable villain from this period: Lex Luthor's niece Nasthalthia, or Nasty. Nasty had made two appearances towards the end of Linda's college years, then pursued her to KSF-TV, trying to secure proof of her dual identity. Supergirl starred in her first solo eponymous monthly series beginning in 1972 until October 1974, when her monthly title merged with Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane, and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen to produce a new title: then-highest DC selling series called The Superman Family, where she eventually became the steady lead story. Linda worked as a student advisor at New Athens Experimental School, before leaving for New York to follow a career in acting with daytime soap Secret Hearts. In 1982 Supergirl received a second monthly solo series titled The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl, relocating the character to Chicago as Linda became a mature student of Psychology. Industry legend, and former DC Publisher, Carmine Infantino provided the pencilled art (Bob Oksner inked). With issue 13 the title was revamped, with a new costume design (sporting a red headband) and the title shortened to just Supergirl. The series ran until sudden cancellation in 1984, only two months before the character's debut in a big-budget Hollywood film starring Helen Slater. In the Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985) the greatest heroes from Earth-One, Earth-Two, Earth-Four, Earth-S, and Earth-X join forces in order to defeat the Anti-Monitor. When Superman comes face to face with the Anti-Monitor and is knocked unconscious, Supergirl rushes to save him before he is killed. She is able to fight him off long enough for Dr. Light to carry her cousin to a safe distance, but is killed by the Anti-Monitor. A public memorial service for Supergirl takes place in Chicago, where Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) delivers the eulogy. In her remarks she states "Kara is a hero. She will not be forgotten." Superman then gives his late cousin burial by taking her corpse to Rokyn/New Krypton to Zor-El and Allura. A Superman issue the next month reveals that Kara had experienced a premonition about her own passing. However, when the universe is rebooted, the timeline is altered. Kara Zor-El and all memory of her is erased from existence. CANNOTANSWER

CANNOTANSWER

Kara Zor-El, also known by her adoptive names of Linda Lee Danvers, Kara Kent, Linda Lang, and Kara Danvers, and the superhero name of Supergirl, is a superheroine appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. She was created by Otto Binder and designed by Al Plastino. Danvers first appeared in Action Comics #252 (May 1959)'s "The Supergirl from Krypton" story. Kara is the biological cousin of Kal-El, who went on to adopt the name of Clark Kent and the superhero Superman. During the 1980s and the revolution of the Modern Age of Comics, Superman editors believed the character's history had become too convoluted, thus killing Supergirl during the 1985 Crisis on Infinite Earths event and retconning her out of existence. DC Comics Senior Vice President Dan DiDio re-introduced the character in 2004 along with editor Eddie Berganza and writer Jeph Loeb, with her the Superman/Batman storyline "The Supergirl from Krypton". As the current Supergirl, Kara stars in her own monthly comic book series. With DC's The New 52 relaunch, Kara, like most of the DC Universe, was revamped. DC relaunched the Supergirl comic in August 2016 as part of their DC Rebirth initiative. In live-action, Supergirl appeared in the 1984 film based on her character and was portrayed by Helen Slater. She also appeared in the series Smallville, played by actress Laura Vandervoort. In 2015, the live-action Arrowverse series Supergirl debuted on CBS and then moved to The CW after the first season. Supergirl was portrayed by Melissa Benoist on the show and also appeared on other Arrowverse shows. Sasha Calle will appear as Supergirl in the upcoming DC Extended Universe film The Flash (2022). Publication history Early life Although Kara Zor-El was the first character to use the name "Supergirl," DC Comics tested three different female versions of Superman prior to her debut. The first story to feature a female counterpart to Superman was "Lois Lane – Superwoman," which was published in Action Comics #60 (May 1943). In the story, a hospitalized Lois Lane dreams she has gained superpowers thanks to a blood transfusion from the Man of Steel. She begins her own career as "Superwoman", complete with a version of Superman's costume. In the Superboy #78 story entitled "Claire Kent, Alias Super-Sister", Superboy saves the life of an alien woman named Shar-La, who turns Superboy into a girl, in retaliation for his disparaging thoughts about women drivers which she picked up telepathically. In Smallville, Clark claims to be Claire Kent, an out-of-town relative who is staying with the Kents. When in costume, he appears as Superboy's sister, Super-Sister, and claims the two have exchanged places. Once Superboy has learned his lesson about feeling more respect for women, Shar-La reveals the episode to be a dream which she projected into Superboy's mind. In Superman #123 (August 1958), Jimmy Olsen uses a magic totem to wish a "Super-Girl" into existence as a companion and aid to Superman; however, the two frequently get in each other's way until she is fatally injured protecting Superman from a Kryptonite meteor. At her insistence, Jimmy wishes the dying girl out of existence. DC used this story to gauge public response to the concept of a completely new super-powered female counterpart to Superman. The Kara Zor-El version of Supergirl finally appeared in Action Comics #252 (May 1959). Otto Binder wrote and Al Plastino illustrated her début story, in which Kara was born and raised in Argo City (unnamed until later issues), a fragment of Krypton that survived destruction. When the city is doomed by a meteor shower, Kara is sent to Earth by her parents, Zor-El and Alura (the latter unnamed until later issues), to be raised by her cousin Kal-El, known as Superman. Supergirl adopted the secret identity of an orphan "Linda Lee", and made Midvale Orphanage her home. Supergirl promised Superman that she would keep her existence on Earth a secret, so that he may use her as a "secret weapon", but that didn't stop Supergirl from exploring her new powers covertly. Action Comics #255 published reader's letters-of-comment to Supergirl's first appearance; she had allegedly generated a sizeable and mostly positive reaction. Supergirl, from her debut onwards, became a regular backup strip in Action Comics. She joined the Legion of Super-Heroes, like her cousin had done as a teenager, and in Action Comics #279 (July 1961) she was adopted by Fred and Edna Danvers, becoming "Linda Lee Danvers". Supergirl acted for three years as Superman's secret weapon, and her adventures during that time have been compared to contemporary developments in feminist thinking in work such as Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. She was at last introduced by her super-powered cousin to an unsuspecting world in Action Comics #285 (February 1962). During her first quarter of a century, Linda Danvers would have many professions, from student to student advisor, to actor, and even TV camera operator. She shared Action Comics with Superman until transferring to the lead in Adventure Comics at the end of the 1960s. In 1972 she finally moved to her own short-lived eponymous magazine, before DC merged its Supergirl, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen titles into a single anthology title named The Superman Family. In 1982 Supergirl was relaunched into her own magazine. Death during Crisis on Infinite Earths In 1985, the maxi-series Crisis on Infinite Earths was conceived as a way to reduce DC continuity to a single universe in which all characters maintained a single history. Despite Supergirl's continued popularity and status as a central member of the "Superman Family", the editors at DC Comics and the creators of the maxi-series decided to kill Supergirl off during the Crisis. According to Marv Wolfman, writer of Crisis on Infinite Earths: The idea of killing Supergirl was first conceived by DC's vice president/executive editor Dick Giordano, who lobbied for the death to DC's publishers. He later said he has never had any regrets about this, explaining, "Supergirl was created initially to take advantage of the high Superman sales and not much thought was put into her creation. She was created essentially as a female Superman. With time, writers and artists improved upon her execution, but she never did really add anything to the Superman mythos—at least not for me." The poor initial reception of the 1984 film Supergirl was also blamed by some sources. In 1989, in the tale "Christmas with the Super-Heroes" the soul of Kara appears to Boston "Deadman" Brand, cheers him up, and then disappears from continuity until 2001 (see below). Several characters unrelated to Superman soon took on the Supergirl persona, including the Matrix (a shapeshifting genetically engineered life-form that 'defaulted' as Supergirl), Linda Danvers (the result of Matrix merging with the dying Linda Danvers and becoming an Earth-bound angel of fire), and Cir-El (Superman's apparent daughter from a possible future). A heroine resembling the Pre-Crisis Kara would later appear in Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds #5, along with an entire army of Legionnaires gathered from alternate worlds, times, and realities, to battle the Time Trapper. Two Supergirls meet Prior to the post-Crisis introduction of Kara Zor-El into mainstream continuity, the pre-Crisis Kara Zor-El made an appearance in Peter David's Supergirl: Many Happy Returns. The then-current Supergirl series, at the time starring Linda Danvers, was in danger of cancellation and Peter David thought a story arc involving Kara Zor-El would be enough to revitalize the series. In an interview with Cliff Biggers of Newsarama, David states: In the Linda Danvers' Supergirl series issues 49 and 50 (October and November 2000), the original dead Kara appears as Linda's "guardian angel". Then in issues 75 to 80, "Many Happy Returns", a young Kara appears from an earlier time long before the Crisis. The paradox becomes a moral crisis for Linda who tries to take her place as the Crisis sacrifice, living for years in a Silver Age universe where "no one swears, the villains are always easy to defeat, and everything's very, very clean", eventually marrying the Silver Age Superman and having a daughter with him, before she is forced to return to her universe by the Spectre when he reveals that her efforts to replace Kara as the sacrifice will not succeed. This run was illustrated by Ed Benes who had also illustrated Gail Simone's Birds of Prey which had a similar whimsical camaraderie between its female leads. Linda's inability to ultimately save Kara, coupled with the loss of her daughter, is so devastating that it ends her own career as Supergirl, Linda leaving a note for Superman where she explains that she feels that she has failed to live up to the standards of a true Supergirl and choosing to go somewhere she cannot be found. This story arc is usually cited as one of the best Supergirl stories ever written. The series ended with issue 80. Revival After the launch of the Superman/Batman comic book series, executive editor Dan DiDio had been looking for a way to simplify the Supergirl character from her convoluted post-Crisis history; the simplest version, of course, was Superman's cousin. Jeph Loeb and editor Eddie Berganza found an opening to reintroduce the character following the conclusion of the first story arc of Superman/Batman. Loeb states: The modern version of Kara Zor-El made her debut in Superman/Batman #8 (2004). Kara takes the mantle of Supergirl at the conclusion of the storyline. The Supergirl comic book series would later be relaunched, now starring Kara Zor-El as "The Girl of Steel". The first arc of the new series was written by Jeph Loeb and illustrated by Ian Churchill. Loeb would later describe the appeal of writing for Supergirl: As the character continued to be reinvented, steps towards regarding the iconic character were some of the most prominent changes. Artist Jamal Igle and editor Matt Idleson moved to transition the character away from red panties under her skirt to biker shorts, feeling such a change was a logical progression and "more respectable." The New 52 In September 2011, DC Comics began The New 52, in which it canceled all of its monthly superhero titles and relaunched 52 new ones, wiping out most of its past continuity in the process. One of the new titles was a new Supergirl series (Volume 6) that featured a new origin for Kara and was published between 2011 and 2015. Artist Mahmud Asrar designed a new costume for the character which strongly deviated from her classic, "cheerleader" suit, a change which generated criticism from some readers. DC Rebirth The 2016 DC Comics title relaunch Rebirth incorporates several elements (such as the costume, the name, the setting, and some characters) from the Supergirl television series. The DC Rebirth initiative undid the New 52's modern recreations, bringing DC's heroes back to their more classic iterations. Supergirl's new series (Volume 7) was titled Supergirl: Rebirth, written by Steven Orlando. The first arc was penciled by Brian Ching, who also redesigned Supergirl's costume in reference to a more classic look. In April 2018, it was announced that the title would be canceled after issue #20, only to be revived in August that year under a new creative team, with new writer Marc Andreyko and artist Kevin Maguire. The series ended with its 42nd issue. Future State: Kara Zor-El, Superwoman The Future State comics propose a possible future for Kara Zor-El, now an adult and having taken the alias of Superwoman. She leaves Earth to become a guardian of the Moon, which has become a refugee colony for aliens from the entire universe. The series was written by Marguerite Bennet and penciled by Marguerite Sauvage. Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow Under the Infinite Frontier brand, Kara's next series Woman of Tomorrow debuted in June 2021, written by Tom King and penciled by Brazilian artists Bilquis Evely and Mat Lopes. The arc introduces Supergirl to new character grounds as she begins the story as a young woman, celebrating her 21st birthday and helping a young alien in her quest for revenge. The "mentor-mentee journey on revenge" plot is, according to King, inspired by the original novel and both versions of True Grit. In this series, the creators paid homage to Linda Danvers, as Kara manifests flame wings and powers after taking a red kryptonite drug, in order to save her space bus crew from a Karpane dragon. Fictional character biography Silver Age In her debut story, Kara Zor-El is the last survivor of Argo City of the planet Krypton. Although Argo, which had survived the explosion of the planet, drifted through space as a self-sustaining environment, the soil of the colony eventually turned into Kryptonite; and though Kara's father Zor-El placed lead sheeting above the ground to protect the citizens from radiation, meteorites pierced the sheeting, and the Kryptonians died of radiation poisoning instead of replacing the metal. In Supergirl's subsequent backup feature in Action Comics drawn by artist Jim Mooney for ten years until 1968, Supergirl adopts the identity of Linda Lee, an orphan at Midvale Orphanage presided over by headmistress Miss Hart. She disguises herself by hiding her blond hair beneath a brunette wig; Supergirl interacts with humans on a person-to-person basis performing good deeds and saving the world by helping one person at a time, and she also devises clever schemes as "Superman's Secret Weapon," saving him many times and avoiding adoption before Superman can introduce her publicly. While temporarily powerless due to the scheming of Kandorian scientist Lesla-Lar, who is out to supplant her on Earth, Linda allows herself to be adopted by engineer and rocket scientist Fred Danvers and his wife, Edna. In time, she reveals her secret identity to her adoptive parents on the same day her cousin Superman finally introduces her to the world in the finale of then-DC's longest playing series ever (eight chapters) aptly called "The World's Greatest Heroine". When frequent dreams about her parents being alive turn out to be real, she builds a machine aided by her engineer father's talent, and brings them both back alive from the "Survival Zone" where they had both teleported during Argo City's final moments. Zor-El and Allura eventually end up living in Kandor, and when the city in the bottle is enlarged, they both go on to live in Rokyn/New Krypton, where they have the sad duty of receiving her mortal remains after "Crisis" for burial. Graduating from high school in 1965, Linda Lee goes to college on a scholarship and stays in Stanhope College until she graduates in 1971. During this era, she is helped by her pet cat Streaky, her Super-Horse pet Comet, and befriends Lena Thorul, who had first appeared in the Lois Lane series. Kara is also a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes, where she becomes close to Brainiac 5. In addition, Linda has boyfriends from the orphanage (Richard "Dick" Malverne) and from Atlantis (Jerro the merboy). In 1967, Supergirl meets Batgirl for the first time in World's Finest Comics. Developing a strong friendship, the two characters teamed up many times again, as in Superman Family #171, or Adventure #381. In 1969, Supergirl left Action Comics and became a featured character in Adventure Comics beginning with issue #381 (June 1969). During the 1970s, Supergirl's costume changed frequently, as did her career in her civilian life. In her secret identity as Linda Lee Danvers, Kara Zor-El took a variety of jobs including graduate student in acting, television camera operator, and student counselor, and finally became an actress on the TV soap Secret Hearts. Bronze Age After long-time Superman family editor Mort Weisinger retired in 1971, the character underwent revitalization under editor Joe Orlando and artist Mike Sekowsky. Wearing a series of new outfits, leaving her adopted foster home with the Danvers family, Linda goes on to San Francisco where she works for KSF-TV as a camera operator and develops a crush on her boss, Geoffrey Anderson. These stories introduced Supergirl's most memorable villain from this period: Lex Luthor's niece Nasthalthia, or Nasty. Nasty had made two appearances towards the end of Linda's college years, then pursued her to KSF-TV, trying to secure proof of her dual identity. Supergirl starred in her first solo eponymous monthly series beginning in 1972 until October 1974, when her monthly title merged with Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane, and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen to produce a new title: then-highest DC selling series called The Superman Family, where she eventually became the steady lead story. Linda worked as a student advisor at New Athens Experimental School, before leaving for New York to follow a career in acting with daytime soap Secret Hearts. In 1982 Supergirl received a second monthly solo series titled The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl, relocating the character to Chicago as Linda became a mature student of Psychology. Industry legend, and former DC Publisher, Carmine Infantino provided the penciled art (Bob Oksner inked). With issue 13 the title was revamped, with a new costume design (sporting a red headband) and the title shortened to just Supergirl. The series ran until sudden cancellation in 1984, only two months before the character's debut in a big-budget Hollywood film starring Helen Slater. In the Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985), the greatest heroes from Earth-One, Earth-Two, Earth-Four, Earth-S, and Earth-X join forces in order to defeat the Anti-Monitor. When Superman comes face to face with the Anti-Monitor and is knocked unconscious, Supergirl rushes to save him before he is killed. She is able to fight him off long enough for Dr. Light to carry her cousin to a safe distance, but is killed by the Anti-Monitor. A public memorial service for Supergirl takes place in Chicago, where Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) delivers the eulogy. In her remarks, she states "Kara is a hero. She will not be forgotten." Superman then gives his late cousin burial by taking her corpse to Rokyn/New Krypton to Zor-El and Allura. A Superman issue the next month reveals that Kara had experienced a premonition about her own passing. However, when the universe is rebooted, the timeline is altered. Kara Zor-El and all memory of her is erased from existence. Echoes After these events, the soul of Kara Zor-El made another appearance in continuity three years later in a story titled "Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot" in Christmas with the Super-Heroes #2 (1989). Within the story, Boston "Deadman" Brand tries to feel the warmth of Christmas by possessing revelers' bodies. Feeling guilty upon the realization that he has been stealing others' Christmases, he flies off feeling sorry for himself for being denied a reward after a year of helping people. A warmly dressed blonde woman approaches Brand, startling him. Somehow seeing the normally invisible Brand, she converses with him, reminding him, She reminds Brand that even though he is dead, he is still human, and he should rejoice because it means his spirit is still alive. As the woman leaves, Brand asks her who she is, to which she replies, "My name is Kara. Though I doubt that will mean anything to you." The story, written by Alan Brennert and penciled by Dick Giordano, is dedicated to Otto Binder and Jim Mooney, adding: "We still remember." Finally, the soul of Kara Zor-El appeared twice during Peter David's run, specifically in issues #48 and #49 when she appears before a defeated and imprisoned then-Supergirl, Linda Danvers from Earth, and comforts her. Linda acknowledges she has been helped three times by her phantom-friend, and when she asks her name she is told by the smiling figure: "I have gone by many names, but the one I am most fond of is: Kara!" Modern Age In 2004, Jeph Loeb reintroduced Kara Zor-El into post-Zero Hour (Birthright timeline) continuity during a storyline in the series Superman/Batman. She is the biological cousin of Superman, and although chronologically older than him, the ship in which she traveled to Earth was caught in a large green Kryptonite meteorite which held her in a state of suspended animation for much of the journey, making her have the appearance of a 16-year-old girl. Still, Supergirl sometimes saw Superman as a child, due to last carrying him as a baby. DC Comics relaunched the Supergirl, the first story arc of which was written by Loeb. showcases Supergirl on a journey of self-discovery. Along her journey, she encounters Power Girl (Kara Zor-El's counterpart from another universe), the Teen Titans, the Outsiders, the Justice League of America, and arch-villain Lex Luthor. During the company-wide crossover series Infinite Crisis (2005), a sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths, Supergirl is transported to the 31st century, where she is revered as a member of the Superman family and joins the Legion of Super-Heroes. DC Comics renamed the monthly series Legion of Super-Heroes to Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes. Beginning with issue #16. In the limited series 52, which chronicles the events that took place during the missing year after the end of Infinite Crisis, Donna Troy recalls the original Kara Zor-El and her sacrifice to save the universe. Supergirl returns to the 21st century during the course of 52. After briefly filling in for a temporarily depowered Superman as guardian of Metropolis, she assumes the identity of Flamebird to fight crime in the bottle city of Kandor with Power Girl as Nightwing in Greg Rucka's arc Supergirl: Kandor. In 2007, Supergirl appeared in the miniseries Amazons Attack! That same year, she joined the Teen Titans for five issues. Conversations with other heroes who maintain secret identities lead Kara to the conclusion that she needs to make a deeper connection with human beings. She accepts Lana Lang's proposal to present her to the Daily Planet staff as "Linda Lang", Lana's teenaged niece. In the 2008–2009 "New Krypton" story arc, in which Superman discovers and frees the real Kandor and a large number of its citizens, Supergirl is reunited with her father, Zor-El and mother, Alura, though Zor-El is killed by the villain Reactron. When a planet is formed that the Kryptonians call New Krypton, Kara is torn between her life on Earth, and her obligation to her mother, eventually joining the New Krypton Science Guild. Supergirl subsequently appears in the 2009 miniseries Justice League: Cry for Justice, and the 2009–2010 storyline "Blackest Night". The New Krypton storyline would later be resolved in the "World of New Krypton", "Superman: Last Stand of New Krypton", "War of the Supermen" storylines, resulting in the destruction of New Krypton and seeing Supergirl mourn her people. Supergirl subsequently appears in the 2010 "Brightest Day" storyline, the follow up to "Blackest Night"., where she joins the Justice League along with Jesse Quick & Jade. The New 52 In this continuity, Kara's ship lands in Smallville, Kansas but hurtles through the Earth and emerges in Siberia. Kara has no memory of the destruction of Krypton, and believes it is only three days since her spacecraft was launched. She learns the truth about Krypton's destruction from Superman, and later journeys through a wormhole to Argo City, which she finds in orbit around a blue sun. She finds the city in ruins, with no explanation of how it met that fate, and is attacked by a female Worldkiller named Reign before the city plummets into the sun. When Reign and her fellow Worldkiller plan to enslave the Earth, Supergirl returns there to defeat them, and thus adopts Earth as her new home. After several battles with supervillains, including the Worldkillers, superweapons of Kryptonian design, she accepts Krypton's destruction, but continues to grapple with her grief. Her desire to restore Krypton results in her being manipulated into nearly destroying the Earth by another Kryptonian whom she falls in love with. Upon realizing his manipulation, she kills him by driving Kryptonite through his heart, and succumbs to Kryptonite poisoning. Following her poisoning, Supergirl departs the Earth to die alone. While adrift in interstellar space, she encounters a planet under attack by monsters, and quickly intervenes to save them, unaware that the entire planet is a trap by Brainiac. She is captured and restrained by Cyborg Superman, but after a struggle, manages to escape both Brainiac and Cyborg Superman. Returning to Earth, she is sent into the past by the Oracle alongside Superman and Superboy, where she ensures that a resurrected H'el cannot save Krypton, and sacrifices the planet and her family in order to save the universe. Back on Earth, she encounters the assassin Lobo. Initially eager for a peaceful resolution, seeing a kind of kinship with him in their both being lone survivors of their respective worlds (although not truly aware of Lobo's circumstances), Kara's encounter with the Czarnian would reveal deep mental wounds, resulting in the unleashing of her rage and transformation into a Red Lantern. Driven insane by rage, Kara wanders space, attacking everyone in her way, until captured by several Green Lanterns and brought to Hal Jordan. Immediately recognizing a Kryptonian and unable to remove the power ring without killing her, he brings her to Guy Gardner, the leader of one of the two Red Lantern factions, who manages to restore her sanity. After some time under Guy Gardner's tutelage and protecting the galaxy as a Red Lantern, after being discharged from the Red Lantern Corps (because Guy did not want for her to die needlessly against Atrocitus' splinter group), on her way back to Earth, Kara encounters the leader of the Worldkillers, who are revealed to be parasitic suits of armor. He attempts to assimilate Kara as his host, but she voluntarily subjects herself to Kryptonite poisoning in order to stop him, and eventually flies into the Sun and removes her power ring, killing her and removing him from her body. However, Kara is revealed to be immortal while in the Sun's core, and is restored to life without the power ring or any Kryptonite poisoning, immediately destroying the Worldkiller. She later helps Guy against Atrocitus and his Red Lantern splinter group. Convergence and return of the Pre-Crisis version During the Convergence story arc, the original Kara Zor-El who had sacrificed her life during Crisis on Infinite Earths makes an appearance on the amalgamated planet of Telos. At the end of the saga she volunteers herself to once again fight the Anti-Monitor but this time, with the help of her timeline's Barry Allen, the Pre-Flashpoint Superman (in tow with his pregnant wife, Lois Lane), and a repentant Parallax (Zero Hour Hal Jordan), vows to defeat him for the sake of the multiverse's continued existence. Without it being seen, those left on Telos discover the group was successful and all previous timelines (with the mysterious exception of the pre-Flashpoint/pre-New 52 DC universe) from DC history had been re-established, though the fate of the original Kara Zor-El and her fellows went unmentioned. A few more details of the battle against the Anti-Monitor are later revealed during the New 52 comic mini-series (leading into DC's Rebirth event). After the defeat of Anti-Monitor, Pre-New 52 Clark and Lois decide to start life anew in the closest universe they can find (mysteriously yet unable to see their old universe even though the rest of the multiverse had been restored) while Pre-Crisis Kara Zor-El, along with her contemporary Barry Allen and Zero Hour Parallax/Hal Jordan, decide to find their place in the universe and go off to do so. Her fate as of that story arc is yet to be revealed. DC Rebirth After the events that led to the death of the New 52 version of Superman, 16-year-old Kara lives in National City with her adoptive parents, D.E.O. agents Jeremiah and Eliza Danvers, where she attends high school and works with the agency as led by Cameron Chase. As part of her civilian identity, Kara receives special glasses that darken her blond hair when posing as Kara Danvers. Kara also goes on an internship at Cat Grant's CATCO alongside Ben Rubel, whom she befriends. In her opening arc "The Reign of the Cyborg Supermen", Kara discovers that the cyborg Zor-El, whom she had battled in her New 52 title, is still active and has rebuilt other Kryptonians (her mother Alura included), planning to take over Earth. Supergirl defeats them but vows to help her father regardless of his actions. After National City discovers Supergirl has kept Zor-El's "living" status a secret, they become untrustful of her. Director Bones takes advantage of the heroine's impopularity and, after taking control of the D.E.O., sends villains in an attempt to bring Kara down. She defeats all of them and regains trust from National City with Ben's help. The Supergirl Who Laughs Kara is later infected by The Batman Who Laughs toxin, causing her to turn evil and joining other infected as part of Laughs Secret Six before later being cured. She is fired from CatCo by Cat Grant and starts working at S.T.A.R. Labs. Woman of Tomorrow Journeying throughout the universe with Krypto, Kara celebrates her 21st birthday alone on a distant planet. Drunk in a bar, she is approached by a little girl named Ruthye and is asked to kill Krem (her father's murderer) in vengeance. Supergirl refuses but, when she is about to leave the planet, Krem attacks and severely wounds both her and Krypto, fleeing in Kara's ship. Kara begins her journey alongside Ruthye and, powerless, saves her space bus crew from a Karpane dragon by taking a red kryptonite drug which causes her to manifest flame wings. Powers and abilities Like all Kryptonians under a yellow sun, the current version of Kara Zor-El possesses virtually unlimited strength, stamina, and durability. She is able to fly and with super speed that she can also use on foot, similar to Superman and The Flash. Also like Superman, Supergirl possesses super senses, super-breath, and freeze breathe, as well as multiple forms of supervision (including X-Ray, Infrared, Telescopic, and Microscopic). Kara also has a bio-electric aura that enhances her near invulnerability and also protects her skin and her costume from dirt and tear; as such, Kara is perpetually clean. The Sun also provides Kara with a longer lifespan than that of a human being, to the point that she is effectively a biological immortal. Kara doesn't require food, water, or sleep to survive. She is also immune to most diseases, mental and physical, and would require a very strong strain to have a chance at affecting her. In the rare instances that Kara is harmed by someone matching her strength or by the use of one of her weaknesses, she can heal almost instantaneously. Her power surpasses most other beings, though she can be overpowered by those who rival her strength such as Black Adam, Darkseid, Despero, Doomsday, Bizarro, Wonder Woman, and Superman. In reality, Kara is actually older than her cousin, Clark, and spent time on Krypton before its destruction. As such (unlike Superman), she possesses memories of Kryptonian culture as well as her cousin's parents. Continued exposure to a yellow Sun will slowly increase abilities. Many characters in the DC Universe have noted that Supergirl appears, at times, to be even more powerful than Superman himself. In answer to this, Superman states that this is because he has spent his entire life subconsciously suppressing his full powers in order to avoid hurting others, having been absorbing solar radiation since his infancy. Kara, not having such practice or experience, simply uses the full magnitude of her powers. Abilities Unlike her cousin, Kara was taught to fight in Krypton as part of her tests, and at the Crucible Academy, being adept at various Kryptonian fighting styles like Klurkor and Torquasm Rao. Supergirl also learned the art of Bagua under I-Ching's instructions. She practiced how to manipulate her Chi or Qi in order to gain better control of her powers due to them becoming overwhelmed after her conflict with the Fatal Five. Superman recommended guardianship with I-Ching to Supergirl first. In addition to training in Krypton, Kara was trained by Batman in advanced martial arts and trained with the Amazons in Themyscira in unarmed and armed combat, Amazonas martial arts, fencing, Shield handling, and other Amazon weapons. She trained with Wonder Woman and Artemis extensively. Other versions There are numerous alternate versions of Supergirl. The most notable is Power Girl (real name Kara Zor-L, also known as Karen Starr) who first appeared in All Star Comics #58 (January/February 1976). Power Girl is the Earth-Two counterpart of Supergirl and the first cousin of Kal-L, Superman of the pre-Crisis Earth-Two. The infant Power Girl's parents enabled her to escape the destruction of Krypton. Although she left the planet at the same time that Superman did, her ship took much longer to reach Earth-Two. She has superhuman strength and the ability to fly and is the first chairwoman of the Justice Society of America. She sports a bob of blond hair; wears a distinctive white, red, and blue costume; and has an aggressive fighting style. Throughout her early appearances in All Star Comics, she is often at odds with Wildcat because his penchant for talking to her as if she were an ordinary human female rather than a superpowered Kryptonian annoys her. She also fought alongside the Sovereign Seven team, replacing Rampart after his death though that series is not considered to be part of canon in the DC universe. The 1985 limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths eliminated Earth-Two, causing her origin to change; she became the granddaughter of the Atlantean sorcerer Arion. However, story events culminating in the 2005–2006 Infinite Crisis limited series restored her status as a refugee from the Krypton of the destroyed pre-Crisis Earth-Two universe. Like the original Kara's Streaky, Power Girl has a cat, featured in a story by Amanda Conner in Wonder Woman #600. Reception This version of Supergirl is ranked as the 153rd-greatest comic book character of all time by Wizard magazine. IGN also ranked this version of Supergirl as the 94th-greatest comic book superhero, stating "for a character born of the Silver Age that saw everything from a Super Baby to a Super Monkey, Kara Zor-El grew into something much more than simply another marketing ploy to slap an 'S' on." In 2013 IGN ranked Supergirl as the 17th-greatest DC comic superhero, stating "she was an early example of a female sidekick developing a large fanbase in her own right", and "Supergirl has been one of DC's most powerful heroes, and a standard to hold other female heroes against." Appearances Pre-Crisis 1959 to 1969: Action Comics #252 to #376. 1969 to 1972: Adventure Comics #381 to #424. 1972 to 1974: Supergirl #1 to #10. 1974 to 1982: Her comic merges with Jimmy Olsen's and Lois Lane's to become Superman Family #164 to #222. 1982 to 1984: The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl #1 to #13, Supergirl (vol. 2) #14 to #23. 2015: Convergence Kara Zor-El appeared in over 750 stories published by DC from 1959 to 1985. Post-Crisis 2004 to 2005: Superman/Batman #8 to #13 and #19 2005 to 2011: Supergirl (vol. 5) #0 to #67 2006 to 2008: Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5) #16 to #37 2007: Action Comics #850 2008: Final Crisis 2011 to 2015: New 52: Supergirl (vol. 6) #1 to #40 2016 to current: Rebirth: Supergirl (vol. 7) #1 to current Kara Zor-El also appears as a supporting character in several issues of other DC Comics, including Superman, Action Comics, Teen Titans, Amazons Attack, World War III, and Wonder Girl. She has also appeared in many issues of Superman, Action Comics, and Superman New Krypton starting with the World Without Superman event in 2009, and continuing with the World Against Superman event going into 2010. Collected editions Listed in chronological order. All ages titles are not in continuity with the original or modern Kara. In other media Television Live-action Smallville Prior to the seventh season (2007–2008) of the WB/CW show Smallville where she is introduced into the cast and is portrayed by Laura Vandervoort, a woman claiming to be Kara (portrayed by Adrianne Palicki) is briefly introduced in the season 3 finale. It is later revealed her real name is Lindsey Harrison, and had been given false memories and powers by the artificial intelligence of Clark Kent's (Tom Welling) father Jor-El as part of a series of tests. Vandervoort portrays the real Kara, Clark's cousin whose spaceship had been trapped in stasis until the events of the season 6 finale. Much of season 7 is concerned with Kara's attempts to adjust to life on Earth, especially after learning of Krypton's destruction. Her storyline sees her simultaneously become the object of Lex Luthor's (Michael Rosenbaum) obsessions and Jimmy Olsen's (Aaron Ashmore) affections, suffer a bout of amnesia, discover her father's (Christopher Heyerdahl) sinister motives and become a target of evil android Brainiac (James Marsters). The season finale sees Kara become trapped in the Phantom Zone. Starting with season 8, Vandervoort ceases to feature as a series regular, but reprises the role three more times. In her first guest appearance, "Bloodline," Kara is freed from the Phantom Zone and later departs Clark's hometown of Smallville to search for Kandor, her birthplace, as it is rumored to have survived their home planet's destruction. She appears again in the season 10 episode "Supergirl", in which she formally adopts her superhero moniker. Her off-screen adventures are alluded to thereafter. Vandervoort makes a final appearance in the show's penultimate episode, "Prophecy", in which she helps Green Arrow (Justin Hartley) locate the "Bow of Orion" to use against Darkseid. She is then called to the Fortress of Solitude, where she learns from Jor-El that her job on Earth is done. Using a Legion of Super-Heroes flight ring, she travels to the future to seek her own destiny. The Season Eleven comic book continuation of the show later depicts Kara's continued story in the 31st century, subsequent return to the present and joining the Justice League. Arrowverse In September 2014, a 22-episode television series centered around Supergirl was in development at Warner Bros. Television, set to premiere on CBS with a January 2015 air date. Melissa Benoist was cast as the titular character. In May 2016, the series moved to The CW and was later integrated into the Arrowverse, a shared universe consisting of shows including Arrow, The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. In the series, Kara Zor-El was sent to Earth to protect her cousin Kal-El, following her homeworld Krypton's destruction. However, she is knocked into the Phantom Zone, where she is stranded for 24 years. She eventually crash lands on Earth and is found by her already grown-up cousin Kal, now known to the world as the iconic superhero "Superman". Superman brings Kara into the custody of Jeremiah Danvers, director of the Department of Extranormal Operations (D.E.O.), and his daughter Alex. Growing up, Kara struggles to maintain her Kryptonian abilities as well as balancing her relationship with her adoptive sister. Eventually, the two bond when Kara's powers are exposed. However, Jeremiah decides it's best to isolate her abilities. As an adult, Kara is forced to use her powers again when her sister's plane almost crashes. She is later dubbed "Supergirl" by the media and dons a costume like her cousin. Kara decides to use her abilities to fight alien invaders such as Kara's aunt Astra and her husband Non, Mon-El's rogue parents, the Worldkiller Reign, anti-alien activist Ben Lockwood, and later the shadowy organization Leviathan, with the help of her sister Alex, now an agent of the D.E.O., her best friend and tech-expert Winn Schott, last of the Green Martians J'onn J'onzz / Martian Manhunter, and Kal's best friend Jimmy Olsen. She is later joined by Lex Luthor's sister Lena, Prince of Daxam Mon-El, former Legion of Superheroes member Querl "Brainy" Dox / Brainiac 5, Nia Nal / Dreamer, James' younger sister Kelly, and reporter Willam Dey face against these rival forces. After joining the Arrowverse, which contain annual crossover, Kara assists Barry Allen, Oliver Queen and the Legends of Tomorrow against threats on their designated earth "Earth-1" while Kara’s is designated as "Earth-38. Later, Kara is selected by The Monitor as the Paragon of Hope to participate in the coming crisis and fight against the Anti-Monitor, whose goal is to destroy the multiverse. After doing so, the Paragons are sent to the Vanishing Point where Oliver, now a Spectre, helps them escape. The Paragons appear at the dawn of time in the anti-matter universe where they have their final confrontation with the Anti-Monitor. Eventually, Oliver sacrifices himself to kill the Anti-Monitor, and as a result, a new multiverse is born with Earth-38 and Earth-1 merged into "Earth-Prime". Following the crisis, Kara is forced to deal the after-effects of Crisis which include working with Lex, now owning the D.E.O. while Leviathan continue their covert operations under Gamemnae. The sixth season sees Kara and her allies expose Lex's crimes, but are then forced to deal with Nyxlygsptlnz, a fifth-dimensional imp who tricked the heroes into releasing her from the Phantom Zone. Eventually Nyxlygsptlnz joins forces with Lex Luthor and the two kill William, but Kara's assembled allies are able to defeat the two, culminating in Lex and Nyxlygsptlnz being trapped in the Phantom Zone when one of their own plans backfires. The series concludes with Kara revealing her dual identity so that she can live a full life as one person. Animation DC Nation Shorts Supergirl appears with Batgirl and Wonder Girl in Super Best Friends Forever, voiced by Nicole Sullivan. DC Super Hero Girls Supergirl appears as a central protagonist in the web series DC Super Hero Girls voiced by Anais Fairweather, and is a student at Super Hero High, is very kind and caring and extremely powerful but she's also very clumsy. She also appears as a central protagonist in the 2019 TV series, with Nicole Sullivan reprising her role from the Super Best Friends Forever shorts. In this version, she is also a rebel and is known as the "cool kid" in school. She may be tough but she can easily express her emotions and is very open-minded as well. She can be a cool friend and a helpful one, but she can also be jealous sometimes and she dislikes her cousin's prominence. Justice League Action Supergirl appears in Justice League Action, voiced by Joanne Spracklen. She has the appearance of a wide-eyed human teenager with blonde hair and wears her traditional costume except that it has thigh-high boots and a pleated skirt. As a person, she is youthful, responsible, and shows much affection for her cousin Superman. In "Party Animal", she appears as a cameo at this Christmas party with the Justice League. In "Keeping up with the Kryptonians", Supergirl becomes a star of the popular reality show "That's So Kara", and Superman a Kasnian who rules from one place to another on Earth, all being a reality caused by Mister Mxyzptlk. In "Unleashed", Supergirl accompanies Justice League in stopping Red Lantern Corps, unaware that it was a distraction made by Dex-Starr to invade Earth, until it was ultimately resolved by Krypto, Streaky, and Plastic Man. In a short "The Goddess Must Be Crazy", Supergirl trains with Wonder Woman in Paradise Island, until she is possessed by Felix Faust, to destroy the island. Film Superman film series A live action depiction of Supergirl first appears in the eponymous 1984 film starring Helen Slater as Supergirl. The film is a spin-off from the Superman film series starring Christopher Reeve, to which it is connected by Marc McClure's character of Jimmy Olsen. DC Extended Universe Kara Zor-El / Linda Danvers / Supergirl exists within the DC Extended Universe, as she was referenced in Man of Steel when Kal-El / Clark Kent / Superman discovers an empty pod within the Kryptonian scout spaceship. Though Zack Snyder confirmed in August 2018 that even though the character does exist, that pod was not intended for her. In August 2018, a film centered around the character was announced to be in development, with Oren Uziel hired as screenwriter for the project. The studio intends to hire a female director, with Reed Morano—who has expressed interest in the project—being its top choice. Filming was expected to start production in early 2020. Sasha Calle will play Supergirl for the DC Extended Universe in The Flash. Animation Summer Glau voices the post-Crisis version of Kara Zor-El in Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, which is based on the Superman/Batman storyline "The Supergirl from Krypton". Despite this, it was confirmed by director Lauren Montgomery that Supergirl's name was removed from the title due to the much slower sales of the previous Wonder Woman animated movie, and the character was not permitted to appear on the cover in her trademark outfit. Molly Quinn voices Supergirl in Superman: Unbound. Supergirl appears in Lego DC Comics Super Heroes: Justice League: Cosmic Clash, voiced by Jessica DiCicco. Video games Supergirl appears in DC Universe Online, voiced by Adriene Mishler. In the villain campaign, the players help Doctor Psycho capture Supergirl using Kryptonite. In the hero campaign, the players fight Doctor Psycho to save Supergirl. Under the thrall of Brainiac, she must be defeated in the Fortress of Solitude: Power Core raid. Supergirl is unlockable in Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, voiced by Bridget Hoffman. Supergirl makes a cameo appearance in the IOS version of Injustice: Gods Among Us as a support card. Supergirl appears as a playable character in Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham, voiced by Kari Wahlgren. She is playable in her default variant which is designed after her appearance in The New 52 and in her Classic attire. Her Classic variant is unlocked in a VR Mission while her New 52 variant is unlocked in a Hub Quest in Nok where she requests players to defeat a number of enemies she accidentally releases from their cells. Supergirl appears as a playable character in Infinite Crisis, voiced by Camilla Luddington. Supergirl appears as a playable character and the central protagonist in Injustice 2 by NetherRealm Studios, the sequel to Injustice: Gods Among Us, voiced by Laura Bailey. Here her origin is much like in the comics where she is sent along with her cousin Kal-El to Earth by her mother after Krypton is destroyed but on separate pods where hers veers off-course after sustaining significant damage, stranding her in space for many years until she lands on Earth, unaged. When the main storyline starts, she is residing on Black Adam's kingdom of Khandaq, apparently under his and Wonder Woman's protection. When Brainiac who was responsible for Krypton's destruction attacks, she, Wonder Woman, and Black Adam attempt to free Superman and the remaining members of the Regime, while being interrupted in their efforts by new Insurgency recruits Blue Beetle and Firestorm until Batman himself arrives and releases Superman, leading to a temporary alliance between the Regime and Insurgency against the alien warlord. Over the course of the story, she learns the truth about her cousin's tyranny and at the end of the game sides with Batman, Green Lantern and Flash in letting Brainiac live in order to restore the lost cities but is defeated. In Batman's ending, she laments her cousin's tyranny and sees him leave to be imprisoned in the Phantom Zone and is offered membership by Batman in his Justice League. In Superman's ending, she is imprisoned aboard Brainiac's ship and to her shock discovers her cousin has bonded with it and when she refuses his offer to join him in leading his new legion of imprisoned species. He attempts to coerce her by revealing a brainwashed Batman, who had also been captured, further shocking her. Supergirl appears as a limited-distribution minifigure for the toys-to-life video game Lego Dimensions, with Kari Wahlgren reprising her role. She has the ability to transform between her classic and Red Lantern forms. Supergirl appears as a playable character in DC Unchained. Supergirl appears in the PSP version of Justice League Heroes. Supergirl appears as a playable character in the DC TV Super-Heroes DLC pack in Lego DC Super-Villains. See also Alternative versions of Supergirl Laurel Gand References External links DC Comics Pre-Crisis Supergirl Chronology Supergirl Characters created by Otto Binder Comics characters introduced in 1958 Comics characters introduced in 1959 DC Comics aliens DC Comics American superheroes DC Comics characters who can move at superhuman speeds DC Comics characters with accelerated healing DC Comics characters with superhuman strength DC Comics deities DC Comics female superheroes DC Comics film characters DC Comics television characters DC Comics extraterrestrial superheroes Female characters in television Fictional characters with superhuman senses Fictional actors Fictional extraterrestrial–human hybrids Fictional orphans Fictional photographers Fictional refugees Fictional reporters Fictional school counselors Fictional American secret agents Fictional waiting staff Kryptonians Superheroes who are adopted Vigilante characters in comics

C_eaa7329c3ac14b8bb4aaea61d8fa517d_1

what else happened between her and Nasty

what else happened between Supergirl and Nasty other than their fued?

Supergirl (Kara Zor-El)

After long-time Superman family editor Mort Weisinger retired in 1971, the character underwent revitalization under editor Joe Orlando and artist Mike Sekowsky. Wearing a series of new outfits, leaving her adopted foster home with the Danvers family, Linda goes on to San Francisco where she works for KSF-TV as a camera operator and develops a crush on her boss, Geoffrey Anderson. These stories introduced Supergirl's most memorable villain from this period: Lex Luthor's niece Nasthalthia, or Nasty. Nasty had made two appearances towards the end of Linda's college years, then pursued her to KSF-TV, trying to secure proof of her dual identity. Supergirl starred in her first solo eponymous monthly series beginning in 1972 until October 1974, when her monthly title merged with Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane, and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen to produce a new title: then-highest DC selling series called The Superman Family, where she eventually became the steady lead story. Linda worked as a student advisor at New Athens Experimental School, before leaving for New York to follow a career in acting with daytime soap Secret Hearts. In 1982 Supergirl received a second monthly solo series titled The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl, relocating the character to Chicago as Linda became a mature student of Psychology. Industry legend, and former DC Publisher, Carmine Infantino provided the pencilled art (Bob Oksner inked). With issue 13 the title was revamped, with a new costume design (sporting a red headband) and the title shortened to just Supergirl. The series ran until sudden cancellation in 1984, only two months before the character's debut in a big-budget Hollywood film starring Helen Slater. In the Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985) the greatest heroes from Earth-One, Earth-Two, Earth-Four, Earth-S, and Earth-X join forces in order to defeat the Anti-Monitor. When Superman comes face to face with the Anti-Monitor and is knocked unconscious, Supergirl rushes to save him before he is killed. She is able to fight him off long enough for Dr. Light to carry her cousin to a safe distance, but is killed by the Anti-Monitor. A public memorial service for Supergirl takes place in Chicago, where Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) delivers the eulogy. In her remarks she states "Kara is a hero. She will not be forgotten." Superman then gives his late cousin burial by taking her corpse to Rokyn/New Krypton to Zor-El and Allura. A Superman issue the next month reveals that Kara had experienced a premonition about her own passing. However, when the universe is rebooted, the timeline is altered. Kara Zor-El and all memory of her is erased from existence. CANNOTANSWER

CANNOTANSWER

Kara Zor-El, also known by her adoptive names of Linda Lee Danvers, Kara Kent, Linda Lang, and Kara Danvers, and the superhero name of Supergirl, is a superheroine appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. She was created by Otto Binder and designed by Al Plastino. Danvers first appeared in Action Comics #252 (May 1959)'s "The Supergirl from Krypton" story. Kara is the biological cousin of Kal-El, who went on to adopt the name of Clark Kent and the superhero Superman. During the 1980s and the revolution of the Modern Age of Comics, Superman editors believed the character's history had become too convoluted, thus killing Supergirl during the 1985 Crisis on Infinite Earths event and retconning her out of existence. DC Comics Senior Vice President Dan DiDio re-introduced the character in 2004 along with editor Eddie Berganza and writer Jeph Loeb, with her the Superman/Batman storyline "The Supergirl from Krypton". As the current Supergirl, Kara stars in her own monthly comic book series. With DC's The New 52 relaunch, Kara, like most of the DC Universe, was revamped. DC relaunched the Supergirl comic in August 2016 as part of their DC Rebirth initiative. In live-action, Supergirl appeared in the 1984 film based on her character and was portrayed by Helen Slater. She also appeared in the series Smallville, played by actress Laura Vandervoort. In 2015, the live-action Arrowverse series Supergirl debuted on CBS and then moved to The CW after the first season. Supergirl was portrayed by Melissa Benoist on the show and also appeared on other Arrowverse shows. Sasha Calle will appear as Supergirl in the upcoming DC Extended Universe film The Flash (2022). Publication history Early life Although Kara Zor-El was the first character to use the name "Supergirl," DC Comics tested three different female versions of Superman prior to her debut. The first story to feature a female counterpart to Superman was "Lois Lane – Superwoman," which was published in Action Comics #60 (May 1943). In the story, a hospitalized Lois Lane dreams she has gained superpowers thanks to a blood transfusion from the Man of Steel. She begins her own career as "Superwoman", complete with a version of Superman's costume. In the Superboy #78 story entitled "Claire Kent, Alias Super-Sister", Superboy saves the life of an alien woman named Shar-La, who turns Superboy into a girl, in retaliation for his disparaging thoughts about women drivers which she picked up telepathically. In Smallville, Clark claims to be Claire Kent, an out-of-town relative who is staying with the Kents. When in costume, he appears as Superboy's sister, Super-Sister, and claims the two have exchanged places. Once Superboy has learned his lesson about feeling more respect for women, Shar-La reveals the episode to be a dream which she projected into Superboy's mind. In Superman #123 (August 1958), Jimmy Olsen uses a magic totem to wish a "Super-Girl" into existence as a companion and aid to Superman; however, the two frequently get in each other's way until she is fatally injured protecting Superman from a Kryptonite meteor. At her insistence, Jimmy wishes the dying girl out of existence. DC used this story to gauge public response to the concept of a completely new super-powered female counterpart to Superman. The Kara Zor-El version of Supergirl finally appeared in Action Comics #252 (May 1959). Otto Binder wrote and Al Plastino illustrated her début story, in which Kara was born and raised in Argo City (unnamed until later issues), a fragment of Krypton that survived destruction. When the city is doomed by a meteor shower, Kara is sent to Earth by her parents, Zor-El and Alura (the latter unnamed until later issues), to be raised by her cousin Kal-El, known as Superman. Supergirl adopted the secret identity of an orphan "Linda Lee", and made Midvale Orphanage her home. Supergirl promised Superman that she would keep her existence on Earth a secret, so that he may use her as a "secret weapon", but that didn't stop Supergirl from exploring her new powers covertly. Action Comics #255 published reader's letters-of-comment to Supergirl's first appearance; she had allegedly generated a sizeable and mostly positive reaction. Supergirl, from her debut onwards, became a regular backup strip in Action Comics. She joined the Legion of Super-Heroes, like her cousin had done as a teenager, and in Action Comics #279 (July 1961) she was adopted by Fred and Edna Danvers, becoming "Linda Lee Danvers". Supergirl acted for three years as Superman's secret weapon, and her adventures during that time have been compared to contemporary developments in feminist thinking in work such as Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. She was at last introduced by her super-powered cousin to an unsuspecting world in Action Comics #285 (February 1962). During her first quarter of a century, Linda Danvers would have many professions, from student to student advisor, to actor, and even TV camera operator. She shared Action Comics with Superman until transferring to the lead in Adventure Comics at the end of the 1960s. In 1972 she finally moved to her own short-lived eponymous magazine, before DC merged its Supergirl, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen titles into a single anthology title named The Superman Family. In 1982 Supergirl was relaunched into her own magazine. Death during Crisis on Infinite Earths In 1985, the maxi-series Crisis on Infinite Earths was conceived as a way to reduce DC continuity to a single universe in which all characters maintained a single history. Despite Supergirl's continued popularity and status as a central member of the "Superman Family", the editors at DC Comics and the creators of the maxi-series decided to kill Supergirl off during the Crisis. According to Marv Wolfman, writer of Crisis on Infinite Earths: The idea of killing Supergirl was first conceived by DC's vice president/executive editor Dick Giordano, who lobbied for the death to DC's publishers. He later said he has never had any regrets about this, explaining, "Supergirl was created initially to take advantage of the high Superman sales and not much thought was put into her creation. She was created essentially as a female Superman. With time, writers and artists improved upon her execution, but she never did really add anything to the Superman mythos—at least not for me." The poor initial reception of the 1984 film Supergirl was also blamed by some sources. In 1989, in the tale "Christmas with the Super-Heroes" the soul of Kara appears to Boston "Deadman" Brand, cheers him up, and then disappears from continuity until 2001 (see below). Several characters unrelated to Superman soon took on the Supergirl persona, including the Matrix (a shapeshifting genetically engineered life-form that 'defaulted' as Supergirl), Linda Danvers (the result of Matrix merging with the dying Linda Danvers and becoming an Earth-bound angel of fire), and Cir-El (Superman's apparent daughter from a possible future). A heroine resembling the Pre-Crisis Kara would later appear in Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds #5, along with an entire army of Legionnaires gathered from alternate worlds, times, and realities, to battle the Time Trapper. Two Supergirls meet Prior to the post-Crisis introduction of Kara Zor-El into mainstream continuity, the pre-Crisis Kara Zor-El made an appearance in Peter David's Supergirl: Many Happy Returns. The then-current Supergirl series, at the time starring Linda Danvers, was in danger of cancellation and Peter David thought a story arc involving Kara Zor-El would be enough to revitalize the series. In an interview with Cliff Biggers of Newsarama, David states: In the Linda Danvers' Supergirl series issues 49 and 50 (October and November 2000), the original dead Kara appears as Linda's "guardian angel". Then in issues 75 to 80, "Many Happy Returns", a young Kara appears from an earlier time long before the Crisis. The paradox becomes a moral crisis for Linda who tries to take her place as the Crisis sacrifice, living for years in a Silver Age universe where "no one swears, the villains are always easy to defeat, and everything's very, very clean", eventually marrying the Silver Age Superman and having a daughter with him, before she is forced to return to her universe by the Spectre when he reveals that her efforts to replace Kara as the sacrifice will not succeed. This run was illustrated by Ed Benes who had also illustrated Gail Simone's Birds of Prey which had a similar whimsical camaraderie between its female leads. Linda's inability to ultimately save Kara, coupled with the loss of her daughter, is so devastating that it ends her own career as Supergirl, Linda leaving a note for Superman where she explains that she feels that she has failed to live up to the standards of a true Supergirl and choosing to go somewhere she cannot be found. This story arc is usually cited as one of the best Supergirl stories ever written. The series ended with issue 80. Revival After the launch of the Superman/Batman comic book series, executive editor Dan DiDio had been looking for a way to simplify the Supergirl character from her convoluted post-Crisis history; the simplest version, of course, was Superman's cousin. Jeph Loeb and editor Eddie Berganza found an opening to reintroduce the character following the conclusion of the first story arc of Superman/Batman. Loeb states: The modern version of Kara Zor-El made her debut in Superman/Batman #8 (2004). Kara takes the mantle of Supergirl at the conclusion of the storyline. The Supergirl comic book series would later be relaunched, now starring Kara Zor-El as "The Girl of Steel". The first arc of the new series was written by Jeph Loeb and illustrated by Ian Churchill. Loeb would later describe the appeal of writing for Supergirl: As the character continued to be reinvented, steps towards regarding the iconic character were some of the most prominent changes. Artist Jamal Igle and editor Matt Idleson moved to transition the character away from red panties under her skirt to biker shorts, feeling such a change was a logical progression and "more respectable." The New 52 In September 2011, DC Comics began The New 52, in which it canceled all of its monthly superhero titles and relaunched 52 new ones, wiping out most of its past continuity in the process. One of the new titles was a new Supergirl series (Volume 6) that featured a new origin for Kara and was published between 2011 and 2015. Artist Mahmud Asrar designed a new costume for the character which strongly deviated from her classic, "cheerleader" suit, a change which generated criticism from some readers. DC Rebirth The 2016 DC Comics title relaunch Rebirth incorporates several elements (such as the costume, the name, the setting, and some characters) from the Supergirl television series. The DC Rebirth initiative undid the New 52's modern recreations, bringing DC's heroes back to their more classic iterations. Supergirl's new series (Volume 7) was titled Supergirl: Rebirth, written by Steven Orlando. The first arc was penciled by Brian Ching, who also redesigned Supergirl's costume in reference to a more classic look. In April 2018, it was announced that the title would be canceled after issue #20, only to be revived in August that year under a new creative team, with new writer Marc Andreyko and artist Kevin Maguire. The series ended with its 42nd issue. Future State: Kara Zor-El, Superwoman The Future State comics propose a possible future for Kara Zor-El, now an adult and having taken the alias of Superwoman. She leaves Earth to become a guardian of the Moon, which has become a refugee colony for aliens from the entire universe. The series was written by Marguerite Bennet and penciled by Marguerite Sauvage. Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow Under the Infinite Frontier brand, Kara's next series Woman of Tomorrow debuted in June 2021, written by Tom King and penciled by Brazilian artists Bilquis Evely and Mat Lopes. The arc introduces Supergirl to new character grounds as she begins the story as a young woman, celebrating her 21st birthday and helping a young alien in her quest for revenge. The "mentor-mentee journey on revenge" plot is, according to King, inspired by the original novel and both versions of True Grit. In this series, the creators paid homage to Linda Danvers, as Kara manifests flame wings and powers after taking a red kryptonite drug, in order to save her space bus crew from a Karpane dragon. Fictional character biography Silver Age In her debut story, Kara Zor-El is the last survivor of Argo City of the planet Krypton. Although Argo, which had survived the explosion of the planet, drifted through space as a self-sustaining environment, the soil of the colony eventually turned into Kryptonite; and though Kara's father Zor-El placed lead sheeting above the ground to protect the citizens from radiation, meteorites pierced the sheeting, and the Kryptonians died of radiation poisoning instead of replacing the metal. In Supergirl's subsequent backup feature in Action Comics drawn by artist Jim Mooney for ten years until 1968, Supergirl adopts the identity of Linda Lee, an orphan at Midvale Orphanage presided over by headmistress Miss Hart. She disguises herself by hiding her blond hair beneath a brunette wig; Supergirl interacts with humans on a person-to-person basis performing good deeds and saving the world by helping one person at a time, and she also devises clever schemes as "Superman's Secret Weapon," saving him many times and avoiding adoption before Superman can introduce her publicly. While temporarily powerless due to the scheming of Kandorian scientist Lesla-Lar, who is out to supplant her on Earth, Linda allows herself to be adopted by engineer and rocket scientist Fred Danvers and his wife, Edna. In time, she reveals her secret identity to her adoptive parents on the same day her cousin Superman finally introduces her to the world in the finale of then-DC's longest playing series ever (eight chapters) aptly called "The World's Greatest Heroine". When frequent dreams about her parents being alive turn out to be real, she builds a machine aided by her engineer father's talent, and brings them both back alive from the "Survival Zone" where they had both teleported during Argo City's final moments. Zor-El and Allura eventually end up living in Kandor, and when the city in the bottle is enlarged, they both go on to live in Rokyn/New Krypton, where they have the sad duty of receiving her mortal remains after "Crisis" for burial. Graduating from high school in 1965, Linda Lee goes to college on a scholarship and stays in Stanhope College until she graduates in 1971. During this era, she is helped by her pet cat Streaky, her Super-Horse pet Comet, and befriends Lena Thorul, who had first appeared in the Lois Lane series. Kara is also a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes, where she becomes close to Brainiac 5. In addition, Linda has boyfriends from the orphanage (Richard "Dick" Malverne) and from Atlantis (Jerro the merboy). In 1967, Supergirl meets Batgirl for the first time in World's Finest Comics. Developing a strong friendship, the two characters teamed up many times again, as in Superman Family #171, or Adventure #381. In 1969, Supergirl left Action Comics and became a featured character in Adventure Comics beginning with issue #381 (June 1969). During the 1970s, Supergirl's costume changed frequently, as did her career in her civilian life. In her secret identity as Linda Lee Danvers, Kara Zor-El took a variety of jobs including graduate student in acting, television camera operator, and student counselor, and finally became an actress on the TV soap Secret Hearts. Bronze Age After long-time Superman family editor Mort Weisinger retired in 1971, the character underwent revitalization under editor Joe Orlando and artist Mike Sekowsky. Wearing a series of new outfits, leaving her adopted foster home with the Danvers family, Linda goes on to San Francisco where she works for KSF-TV as a camera operator and develops a crush on her boss, Geoffrey Anderson. These stories introduced Supergirl's most memorable villain from this period: Lex Luthor's niece Nasthalthia, or Nasty. Nasty had made two appearances towards the end of Linda's college years, then pursued her to KSF-TV, trying to secure proof of her dual identity. Supergirl starred in her first solo eponymous monthly series beginning in 1972 until October 1974, when her monthly title merged with Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane, and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen to produce a new title: then-highest DC selling series called The Superman Family, where she eventually became the steady lead story. Linda worked as a student advisor at New Athens Experimental School, before leaving for New York to follow a career in acting with daytime soap Secret Hearts. In 1982 Supergirl received a second monthly solo series titled The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl, relocating the character to Chicago as Linda became a mature student of Psychology. Industry legend, and former DC Publisher, Carmine Infantino provided the penciled art (Bob Oksner inked). With issue 13 the title was revamped, with a new costume design (sporting a red headband) and the title shortened to just Supergirl. The series ran until sudden cancellation in 1984, only two months before the character's debut in a big-budget Hollywood film starring Helen Slater. In the Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985), the greatest heroes from Earth-One, Earth-Two, Earth-Four, Earth-S, and Earth-X join forces in order to defeat the Anti-Monitor. When Superman comes face to face with the Anti-Monitor and is knocked unconscious, Supergirl rushes to save him before he is killed. She is able to fight him off long enough for Dr. Light to carry her cousin to a safe distance, but is killed by the Anti-Monitor. A public memorial service for Supergirl takes place in Chicago, where Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) delivers the eulogy. In her remarks, she states "Kara is a hero. She will not be forgotten." Superman then gives his late cousin burial by taking her corpse to Rokyn/New Krypton to Zor-El and Allura. A Superman issue the next month reveals that Kara had experienced a premonition about her own passing. However, when the universe is rebooted, the timeline is altered. Kara Zor-El and all memory of her is erased from existence. Echoes After these events, the soul of Kara Zor-El made another appearance in continuity three years later in a story titled "Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot" in Christmas with the Super-Heroes #2 (1989). Within the story, Boston "Deadman" Brand tries to feel the warmth of Christmas by possessing revelers' bodies. Feeling guilty upon the realization that he has been stealing others' Christmases, he flies off feeling sorry for himself for being denied a reward after a year of helping people. A warmly dressed blonde woman approaches Brand, startling him. Somehow seeing the normally invisible Brand, she converses with him, reminding him, She reminds Brand that even though he is dead, he is still human, and he should rejoice because it means his spirit is still alive. As the woman leaves, Brand asks her who she is, to which she replies, "My name is Kara. Though I doubt that will mean anything to you." The story, written by Alan Brennert and penciled by Dick Giordano, is dedicated to Otto Binder and Jim Mooney, adding: "We still remember." Finally, the soul of Kara Zor-El appeared twice during Peter David's run, specifically in issues #48 and #49 when she appears before a defeated and imprisoned then-Supergirl, Linda Danvers from Earth, and comforts her. Linda acknowledges she has been helped three times by her phantom-friend, and when she asks her name she is told by the smiling figure: "I have gone by many names, but the one I am most fond of is: Kara!" Modern Age In 2004, Jeph Loeb reintroduced Kara Zor-El into post-Zero Hour (Birthright timeline) continuity during a storyline in the series Superman/Batman. She is the biological cousin of Superman, and although chronologically older than him, the ship in which she traveled to Earth was caught in a large green Kryptonite meteorite which held her in a state of suspended animation for much of the journey, making her have the appearance of a 16-year-old girl. Still, Supergirl sometimes saw Superman as a child, due to last carrying him as a baby. DC Comics relaunched the Supergirl, the first story arc of which was written by Loeb. showcases Supergirl on a journey of self-discovery. Along her journey, she encounters Power Girl (Kara Zor-El's counterpart from another universe), the Teen Titans, the Outsiders, the Justice League of America, and arch-villain Lex Luthor. During the company-wide crossover series Infinite Crisis (2005), a sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths, Supergirl is transported to the 31st century, where she is revered as a member of the Superman family and joins the Legion of Super-Heroes. DC Comics renamed the monthly series Legion of Super-Heroes to Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes. Beginning with issue #16. In the limited series 52, which chronicles the events that took place during the missing year after the end of Infinite Crisis, Donna Troy recalls the original Kara Zor-El and her sacrifice to save the universe. Supergirl returns to the 21st century during the course of 52. After briefly filling in for a temporarily depowered Superman as guardian of Metropolis, she assumes the identity of Flamebird to fight crime in the bottle city of Kandor with Power Girl as Nightwing in Greg Rucka's arc Supergirl: Kandor. In 2007, Supergirl appeared in the miniseries Amazons Attack! That same year, she joined the Teen Titans for five issues. Conversations with other heroes who maintain secret identities lead Kara to the conclusion that she needs to make a deeper connection with human beings. She accepts Lana Lang's proposal to present her to the Daily Planet staff as "Linda Lang", Lana's teenaged niece. In the 2008–2009 "New Krypton" story arc, in which Superman discovers and frees the real Kandor and a large number of its citizens, Supergirl is reunited with her father, Zor-El and mother, Alura, though Zor-El is killed by the villain Reactron. When a planet is formed that the Kryptonians call New Krypton, Kara is torn between her life on Earth, and her obligation to her mother, eventually joining the New Krypton Science Guild. Supergirl subsequently appears in the 2009 miniseries Justice League: Cry for Justice, and the 2009–2010 storyline "Blackest Night". The New Krypton storyline would later be resolved in the "World of New Krypton", "Superman: Last Stand of New Krypton", "War of the Supermen" storylines, resulting in the destruction of New Krypton and seeing Supergirl mourn her people. Supergirl subsequently appears in the 2010 "Brightest Day" storyline, the follow up to "Blackest Night"., where she joins the Justice League along with Jesse Quick & Jade. The New 52 In this continuity, Kara's ship lands in Smallville, Kansas but hurtles through the Earth and emerges in Siberia. Kara has no memory of the destruction of Krypton, and believes it is only three days since her spacecraft was launched. She learns the truth about Krypton's destruction from Superman, and later journeys through a wormhole to Argo City, which she finds in orbit around a blue sun. She finds the city in ruins, with no explanation of how it met that fate, and is attacked by a female Worldkiller named Reign before the city plummets into the sun. When Reign and her fellow Worldkiller plan to enslave the Earth, Supergirl returns there to defeat them, and thus adopts Earth as her new home. After several battles with supervillains, including the Worldkillers, superweapons of Kryptonian design, she accepts Krypton's destruction, but continues to grapple with her grief. Her desire to restore Krypton results in her being manipulated into nearly destroying the Earth by another Kryptonian whom she falls in love with. Upon realizing his manipulation, she kills him by driving Kryptonite through his heart, and succumbs to Kryptonite poisoning. Following her poisoning, Supergirl departs the Earth to die alone. While adrift in interstellar space, she encounters a planet under attack by monsters, and quickly intervenes to save them, unaware that the entire planet is a trap by Brainiac. She is captured and restrained by Cyborg Superman, but after a struggle, manages to escape both Brainiac and Cyborg Superman. Returning to Earth, she is sent into the past by the Oracle alongside Superman and Superboy, where she ensures that a resurrected H'el cannot save Krypton, and sacrifices the planet and her family in order to save the universe. Back on Earth, she encounters the assassin Lobo. Initially eager for a peaceful resolution, seeing a kind of kinship with him in their both being lone survivors of their respective worlds (although not truly aware of Lobo's circumstances), Kara's encounter with the Czarnian would reveal deep mental wounds, resulting in the unleashing of her rage and transformation into a Red Lantern. Driven insane by rage, Kara wanders space, attacking everyone in her way, until captured by several Green Lanterns and brought to Hal Jordan. Immediately recognizing a Kryptonian and unable to remove the power ring without killing her, he brings her to Guy Gardner, the leader of one of the two Red Lantern factions, who manages to restore her sanity. After some time under Guy Gardner's tutelage and protecting the galaxy as a Red Lantern, after being discharged from the Red Lantern Corps (because Guy did not want for her to die needlessly against Atrocitus' splinter group), on her way back to Earth, Kara encounters the leader of the Worldkillers, who are revealed to be parasitic suits of armor. He attempts to assimilate Kara as his host, but she voluntarily subjects herself to Kryptonite poisoning in order to stop him, and eventually flies into the Sun and removes her power ring, killing her and removing him from her body. However, Kara is revealed to be immortal while in the Sun's core, and is restored to life without the power ring or any Kryptonite poisoning, immediately destroying the Worldkiller. She later helps Guy against Atrocitus and his Red Lantern splinter group. Convergence and return of the Pre-Crisis version During the Convergence story arc, the original Kara Zor-El who had sacrificed her life during Crisis on Infinite Earths makes an appearance on the amalgamated planet of Telos. At the end of the saga she volunteers herself to once again fight the Anti-Monitor but this time, with the help of her timeline's Barry Allen, the Pre-Flashpoint Superman (in tow with his pregnant wife, Lois Lane), and a repentant Parallax (Zero Hour Hal Jordan), vows to defeat him for the sake of the multiverse's continued existence. Without it being seen, those left on Telos discover the group was successful and all previous timelines (with the mysterious exception of the pre-Flashpoint/pre-New 52 DC universe) from DC history had been re-established, though the fate of the original Kara Zor-El and her fellows went unmentioned. A few more details of the battle against the Anti-Monitor are later revealed during the New 52 comic mini-series (leading into DC's Rebirth event). After the defeat of Anti-Monitor, Pre-New 52 Clark and Lois decide to start life anew in the closest universe they can find (mysteriously yet unable to see their old universe even though the rest of the multiverse had been restored) while Pre-Crisis Kara Zor-El, along with her contemporary Barry Allen and Zero Hour Parallax/Hal Jordan, decide to find their place in the universe and go off to do so. Her fate as of that story arc is yet to be revealed. DC Rebirth After the events that led to the death of the New 52 version of Superman, 16-year-old Kara lives in National City with her adoptive parents, D.E.O. agents Jeremiah and Eliza Danvers, where she attends high school and works with the agency as led by Cameron Chase. As part of her civilian identity, Kara receives special glasses that darken her blond hair when posing as Kara Danvers. Kara also goes on an internship at Cat Grant's CATCO alongside Ben Rubel, whom she befriends. In her opening arc "The Reign of the Cyborg Supermen", Kara discovers that the cyborg Zor-El, whom she had battled in her New 52 title, is still active and has rebuilt other Kryptonians (her mother Alura included), planning to take over Earth. Supergirl defeats them but vows to help her father regardless of his actions. After National City discovers Supergirl has kept Zor-El's "living" status a secret, they become untrustful of her. Director Bones takes advantage of the heroine's impopularity and, after taking control of the D.E.O., sends villains in an attempt to bring Kara down. She defeats all of them and regains trust from National City with Ben's help. The Supergirl Who Laughs Kara is later infected by The Batman Who Laughs toxin, causing her to turn evil and joining other infected as part of Laughs Secret Six before later being cured. She is fired from CatCo by Cat Grant and starts working at S.T.A.R. Labs. Woman of Tomorrow Journeying throughout the universe with Krypto, Kara celebrates her 21st birthday alone on a distant planet. Drunk in a bar, she is approached by a little girl named Ruthye and is asked to kill Krem (her father's murderer) in vengeance. Supergirl refuses but, when she is about to leave the planet, Krem attacks and severely wounds both her and Krypto, fleeing in Kara's ship. Kara begins her journey alongside Ruthye and, powerless, saves her space bus crew from a Karpane dragon by taking a red kryptonite drug which causes her to manifest flame wings. Powers and abilities Like all Kryptonians under a yellow sun, the current version of Kara Zor-El possesses virtually unlimited strength, stamina, and durability. She is able to fly and with super speed that she can also use on foot, similar to Superman and The Flash. Also like Superman, Supergirl possesses super senses, super-breath, and freeze breathe, as well as multiple forms of supervision (including X-Ray, Infrared, Telescopic, and Microscopic). Kara also has a bio-electric aura that enhances her near invulnerability and also protects her skin and her costume from dirt and tear; as such, Kara is perpetually clean. The Sun also provides Kara with a longer lifespan than that of a human being, to the point that she is effectively a biological immortal. Kara doesn't require food, water, or sleep to survive. She is also immune to most diseases, mental and physical, and would require a very strong strain to have a chance at affecting her. In the rare instances that Kara is harmed by someone matching her strength or by the use of one of her weaknesses, she can heal almost instantaneously. Her power surpasses most other beings, though she can be overpowered by those who rival her strength such as Black Adam, Darkseid, Despero, Doomsday, Bizarro, Wonder Woman, and Superman. In reality, Kara is actually older than her cousin, Clark, and spent time on Krypton before its destruction. As such (unlike Superman), she possesses memories of Kryptonian culture as well as her cousin's parents. Continued exposure to a yellow Sun will slowly increase abilities. Many characters in the DC Universe have noted that Supergirl appears, at times, to be even more powerful than Superman himself. In answer to this, Superman states that this is because he has spent his entire life subconsciously suppressing his full powers in order to avoid hurting others, having been absorbing solar radiation since his infancy. Kara, not having such practice or experience, simply uses the full magnitude of her powers. Abilities Unlike her cousin, Kara was taught to fight in Krypton as part of her tests, and at the Crucible Academy, being adept at various Kryptonian fighting styles like Klurkor and Torquasm Rao. Supergirl also learned the art of Bagua under I-Ching's instructions. She practiced how to manipulate her Chi or Qi in order to gain better control of her powers due to them becoming overwhelmed after her conflict with the Fatal Five. Superman recommended guardianship with I-Ching to Supergirl first. In addition to training in Krypton, Kara was trained by Batman in advanced martial arts and trained with the Amazons in Themyscira in unarmed and armed combat, Amazonas martial arts, fencing, Shield handling, and other Amazon weapons. She trained with Wonder Woman and Artemis extensively. Other versions There are numerous alternate versions of Supergirl. The most notable is Power Girl (real name Kara Zor-L, also known as Karen Starr) who first appeared in All Star Comics #58 (January/February 1976). Power Girl is the Earth-Two counterpart of Supergirl and the first cousin of Kal-L, Superman of the pre-Crisis Earth-Two. The infant Power Girl's parents enabled her to escape the destruction of Krypton. Although she left the planet at the same time that Superman did, her ship took much longer to reach Earth-Two. She has superhuman strength and the ability to fly and is the first chairwoman of the Justice Society of America. She sports a bob of blond hair; wears a distinctive white, red, and blue costume; and has an aggressive fighting style. Throughout her early appearances in All Star Comics, she is often at odds with Wildcat because his penchant for talking to her as if she were an ordinary human female rather than a superpowered Kryptonian annoys her. She also fought alongside the Sovereign Seven team, replacing Rampart after his death though that series is not considered to be part of canon in the DC universe. The 1985 limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths eliminated Earth-Two, causing her origin to change; she became the granddaughter of the Atlantean sorcerer Arion. However, story events culminating in the 2005–2006 Infinite Crisis limited series restored her status as a refugee from the Krypton of the destroyed pre-Crisis Earth-Two universe. Like the original Kara's Streaky, Power Girl has a cat, featured in a story by Amanda Conner in Wonder Woman #600. Reception This version of Supergirl is ranked as the 153rd-greatest comic book character of all time by Wizard magazine. IGN also ranked this version of Supergirl as the 94th-greatest comic book superhero, stating "for a character born of the Silver Age that saw everything from a Super Baby to a Super Monkey, Kara Zor-El grew into something much more than simply another marketing ploy to slap an 'S' on." In 2013 IGN ranked Supergirl as the 17th-greatest DC comic superhero, stating "she was an early example of a female sidekick developing a large fanbase in her own right", and "Supergirl has been one of DC's most powerful heroes, and a standard to hold other female heroes against." Appearances Pre-Crisis 1959 to 1969: Action Comics #252 to #376. 1969 to 1972: Adventure Comics #381 to #424. 1972 to 1974: Supergirl #1 to #10. 1974 to 1982: Her comic merges with Jimmy Olsen's and Lois Lane's to become Superman Family #164 to #222. 1982 to 1984: The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl #1 to #13, Supergirl (vol. 2) #14 to #23. 2015: Convergence Kara Zor-El appeared in over 750 stories published by DC from 1959 to 1985. Post-Crisis 2004 to 2005: Superman/Batman #8 to #13 and #19 2005 to 2011: Supergirl (vol. 5) #0 to #67 2006 to 2008: Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5) #16 to #37 2007: Action Comics #850 2008: Final Crisis 2011 to 2015: New 52: Supergirl (vol. 6) #1 to #40 2016 to current: Rebirth: Supergirl (vol. 7) #1 to current Kara Zor-El also appears as a supporting character in several issues of other DC Comics, including Superman, Action Comics, Teen Titans, Amazons Attack, World War III, and Wonder Girl. She has also appeared in many issues of Superman, Action Comics, and Superman New Krypton starting with the World Without Superman event in 2009, and continuing with the World Against Superman event going into 2010. Collected editions Listed in chronological order. All ages titles are not in continuity with the original or modern Kara. In other media Television Live-action Smallville Prior to the seventh season (2007–2008) of the WB/CW show Smallville where she is introduced into the cast and is portrayed by Laura Vandervoort, a woman claiming to be Kara (portrayed by Adrianne Palicki) is briefly introduced in the season 3 finale. It is later revealed her real name is Lindsey Harrison, and had been given false memories and powers by the artificial intelligence of Clark Kent's (Tom Welling) father Jor-El as part of a series of tests. Vandervoort portrays the real Kara, Clark's cousin whose spaceship had been trapped in stasis until the events of the season 6 finale. Much of season 7 is concerned with Kara's attempts to adjust to life on Earth, especially after learning of Krypton's destruction. Her storyline sees her simultaneously become the object of Lex Luthor's (Michael Rosenbaum) obsessions and Jimmy Olsen's (Aaron Ashmore) affections, suffer a bout of amnesia, discover her father's (Christopher Heyerdahl) sinister motives and become a target of evil android Brainiac (James Marsters). The season finale sees Kara become trapped in the Phantom Zone. Starting with season 8, Vandervoort ceases to feature as a series regular, but reprises the role three more times. In her first guest appearance, "Bloodline," Kara is freed from the Phantom Zone and later departs Clark's hometown of Smallville to search for Kandor, her birthplace, as it is rumored to have survived their home planet's destruction. She appears again in the season 10 episode "Supergirl", in which she formally adopts her superhero moniker. Her off-screen adventures are alluded to thereafter. Vandervoort makes a final appearance in the show's penultimate episode, "Prophecy", in which she helps Green Arrow (Justin Hartley) locate the "Bow of Orion" to use against Darkseid. She is then called to the Fortress of Solitude, where she learns from Jor-El that her job on Earth is done. Using a Legion of Super-Heroes flight ring, she travels to the future to seek her own destiny. The Season Eleven comic book continuation of the show later depicts Kara's continued story in the 31st century, subsequent return to the present and joining the Justice League. Arrowverse In September 2014, a 22-episode television series centered around Supergirl was in development at Warner Bros. Television, set to premiere on CBS with a January 2015 air date. Melissa Benoist was cast as the titular character. In May 2016, the series moved to The CW and was later integrated into the Arrowverse, a shared universe consisting of shows including Arrow, The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. In the series, Kara Zor-El was sent to Earth to protect her cousin Kal-El, following her homeworld Krypton's destruction. However, she is knocked into the Phantom Zone, where she is stranded for 24 years. She eventually crash lands on Earth and is found by her already grown-up cousin Kal, now known to the world as the iconic superhero "Superman". Superman brings Kara into the custody of Jeremiah Danvers, director of the Department of Extranormal Operations (D.E.O.), and his daughter Alex. Growing up, Kara struggles to maintain her Kryptonian abilities as well as balancing her relationship with her adoptive sister. Eventually, the two bond when Kara's powers are exposed. However, Jeremiah decides it's best to isolate her abilities. As an adult, Kara is forced to use her powers again when her sister's plane almost crashes. She is later dubbed "Supergirl" by the media and dons a costume like her cousin. Kara decides to use her abilities to fight alien invaders such as Kara's aunt Astra and her husband Non, Mon-El's rogue parents, the Worldkiller Reign, anti-alien activist Ben Lockwood, and later the shadowy organization Leviathan, with the help of her sister Alex, now an agent of the D.E.O., her best friend and tech-expert Winn Schott, last of the Green Martians J'onn J'onzz / Martian Manhunter, and Kal's best friend Jimmy Olsen. She is later joined by Lex Luthor's sister Lena, Prince of Daxam Mon-El, former Legion of Superheroes member Querl "Brainy" Dox / Brainiac 5, Nia Nal / Dreamer, James' younger sister Kelly, and reporter Willam Dey face against these rival forces. After joining the Arrowverse, which contain annual crossover, Kara assists Barry Allen, Oliver Queen and the Legends of Tomorrow against threats on their designated earth "Earth-1" while Kara’s is designated as "Earth-38. Later, Kara is selected by The Monitor as the Paragon of Hope to participate in the coming crisis and fight against the Anti-Monitor, whose goal is to destroy the multiverse. After doing so, the Paragons are sent to the Vanishing Point where Oliver, now a Spectre, helps them escape. The Paragons appear at the dawn of time in the anti-matter universe where they have their final confrontation with the Anti-Monitor. Eventually, Oliver sacrifices himself to kill the Anti-Monitor, and as a result, a new multiverse is born with Earth-38 and Earth-1 merged into "Earth-Prime". Following the crisis, Kara is forced to deal the after-effects of Crisis which include working with Lex, now owning the D.E.O. while Leviathan continue their covert operations under Gamemnae. The sixth season sees Kara and her allies expose Lex's crimes, but are then forced to deal with Nyxlygsptlnz, a fifth-dimensional imp who tricked the heroes into releasing her from the Phantom Zone. Eventually Nyxlygsptlnz joins forces with Lex Luthor and the two kill William, but Kara's assembled allies are able to defeat the two, culminating in Lex and Nyxlygsptlnz being trapped in the Phantom Zone when one of their own plans backfires. The series concludes with Kara revealing her dual identity so that she can live a full life as one person. Animation DC Nation Shorts Supergirl appears with Batgirl and Wonder Girl in Super Best Friends Forever, voiced by Nicole Sullivan. DC Super Hero Girls Supergirl appears as a central protagonist in the web series DC Super Hero Girls voiced by Anais Fairweather, and is a student at Super Hero High, is very kind and caring and extremely powerful but she's also very clumsy. She also appears as a central protagonist in the 2019 TV series, with Nicole Sullivan reprising her role from the Super Best Friends Forever shorts. In this version, she is also a rebel and is known as the "cool kid" in school. She may be tough but she can easily express her emotions and is very open-minded as well. She can be a cool friend and a helpful one, but she can also be jealous sometimes and she dislikes her cousin's prominence. Justice League Action Supergirl appears in Justice League Action, voiced by Joanne Spracklen. She has the appearance of a wide-eyed human teenager with blonde hair and wears her traditional costume except that it has thigh-high boots and a pleated skirt. As a person, she is youthful, responsible, and shows much affection for her cousin Superman. In "Party Animal", she appears as a cameo at this Christmas party with the Justice League. In "Keeping up with the Kryptonians", Supergirl becomes a star of the popular reality show "That's So Kara", and Superman a Kasnian who rules from one place to another on Earth, all being a reality caused by Mister Mxyzptlk. In "Unleashed", Supergirl accompanies Justice League in stopping Red Lantern Corps, unaware that it was a distraction made by Dex-Starr to invade Earth, until it was ultimately resolved by Krypto, Streaky, and Plastic Man. In a short "The Goddess Must Be Crazy", Supergirl trains with Wonder Woman in Paradise Island, until she is possessed by Felix Faust, to destroy the island. Film Superman film series A live action depiction of Supergirl first appears in the eponymous 1984 film starring Helen Slater as Supergirl. The film is a spin-off from the Superman film series starring Christopher Reeve, to which it is connected by Marc McClure's character of Jimmy Olsen. DC Extended Universe Kara Zor-El / Linda Danvers / Supergirl exists within the DC Extended Universe, as she was referenced in Man of Steel when Kal-El / Clark Kent / Superman discovers an empty pod within the Kryptonian scout spaceship. Though Zack Snyder confirmed in August 2018 that even though the character does exist, that pod was not intended for her. In August 2018, a film centered around the character was announced to be in development, with Oren Uziel hired as screenwriter for the project. The studio intends to hire a female director, with Reed Morano—who has expressed interest in the project—being its top choice. Filming was expected to start production in early 2020. Sasha Calle will play Supergirl for the DC Extended Universe in The Flash. Animation Summer Glau voices the post-Crisis version of Kara Zor-El in Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, which is based on the Superman/Batman storyline "The Supergirl from Krypton". Despite this, it was confirmed by director Lauren Montgomery that Supergirl's name was removed from the title due to the much slower sales of the previous Wonder Woman animated movie, and the character was not permitted to appear on the cover in her trademark outfit. Molly Quinn voices Supergirl in Superman: Unbound. Supergirl appears in Lego DC Comics Super Heroes: Justice League: Cosmic Clash, voiced by Jessica DiCicco. Video games Supergirl appears in DC Universe Online, voiced by Adriene Mishler. In the villain campaign, the players help Doctor Psycho capture Supergirl using Kryptonite. In the hero campaign, the players fight Doctor Psycho to save Supergirl. Under the thrall of Brainiac, she must be defeated in the Fortress of Solitude: Power Core raid. Supergirl is unlockable in Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, voiced by Bridget Hoffman. Supergirl makes a cameo appearance in the IOS version of Injustice: Gods Among Us as a support card. Supergirl appears as a playable character in Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham, voiced by Kari Wahlgren. She is playable in her default variant which is designed after her appearance in The New 52 and in her Classic attire. Her Classic variant is unlocked in a VR Mission while her New 52 variant is unlocked in a Hub Quest in Nok where she requests players to defeat a number of enemies she accidentally releases from their cells. Supergirl appears as a playable character in Infinite Crisis, voiced by Camilla Luddington. Supergirl appears as a playable character and the central protagonist in Injustice 2 by NetherRealm Studios, the sequel to Injustice: Gods Among Us, voiced by Laura Bailey. Here her origin is much like in the comics where she is sent along with her cousin Kal-El to Earth by her mother after Krypton is destroyed but on separate pods where hers veers off-course after sustaining significant damage, stranding her in space for many years until she lands on Earth, unaged. When the main storyline starts, she is residing on Black Adam's kingdom of Khandaq, apparently under his and Wonder Woman's protection. When Brainiac who was responsible for Krypton's destruction attacks, she, Wonder Woman, and Black Adam attempt to free Superman and the remaining members of the Regime, while being interrupted in their efforts by new Insurgency recruits Blue Beetle and Firestorm until Batman himself arrives and releases Superman, leading to a temporary alliance between the Regime and Insurgency against the alien warlord. Over the course of the story, she learns the truth about her cousin's tyranny and at the end of the game sides with Batman, Green Lantern and Flash in letting Brainiac live in order to restore the lost cities but is defeated. In Batman's ending, she laments her cousin's tyranny and sees him leave to be imprisoned in the Phantom Zone and is offered membership by Batman in his Justice League. In Superman's ending, she is imprisoned aboard Brainiac's ship and to her shock discovers her cousin has bonded with it and when she refuses his offer to join him in leading his new legion of imprisoned species. He attempts to coerce her by revealing a brainwashed Batman, who had also been captured, further shocking her. Supergirl appears as a limited-distribution minifigure for the toys-to-life video game Lego Dimensions, with Kari Wahlgren reprising her role. She has the ability to transform between her classic and Red Lantern forms. Supergirl appears as a playable character in DC Unchained. Supergirl appears in the PSP version of Justice League Heroes. Supergirl appears as a playable character in the DC TV Super-Heroes DLC pack in Lego DC Super-Villains. See also Alternative versions of Supergirl Laurel Gand References External links DC Comics Pre-Crisis Supergirl Chronology Supergirl Characters created by Otto Binder Comics characters introduced in 1958 Comics characters introduced in 1959 DC Comics aliens DC Comics American superheroes DC Comics characters who can move at superhuman speeds DC Comics characters with accelerated healing DC Comics characters with superhuman strength DC Comics deities DC Comics female superheroes DC Comics film characters DC Comics television characters DC Comics extraterrestrial superheroes Female characters in television Fictional characters with superhuman senses Fictional actors Fictional extraterrestrial–human hybrids Fictional orphans Fictional photographers Fictional refugees Fictional reporters Fictional school counselors Fictional American secret agents Fictional waiting staff Kryptonians Superheroes who are adopted Vigilante characters in comics

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Who was Gavel's running mate?

Who was Mike Gravel's running mate in 1972?

Mike Gravel

Gravel "decided to become a pioneer in a faraway place," and moved to pre-statehood Alaska in August 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place where someone without social or political connections could be a viable candidate for public office. Alaska's voting age of 19, less than most other states' 21, played a role in his decision, as did its newness and cooler climate. Broke when he arrived, he immediately found work in real estate sales until winter arrived. Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-Fairbanks run. Subsequently, he opened a small real estate brokerage in Anchorage (the Territory of Alaska not requiring a license) and saved enough so as not to have to work the railroad again. Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and continued a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life. Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin, who had been Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958, on April 29, 1959. They had two children, Martin Anthony Gravel and Lynne Denise Gravel, born c. 1960 and 1962 respectively. Meanwhile, he went to Washington, D.C. in 1957 to campaign for Alaskan statehood via the "Tennessee Plan": dressed as Paul Revere, he rode with a petition to the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Seeing Alaska as a wide-open place with no political establishment or entrenched interests, and using the slogan "Gravel, the Roadbed to Prosperity", he ran for the territorial legislature in 1958 but lost. He went on a national speaking tour concerning tax reform in 1959, sponsored by the Jaycees. He ran without avail for the City Council in Anchorage in 1960. During this time, he had become a successful real estate agent; after the 1960 election, he became a property developer in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Anchorage. A partner ran into financial difficulty, however, and the project went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and Gravel was forced out in 1962. In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one megaton calibration exercise for the second, and larger five megaton, Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests in Congress. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences, and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety to be created; he then made a personal appeal to President Nixon to stop the test. After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the larger Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971, Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage, in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign). Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for the commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971, Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975, he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974, Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power. Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.) in July 1971, Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with China, including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. Gravel reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971. Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in running for the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates. Towards this end he began soliciting delegates for their support in advance of the convention. He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose. At the convention's final day on July 14, 1972, presidential nominee McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice. Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations. Thus, there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska. He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination. In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting that included several other candidates as well. For his efforts, Gravel attracted some attention: famed writer Norman Mailer would say he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films", while Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances ..." Yet, the whole process had been doubly disastrous for the Democrats. The time consumed with the nominating and seconding and other speeches of all the vice-presidential candidates had lost the attention of the delegates on the floor and pushed McGovern's speech until 3:30 a.m. The haste with which Eagleton had been selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver. CANNOTANSWER

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Maurice Robert Gravel ( ; May 13, 1930 – June 26, 2021) was an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981 as a member of the Democratic Party, and who, in later life, twice ran for the presidential nomination of that party. Born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, by French-Canadian immigrant parents, Gravel moved to Alaska in the late 1950s, becoming a real estate developer and entering politics. He served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963 to 1967, and also became Speaker of the Alaska House. Gravel was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1968. As a senator, Gravel became nationally known for his forceful, but unsuccessful, attempts to end the draft during the War in Vietnam, and for putting the Pentagon Papers into the public record in 1971. He conducted a campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1972 for Vice President of the United States, and then played a crucial role in obtaining Congressional approval for the Trans-Alaska pipeline in 1973. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1974, but was defeated in his bid for a third term in the primary election in 1980. An advocate of direct democracy and the National Initiative, Gravel staged a run for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President of the United States. His campaign failed to gain support, and in March 2008, he left the Democratic Party and joined the Libertarian Party to compete unsuccessfully for its presidential nomination and the inclusion of the National Initiative into the Libertarian Platform. He ran for president as a Democrat again in the 2020 election, in a campaign that ended four months after it began. Two years before his death, Gravel and his campaign staff founded the progressive think tank The Gravel Institute. Early life, military service, education Gravel was born on May 13, 1930, in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of five children of French-Canadian immigrant parents, Alphonse and Marie (née Bourassa) Gravel. His parents were part of the Quebec diaspora, and he was raised in a working-class neighborhood during the Great Depression, speaking only French until he was seven years old. Calling him "Mike" from an early age, his father valued work above all else, while his mother stressed the importance of education. Gravel was educated in parochial schools as a Roman Catholic. There he struggled, due to what he later said was undiagnosed dyslexia, and was left back in third grade. He completed elementary school in 1945 and his class voted him "most charming personality". A summer job as a soda jerk led to Gravel handing out campaign fliers for local candidates on his boss's behalf; Gravel was immediately impressed with "the awesomeness of political office". Gravel then boarded at Assumption Preparatory School in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his performance was initially mediocre. By Gravel's telling, in the summer of 1948 he intended to volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces during the 1947–1949 Palestine war, but Alexandra Tolstaya told him to return to school. There an English teacher, the Assumptionist Edgar Bourque, gave him personal attention, improving Gravel's language skills and instructing him in public speaking. Gravel's grades improved measurably in his final year and he graduated in 1949. His sister, Marguerite, became a Holy Cross nun, but Gravel himself struggled with the Catholic faith. He studied for one year at Assumption College, a Catholic school in Worcester, then transferred for his sophomore year to American International College in Springfield. Journalist I. F. Stone and philosopher Bertrand Russell strongly influenced Gravel in their willingness to challenge assumptions and oppose social convention and political authority. Around May 1951, Gravel saw that he was about to be drafted and instead enlisted in the U.S. Army for a three-year term so that he could get into the Counterintelligence Corps. After basic training and counterintelligence school at Fort Holabird in Maryland and in South Carolina, he went to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. While he expected to be sent off to the Korean War when he graduated as a second lieutenant in early 1952, he was instead assigned to Stuttgart, West Germany, as a Special Adjutant in the Army's Communications Intelligence Service. In Germany, Gravel conducted surveillance operations on civilians and paid off spies. After about a year, he transferred to Orléans, France, where his French language abilities (if not his French-Canadian accent) allowed him to infiltrate French communist rallies. He worked as a Special Agent in the Counterintelligence Corps until 1954, eventually becoming a first lieutenant. Following his discharge, Gravel entered the Columbia University School of General Studies in New York City, where he studied economics and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1956. He moved to New York "flat broke" and supported himself by working as a bar boy in a hotel, driving a taxicab, and working in the investment bond department at Bankers Trust. During this time he left the Roman Catholic faith. Move to Alaska Gravel "decided to become a pioneer in a faraway place," and moved to pre-statehood Alaska in August 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place where someone without social or political connections could be a viable candidate for public office. Alaska's voting age of 19, less than most other states' 21, played a role in his decision, as did its newness and cooler climate. Broke when he arrived, he immediately found work in real estate sales until winter arrived. Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-to-Fairbanks run. Subsequently, he opened a small real estate brokerage in Anchorage (the Territory of Alaska not requiring a license) and saved enough so as not to have to work the railroad again. The firm was named the M. R. Gravel Real Estate Company. Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and continued a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life. Seeing Alaska as a wide-open place with no political establishment or entrenched interests, Gravel quickly became part of the civic scene there. By October 1957 he was a Division Chairman for Anchorage for the Democratic Central Committee in the territory, and by June 1958 he was president of the Alaska Young Democrats organization. He also became active in the United States Junior Chamber (Jaycees), and by early 1958 his duties included handing out awards for farmer of the year. By early 1958, Gravel was running as Democratic Party primary candidate for a Third Division seat in House of Representative of the territorial legislature. (This was one of the four judicial divisions into which Alaska was sectioned at the time.) Using the slogan "Gravel, the Roadbed to Prosperity", he ran but lost. At the same time, he was also an advocate for Alaskan statehood. Gravel went on a 44-state national speaking tour concerning tax reform in 1959, sponsored by the Jaycees, often dressing for events as Paul Revere. Gravel was selected from some two thousand applications for this position. The tour received a good amount of local newspaper coverage at its various stops, with Gravel's first name sometimes given as Mike and other times as Maurice. The tour's general message was an urging of "lower taxes, more efficiency in government and a system of taxation moderate at all levels of income". At several stops Gravel stated that the "tide of socialism" had to be stopped. He elaborated at another stop, "It is part of our Jaycee creed that economic justice can best be won by free men through free enterprise. We really want to see that free enterprise become our inheritance." The tour was scheduled to conclude in Washington D.C., on Tax Day, April 15, with petition signatures accumulated for reform to be presented to U.S. lawmakers: dressed as Revere, Gravel rode with the petition to the steps of the U.S. Capitol. The tour over, Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin at the First Methodist Church of Anchorage on April 29, 1959. She was a native of Montana who had attended Billings Business College before moving to Alaska two years prior and becoming a secretary in the office of the Anchorage city manager. She had also been named Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958. They had two children, Martin Anthony Gravel and Lynne Denise Gravel, born c. 1960 and 1962 respectively. Gravel ran without avail for the City Council in Anchorage in 1960. During this time, he had become a successful real estate agent; after the 1960 election, he became a property developer in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Anchorage. After a partner ran into financial difficulty, however, the project went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Gravel was forced out in 1962. State legislator With the support of Alaska wholesale grocer Barney Gottstein and supermarket builder Larry Carr, Gravel ran for the Alaska House of Representatives representing Anchorage in 1962, initially assigned the 10th and then 8th districts. Alaska had very crowded primaries that year: Gravel was one of 33 Democrats, along with 21 Republicans, who were running for the chance to compete for the 14 House seats allocated to the 8th district. Gravel made it through the primary, and in November eight Republicans and six Democrats were elected to the House from the district, with Gravel finishing eighth overall and third among with Democrats, with 8,174 votes. Gottstein became Gravel's main financial backer during most of his subsequent campaigns. Gravel served in the Alaska House of Representatives from January 28, 1963 to January 22, 1967, winning reelection in 1964. In his first term, he served as a minority member on two House committees: Commerce, and Labor and Management. He co-authored and sponsored the act that created the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights. Gravel was the chief architect of the law that created a regional high school system for rural Alaska; this allowed Alaska Natives to attend schools near where they lived instead of having to go to schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the lower 48 states. During the half-years that the legislature was not in session, Gravel resumed his real estate work. With Gottstein and Carr's backing, he became quite successful as a property developer on the Kenai Peninsula. During 1965 and 1966, he served as the Speaker of the House, surprising observers by winning that post. Gravel convinced former Speaker Warren A. Taylor to not try for the position against him by promising Taylor chairmanship of the Rules Committee, then reneged on the promise. Gravel denied later press charges that he had promised but not delivered on other committee chairmanships. As Speaker he antagonized fellow lawmakers by imposing his will on the legislature's committees and feuded with Alaska State Senate president Robert J. McNealy. Gravel did not run for reelection in 1966, instead choosing to run for Alaska's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, losing the primary to four-term incumbent Democrat Ralph Rivers by 1,300 votes and splitting the Democratic Party in the process. Rivers lost the general election that year to Republican state Senator Howard Pollock. Following this defeat, Gravel returned to the real estate business in Anchorage. U.S. Senator Election to Senate in 1968 In 1968, Gravel ran against 81-year-old incumbent Democratic United States Senator Ernest Gruening, a popular former governor of the Alaska Territory who was considered one of the fathers of Alaska's statehood, for his party's nomination to the U.S. Senate. Gravel's campaign was primarily based on his youth and telegenic appearance rather than issue differences. He hired Joseph Napolitan, the first self-described political consultant, in late 1966. They spent over a year and a half planning a short, nine-day primary election campaign that featured the slogans "Alaska first" and "Let's do something about the state we're in", the distribution of a collection of essays titled Jobs and More Jobs, and the creation of a half-hour, well-produced, glamorized biographical film of Gravel, Man for Alaska. The film was shown twice a day on every television station in Alaska, and carried by plane and shown on home projectors in hundreds of Alaska Native villages. The heavy showings quickly reversed a 2–to–1 Gruening lead in polls into a Gravel lead. Gravel visited many remote villages by seaplane and showed a thorough understanding of the needs of the bush country and the fishing and oil industries. Gravel also benefited from maintaining a deliberately ambiguous posture about Vietnam policy. Gruening had been one of only two Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and his opposition to President Lyndon B. Johnson's war policies was harming him among the Democratic electorate; according to Gravel, "all I had to do was stand up and not deal with the subject, and people would assume that I was to the right of Ernest Gruening, when in point of fact I was to the left of him". In Man for Alaska, Gravel argued that "the liberals" would come to West Germany's defense if it was attacked, and that the same standard should apply to the United States' allies in Asia. During the campaign he also claimed that he was "more in the mainstream of American thought on Vietnam" than Gruening, despite the fact that he had written to Gruening to praise his antiwar stance four years earlier. Decades later, Gravel conceded that "I said what I said [about Vietnam] to advance my career." Gravel beat Gruening in the primary by about 2,000 votes. Gruening found "the unexpected defeat hard to take" and thought that some aspects of his opponent's biographical film had misled viewers. In the general election, Gravel faced Republican Elmer E. Rasmuson, a banker and former mayor of Anchorage. College students in the state implored Gruening to run a write-in campaign as an Independent, but legal battles prevented him from getting approval for it until only two weeks were left. A late appearance by anti-war presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy did not offset Gruening's lack of funds and endorsements; meanwhile, Gravel and Rasmuson both saturated local media with their filmed biographies. On November 5, 1968, Gravel won the general election with 45 percent of the vote to Rasmuson's 37 percent and Gruening's 18 percent. Senate assignments and style When Gravel joined the U.S.Senate in January 1969, he requested and received a seat on the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, which had direct relevance to Alaskan issues. He also got a spot on the Public Works Committee, which he held throughout his time in the Senate. Finally, he was a member of the Select Committee on Small Business. In 1971 he became chair of the Public Works Committee's Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds, and by 1973 he was chair of its Subcommittee on Water Resources, then later its Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution. Gravel was also initially named to the Joint Committee on Congressional Operations. By 1973 Gravel was off the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee and the Select Small Business Committee and instead a member of the Finance Committee, and by 1977 was chair of that body's Subcommittee on Energy and Foundations. By 1973 he had also been on the ad hoc Special Committee to Study Secret and Confidential Government Documents. By his own admission, Gravel was too new and "too abrasive" to be effective in the Senate by the usual means of seniority-based committee assignments or negotiating deals with other senators, and was sometimes seen as arrogant or a nuisance by the more senior and tradition-oriented members. Gravel relied on attention-getting gestures to achieve what he wanted, hoping national exposure would force other senators to listen to him. But even senators who agreed with him on issues considered his methods to be showboating. As part of this approach, Gravel voted with Southern Democrats to keep the Senate filibuster rule in place, and accordingly supported Russell Long and Robert Byrd but opposed Ted Kennedy in Senate leadership battles. In retrospective assessment, University of Alaska Anchorage history professor Stephen Haycox said, "Loose cannon is a good description of Gravel's Senate career. He was an off-the-wall guy, and you weren't really ever sure what he would do." Nuclear issues and the Cold War In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one-megaton calibration exercise for the second and larger five-megaton Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety; he then made a personal appeal to President Richard Nixon to stop the test. After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971 Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign). In 1971 Gravel voted against the Nixon administration's proposed anti-ballistic missile system, the Safeguard Program, having previously vacillated over the issue, suggesting that he might be willing to support it in exchange for federal lands in Alaska being opened up for private oil drilling. His vote alienated Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who had raised funds for Gravel's primary campaign. Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971 Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975 he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974 Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power. Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's July 1971 secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.), Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with the P.R.C., including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. He reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971. Vietnam War, the draft, and the Pentagon Papers Although he did not campaign against the Vietnam War during his first Senate campaign, by the end of 1970 Gravel was speaking out against United States policy in southeast Asia: in December of that year he persuaded William Fulbright to join him in a spontaneous two-day filibuster against a $155 million military aid package to Cambodia's Khmer Republic government in the Cambodian Civil War. President Richard Nixon had campaigned in 1968 on a promise to end the U.S. military draft, a decision endorsed by the February 1970 report of the Gates Commission. The existing draft law was scheduled to conclude at the end of June 1971, and the Senate faced a contentious debate about whether to extend it as the Vietnam War continued. The Nixon administration announced in February 1971 that it wanted a two-year extension to June 1973, after which the draft would end; Army planners had already been operating under the assumption of a two-year extension, after which an all-volunteer force would be in place. Skeptics such as Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Stennis thought this unrealistic and wanted a four-year extension, but the two-year proposal is what went forward in Congress. By early May 1971, Gravel had indicated his intention to filibuster the draft renewal legislation, halting conscription and thereby bringing U.S. involvement in the war to a rapid end. During this period he also supported efforts to mobilize and influence public opinion against the war, endorsing the "Vietnam War Out Now" rallies in Washington D.C. and San Francisco on April 24, 1971, and financing a broadcast campaign by the antiwar group War No More with a personal loan. In June 1972 he escorted a group of over 100 antiwar protesters, including psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, actress Candice Bergen, theater producer and director Joseph Papp, and peditrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, into the United States Capitol Building; the group was arrested after blocking a hallway outside the Senate chamber. By June 1971, some Democratic senators opposed to the war wanted to limit the renewal to a one-year extension, while others wanted to end it immediately; Gravel reiterated that he was one of the latter, saying, "It's a senseless war, and one way to do away with it is to do away with the draft." A Senate vote on June 4 indicated majority support for the two-year extension. On June 18 Gravel announced again his intention to counteract that by filibustering the renewal legislation, defending the practice against those who associated it only with blocking civil rights legislation. The first filibuster attempt failed on June 23 when, by three votes, the Senate voted cloture for only the fifth time since 1927. Protracted negotiations took place over House conference negotiations on the bill, revolving in large part around Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's eventually unsuccessful amendment to tie renewal to a troop withdrawal timetable from Vietnam; during this time the draft law expired and no more were conscripted. On August 5, the Nixon administration pleaded for a renewal before the Senate went on recess, but Gravel blocked Stennis's attempt to limit debate, and no vote was held. Finally on September 21, 1971, the Senate invoked cloture over Gravel's second filibuster attempt by one vote, and then passed the two-year draft extension. Gravel's attempts to stop the draft had failed (notwithstanding Gravel's later claims that he had stopped or shortened the draft, taken at face value in some media reports, during his 2008 presidential campaign). Meanwhile, on June 13, 1971, The New York Times began printing large portions of the Pentagon Papers. The papers were a large collection of secret government documents and studies pertaining to the Vietnam War, of which former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg had made unauthorized copies and was determined to make public. Ellsberg had for a year and a half approached members of Congress – such as William Fulbright, George McGovern, Charles Mathias, and Pete McCloskey – about publishing the documents, on the grounds that the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution would give congressional members immunity from prosecution, but all had refused. Instead, Ellsberg gave the documents to the Times. The U.S. Justice Department immediately tried to halt publication, on the grounds that the information revealed within the papers harmed the national interest. Within the next two weeks, a federal court injunction halted publication in the Times; The Washington Post and several other newspapers began publishing parts of the documents, with some of them also being halted by injunctions; and the whole matter went to the U.S. Supreme Court for arguments. Looking for an alternate publication mechanism, Ellsberg returned to his idea of having a member of Congress read them, and chose Gravel based on the latter's efforts against the draft; Gravel agreed where previously others had not. Ellsberg arranged for the papers to be given to Gravel on June 26 via an intermediary, Post editor Ben Bagdikian. Gravel used his counter-intelligence experience to choose a midnight transfer in front of the Mayflower Hotel in the center of Washington, D.C. On the night of June 29, 1971, Gravel attempted to read the papers on the floor of the Senate as part of his filibuster against the draft, but was thwarted when no quorum could be formed. Gravel instead convened a session of the Buildings and Grounds subcommittee that he chaired. He got New York Congressman John G. Dow to testify that the war had soaked up funding for public buildings, thus making discussion of the war relevant to the committee. He began reading from the papers with the press in attendance, omitting supporting documents that he felt might compromise national security, and declaring, "It is my constitutional obligation to protect the security of the people by fostering the free flow of information absolutely essential to their democratic decision-making." He read until 1 a.m., culminating by saying "Arms are being severed. Metal is clashing through human bodies because of the public policy this government and all its branches continue to support." Then with tears and sobs he said that he could no longer physically continue, the previous three nights of sleeplessness and fear about the future having taken their toll. Gravel ended the session by, with no other senators present, establishing unanimous consent to insert 4,100 pages of the Papers into the Congressional Record of his subcommittee. The following day, the Supreme Court's New York Times Co. v. United States decision ruled in favor of the newspapers and publication in the Times and others resumed. In July 1971 Bantam Books published an inexpensive paperback edition of the papers containing the material the Times had published. Gravel, too, wanted to privately publish the portion of the papers he had read into the record, believing that "immediate disclosure of the contents of these papers will change the policy that supports the war". After being turned down by many commercial publishers, on August 4 he reached agreement with Beacon Press, the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which Gravel was a member. Announced on August 17 and published on October 22, 1971, this four-volume, relatively expensive set became the "Senator Gravel Edition", which studies from Cornell University and the Annenberg Center for Communication have labeled as the most complete edition of the Pentagon Papers to be published. The "Gravel Edition" was edited and annotated by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, and included an additional volume of analytical articles on the origins and progress of the war, also edited by Chomsky and Zinn. Beacon Press then was subjected to a FBI investigation; an outgrowth of this was the Gravel v. United States court case, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled upon in June 1972; it held that the Speech or Debate Clause did grant immunity to Gravel for his reading the papers in his subcommittee, did grant some immunity to Gravel's congressional aide, but granted no immunity to Beacon Press in relation to their publishing the same papers. The U.S. Senate Democratic Caucus backed Gravel in the case, but due to Republican opposition it did not pay Gravel's legal fees, leaving him owing $25,000 (the equivalent of $150,000 in 2019, adjusted for inflation). The events of 1971 changed Gravel in the following months from an obscure freshman senator to a nationally visible political figure. He became a sought-after speaker on the college circuit as well as at political fundraisers, opportunities he welcomed as lectures were "the one honest way a Senator has to supplement his income". But his speaking tours caused him to accrue one of the worst absentee records in the Senate. The Democratic candidates for the 1972 presidential election sought his endorsement. In January 1972 Gravel endorsed Maine Senator Ed Muskie, hoping that his support would help Muskie with the party's left wing and in ethnic French-Canadian areas during the first primary contest in New Hampshire (Muskie won, but not overwhelmingly, and his campaign faltered soon after). In April 1972 Gravel appeared on all three networks' nightly newscasts to decry the Nixon administration's reliance on Vietnamization by making reference to the secret National Security Study Memorandum 1 document, which stated it would take 8–13 years for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam to defend South Vietnam. Gravel made excerpts from the study public, but senators Robert P. Griffin and William B. Saxbe blocked his attempt to read NSSM 1 into the Congressional Record. Domestic policy In 1970 Gravel co-sponsored legislation to establish a guaranteed minimum income, entitling poor families to up to $6,300 a year (the equivalent of $42,000 in 2019 after adjustment for inflation). He subsequently voted for a "work bonus" program, which would have entitled low-income working families with dependent children if they were paying Social Security or Railroad Retirement taxes to a non-taxable bonus of up to 10 percent of their wages. Gravel also supported extending Social Security to all federal employees and introduced a campaign finance reform bill in 1971 that would have enacted full disclosure of campaign financing, placed limits on large donations, media spending and individual candidate spending. In 1969, Gravel was the only Democratic Senator outside of the South to vote for Nixon's Supreme Court nominee Clement Haynsworth. The following year Gravel opposed Nixon's next pick, G. Harrold Carswell. Run for vice president in 1972 Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates. Toward this end he began soliciting delegates for their support. He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose. On the convention's final day, July 14, 1972, McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice. Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations. Thus there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska. He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination. In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting that included several other candidates. Gravel attracted some attention for his efforts: writer Norman Mailer said he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films", while Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances". Yet the process was doubly disastrous for the Democrats. In the time consumed by nominating and seconding and all the vice-presidential candidates' speeches, the attention of the delegates on the floor was lost and McGovern's speech was pushed to 3:30 a.m. The haste with which Eagleton was selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver. Reelection to Senate in 1974 Several years earlier, Alaska politicians had speculated that Gravel would have a hard time getting both renominated and elected when his first term expired, given that he was originally elected without a base party organization and tended to focus on national rather than local issues. Nonetheless, after receiving support from national and local labor leaders, securing key earmarks, and producing another half-hour TV advertorial, in 1974 Gravel was reelected to the Senate, with 58 percent of the vote to 42 percent for Republican State Senator C. R. Lewis, who was a national officer of the John Birch Society. Second term Gravel's reelection campaign left him $65,000–$75,000 in debt. In 1975 The Washington Post reported on a memo by his executive assistant laying out a fundraising strategy to tackle this, including raising funds from oil companies, meeting with previous donors and "inquir[ing] into the governmental priorities of these people and their groups in the coming session", as well as obtaining further speaking fees to reduce his personal debt. This was followed by a number of stories about links between Gravel, lobbyists and fundraisers, including one that was widely publicized in Alaska about his holding a share in a Colorado resort with two Washington lobbyists he was working with on land and energy legislation. Gravel had been open about the investment and had opposing views to one of the lobbyists on nuclear power. In 1980 the Wall Street Journal published details about his fundraising activities, including writing to individuals and PACs in the oil industry, pledging to kill off proposals for a windfall profits tax on the sector, and traveling in the Middle East with the business partner of one of his donors to sell Alaskan land to businessmen. Gravel suggested that critics of his fundraising were "naive". In 1975 Gravel introduced an amendment to cut the number of troops overseas by 200,000, but it was defeated on a voice vote. In September 1975 Gravel was named as one of several Congressional Advisers to the Seventh Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly, which met to discuss problems related to economic development and international economic cooperation. In June 1976 Gravel was the focus of a federal investigation into allegations that he was involved in a sex-for-vote arrangement. Congressional staff clerk Elizabeth Ray (who had already been involved in a sex scandal that led to the downfall of Representative Wayne Hays) said that in August 1972 she had sex with Gravel aboard a houseboat on the Potomac River, under the instruction of Representative Kenneth J. Gray, her boss at the time. Gray allegedly wanted to secure Gravel's support for further funding for construction of the National Visitor Center in Washington, a troubled project that was under the jurisdiction of subcommittees that both members chaired. Another Congressional staffer said she witnessed the boat encounter, but Gravel said at the time that he had never met either of the women. Gravel and Gray strongly denied that they had made any arrangement regarding legislation, and neither was ever charged with any wrongdoing. Decades later Gravel wrote that he had indeed had sex with Ray, but had not changed any votes because of it. Gravel and his main financial backer, Gottstein, had a falling out in 1978, during the Congressional debate over whether to allow a controversial sale of U.S. F-15 fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia. An ardent backer of Israel, Gottstein opposed the sale and asked Gravel to vote against it. But Gravel not only voted for it but made an emotional speech attacking the anti-sale campaign. Gravel wrote in 2008 that it was the only time Gottstein had ever asked him for a favor, and the rupture resulted in their never speaking to each other again. Alaskan issues By 1971 Gravel was urging construction of the much-argued Trans-Alaska pipeline, addressing environmental concerns by saying that the pipeline's builders and operators should have "total and absolute" responsibility for any consequent environmental damage. Two years later the debate over the pipeline came to a crux, with The New York Times describing it as "environmentalists [in] a holy war with the major oil companies". In February 1973 the U.S. Court of Appeals blocked the issuance of permits for construction; Gravel and fellow Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens reacted by urging Congress to pass legislation overturning the court's decision. Environmentalists opposed to the pipeline, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club then sought to use the recently passed National Environmental Policy Act to their advantage; Gravel designed an amendment to the pipeline bill that would immunize the pipeline from any further court challenges under that law, and thus speed its construction. Passage of the amendment became the key battle regarding the pipeline. On July 17, 1973, in a dramatic roll-call vote, the Gravel amendment was approved as a 49–49 tie was broken in favor by Vice President Spiro Agnew. The actual bill enabling the pipeline then passed easily; Gravel had triumphed in what became perhaps his most lasting accomplishment as a senator. In opposition to the Alaskan fishing industry, Gravel advocated American participation in the formation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. For two years he opposed legislation that established a Exclusive Economic Zone for marine resources. He was one of only 19 senators to vote against Senate approval for the expanded zone in 1976, saying it would undermine the U.S. position in Law of the Sea negotiations and that nations arbitrarily extending their fishing rights limits would "produce anarchy of the seas". The legislation was passed, and the United States has signed but never ratified the Law of the Sea treaty. Gravel accumulated a complicated record on Indian affairs during his time in the Senate. During his first year in the Senate Gravel urged abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, criticizing the agency for the pace of development of schools in Alaska, its paternalistic attitudes and the culturally inappropriate nature of its education, and advocating greater shared decision-making between the federal government and native communities in Alaska. Later, his views changed; in the early 1970s Gravel supported a demonstration project that established links between Alaskan villages and the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, for medical diagnostic communications. In 1971, he fended off accusations from Alaskan natives that he was not spending enough time working on their land claims. Gravel helped secure a private grant to facilitate the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference in 1977, attended by Inuit representatives from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. These conferences now also include representatives from Russia. In 1977, Gravel helped lead an effort to have the U.S. Interior Department rename Mount McKinley to Denali; this eventually led to Denali National Park being so named. Subsequently, Gravel proposed a never-built "Denali City" development above the Tokositna River near the mountain, to consist of a giant Teflon dome enclosing hotels, golf courses, condominiums, and commercial buildings. A related idea of his to build a high-speed rail line to Denali also failed to gain traction. A key, emotional issue in the state at the time was "locking up Alaska", making reference to allocation of its vast, mostly uninhabited land. President Jimmy Carter desired to put large portions of this land under federal protection against development, a move that some Alaskans vociferously opposed. In 1978 Gravel blocked passage, via procedural delays such as walking out of House–Senate conference committee meetings, of a complex bill which represented a compromise on land use policy. The bill would have put some of Alaska's vast federal land holdings under state control while preserving other portions for federal parks and refuges; the blocking action earned Gravel the enmity of fellow Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who had supported the compromise. In 1980, a new lands bill came up for consideration, that was less favorable to Alaskan interests and more liked by environmentalists; it set aside of Alaska's for national parks, conservation areas, and other restricted federal uses. Gravel blocked it, as not ensuring enough future development in the state. A new compromise version of the 1980 bill came forward, which reduced the land set aside to . Representing Alaskan interests, Gravel tried to stop the bill, including by filibuster. But the Senate voted for cloture and passed the bill. Frustrated, Gravel said, "the legislation denies Alaska its rights as a state, and denies the U.S. crucial strategic resources," and opined that the Senate was "a little bit like a tank of barracudas". Nonetheless, the bill, known as the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, was signed by President Carter shortly before leaving the White House, and led to millions of acres being set aside in the state for national parks, wildlife refuges, and other kinds of areas under protection. In 1978 Gravel authored and secured the passage into federal law of the General Stock Ownership Corporation, that became Subchapter U of the Tax Code under the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. This gave states the ability to create corporations that would invest in for-profit enterprises, with all citizens within the state owning shares in the corporation. Gravel's attempt to convince the Alaska state legislature to create such a corporation failed, as did a 1980 state ballot initiative towards the same end, but nevertheless the creation of the General Stock Ownership Corporation in federal law turned out to be significant in the development of binary economics. Loss of Senate seat in 1980 In 1980 Gravel was challenged for the Democratic Party's nomination by State Representative Clark Gruening, the grandson of the man Gravel had defeated in a primary 12 years earlier. One of Gruening's supporters was Gravel's former backer Gottstein. Several factors made Gravel vulnerable. As an insurgent candidate in 1968 Gravel had never established a firm party base. Not liking to hunt or fish, he was also always culturally suspect in the state. The primary campaign was bitterly fought. A group of Democrats, including future governor Steve Cowper, led the campaign against Gravel, with Gravel's actions in respect to the 1978 and 1980 Alaskan lands bills a major issue. This was especially so given that the 1980 bill's dénouement happened but a week before the primary. The sources of Gravel's campaign funds, some of which Gravel readily acknowledged came from political action committees outside the state, also became an issue in the contest. Gruening had pledged that he would not take special interest group money, but Gravel said that Gruening was "dishonest" in accepting individual contributors from Jewish donors living outside the state because to him such contributors comprised "a special interest group ... that seeks to influence the foreign policy of the U.S." Gruening won the primary with about 55 percent of the vote to Gravel's 44 percent. Gravel later conceded that by the time of his defeat, he had alienated "almost every constituency in Alaska". Another factor may have been Alaska's blanket primary system of the time, which allowed unlimited voting across party lines and from its many independents; Republicans believed Gruening would be an easier candidate to defeat in the general election. Gruening lost the general election to Republican Frank Murkowski. Gravel was the last Democrat to represent Alaska in Congress for 28 years, until Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich defeated Ted Stevens, by then an aged, iconic figure who had just been convicted of seven felonies for taking unreported gifts, in a very close and protracted election result in 2008. Stevens's conviction was subsequently vacated due to prosecutorial misconduct. Career after leaving the Senate Of his 1980 defeat, Gravel later recalled: "I had lost my career. I lost my marriage. I was in the doldrums for ten years after my defeat," and "Nobody wanted to hire me for anything important. I felt like I was worthless. I didn't know what I could do." By his own later description, Gravel was a womanizer, and had an affair while in the Senate, and in December 1980 he and his wife Rita separated. They filed for divorce in September 1981; she later received all of his Senate pension income. During the 1980s Gravel was a real estate developer in Anchorage and Kenai, Alaska, a consultant, and a stockbroker. One of his real estate ventures, a condominium business, was forced to declare bankruptcy and a lawsuit ensued. In 1986 Gravel worked in partnership with Merrill Lynch Capital Markets to buy losses that financially troubled Alaska Native Corporations could not take as tax deductions and sell them to large national companies looking for tax writeoffs. Gravel also learned computer programming at some point but never practiced it. In 1984 Gravel married his second wife, Whitney Stewart Gravel, a former administrative assistant for Senator Jacob Javits. Return to politics In 1989 Gravel reentered politics. He founded and led The Democracy Foundation, which promotes direct democracy. He established the Philadelphia II corporation, which seeks to replicate the original 1787 Constitutional Convention and have a Second Constitutional Convention to bring about direct democracy Gravel led an effort to get a United States Constitutional amendment to allow voter-initiated federal legislation similar to state ballot initiatives. He argued that Americans are able to legislate responsibly, and that the Act and Amendment in the National Initiative would allow American citizens to become "law makers". However such efforts met with little success. In 2001, Gravel became director of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, where he admired institute co-founder Gregory Fossedal's work on direct democracy in Switzerland. By 2004, Gravel had become chair of the institute, and Fossedal (who in turn was a director of the Democracy Foundation) gave the introduction at Gravel's presidential announcement. In 2003 Gravel gave a speech on direct democracy at a conference hosted by the American Free Press. The event was cosponsored by the Barnes Review, a journal that endorses Holocaust denial. After some controversy over his appearance, Gravel apologized, saying he did not realize the group's ties. Gravel said repeatedly that he did not share the group's views on the Holocaust, stating, "You better believe I know that six million Jews were killed. [The Barnes Review publishers] are nutty as loons if they don't think it happened". The group invited Gravel to speak again, but he declined. Mike and Whitney Gravel lived in Arlington County, Virginia, until 2010 and then resided in Burlingame, California. They have the two grown children from his first marriage, Martin Gravel and Lynne Gravel Mosier, and four grandchildren. Whitney Gravel's income sustained the couple from 1998 on. In the 2000s, Gravel suffered poor health, requiring three surgeries in 2003 for back pain and neuropathy. Due to unreimbursed medical expenses and debts from his political causes, he declared personal bankruptcy in 2004. He began taking a salary from the non-profit organizations for which he was working; much of that income was lent to his presidential campaign. In 2007, he declared that he had "zero net worth". 2008 presidential campaign Democratic Party primaries At the start of 2006 Gravel decided the best way he could promote direct democracy and the National Initiative was to run for president. On April 17, 2006, Gravel became the first candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election, announcing his run in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Short on campaign cash, he took public transportation to get to his announcement. (Gravel called for public financing of elections.) Other principal Gravel positions were the FairTax, as well as withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days and a single payer national health care system. Gravel had opposed the Iraq War, and President George W. Bush's rationale for it, from the beginning, and in 2006 said that U.S. troops in Iraq, as in Vietnam, had "died in vain". He also favored a regional peace initiative, as well as reparation payments for Iraqis. Gravel also called for a "U.S. corporate withdrawal from Iraq", with reconstruction contracts held by U.S. companies to be turned over to Iraqi firms. Gravel campaigned almost full-time in New Hampshire, the first primary state, following his announcement. Opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination showed Gravel with 1 percent or less support. By the end of March 2007, Gravel's campaign had less than $500 in cash on hand against debts of nearly $90,000. Because of his time in the Senate, Gravel was invited to many of the early Democratic presidential debates. During the initial one at South Carolina State University on April 26, 2007, he suggested a bill requiring the president to withdraw from Iraq on pain of criminal penalties. He also advocated positions such as opposing preemptive nuclear war. He stated that the Iraq War had the effect of creating more terrorists and that the "war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis". Regarding his fellow candidates, he said, "I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me – they frighten me." In one such exchange, Gravel said, "Tell me, Barack, who do you want to nuke?" to which Obama responded, "I'm not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike, I promise." Media stories said that Gravel was responsible for much of whatever "heat" and "flashpoints" had taken place during the Democratic debates. Gravel gained considerable publicity by shaking up the normally staid multiple-candidate format; The New York Times' media critic said that what Gravel had done was "steal a debate with outrageous, curmudgeonly statements". The Internet was a benefit: a YouTube video of his responses in the debate was viewed more than 225,892 times, ranking seventeenth in most views for week and first among news and politics clips; his name became the fifteenth most searched-for in the blogosphere; and his website garnered more traffic than those of frontrunners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards. Gravel appeared on the popular Colbert Report on television on May 2, and his campaign and career were profiled in national publications such as Salon. Two wordless, Warholesque campaign videos, "Rock" and "Fire", were released on YouTube in late May and became hits, and eventually gained over 760,000 and 185,000 views respectively. "Rock", in turn, was given airtime during an episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Some thirty-five years after he first achieved the national spotlight, he had found it again. All this did not improve his performance in the polls; a May 2007 CNN poll showed him with less than 0.5 percent support among Democrats. Gravel was in the next several debates, in one case after CNN reversed a decision to exclude him. Like some of the other second-tier candidates, Gravel did not get as much time as the leaders; during the June 2, 2007, New Hampshire debate, which lasted two hours, he was asked 10 questions and allowed to speak for five minutes and 37 seconds. During the July 23, 2007, CNN-YouTube presidential debate, Gravel responded to audience applause when he had complained of a lack of airtime and said: "Thank you. Has it been fair thus far?" Detractors began to liken him to "the cranky uncle who lives in the attic," or "the angry old guy that just seemed to want to become angrier". Berkeley political scientist David Terr found that moderator George Stephanopoulos directed roughly five percent of his questions to Gravel; in a poll asking who did the best in the debate, Gravel placed seventh among the eight candidates. National opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination continued to show Gravel with one percent or zero percent numbers. By the end of the third-quarter 2007, Gravel had about $17,500 in cash on hand, had collected a total of about $380,000 during the 2008 election cycle, and was continuing to run a threadbare campaign with minimal staff. Beginning with the October 30, 2007, Philadelphia event, Gravel was excluded from most of the debates, with the debate sponsors or the Democratic National Committee saying Gravel's campaign had not met fund-raising, polling, or local campaign organizational thresholds. For the Philadelphia exclusion, Gravel blamed corporate censorship on the part of sponsor owner and alleged military-industrial complex member General Electric for his exclusion and mounted a counter-gathering and debate against a video screen a short distance away, but he had lost his easiest publicity. In reaction, supporters organized "mass donation days" to try to help the campaign gain momentum and funds, such as on December 5, 2007, the anniversary of the Repeal of Prohibition. Gravel did not compete in the initial 2008 vote, the Iowa caucuses, but was still subjected to a false report from MSNBC that he had pulled out of the race afterward. Gravel did focus his attention on the second 2008 vote, the New Hampshire primary. In early January, Mother Jones' investigative reporter James Ridgeway was filmed interviewing and following Gravel in New Hampshire, in which Gravel is interviewed on the phone by Neal Conan for NPR's, Talk of the Nation. He received about 400 votes out of some 280,000 cast in New Hampshire, or 0.14 percent, before taking time off to improve his health. He resumed campaigning, but fared no better in subsequent states. By the end of January 2008, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Gravel were the only remaining Democrats from the initial debates still running; Gravel vowed to stay in the presidential campaign until November. On March 11, 2008, Gravel continued to remain in the Democratic race but additionally endorsed a Green Party candidate for president, Jesse Johnson, saying he wanted to help Johnson prevail against Green Party rivals Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader. By late March, Gravel had almost no fundraising and was only on the ballot in one of the next ten Democratic primaries. Switch to Libertarian Party On March 25, 2008, Gravel announced that he would leave the Democrats and join the Libertarian Party, saying: "My libertarian views, as well as my strong stance against war, the military industrial complex and American imperialism, seem not to be tolerated by Democratic Party elites who are out of touch with the average American; elites that reject the empowerment of American citizens I offered to the Democratic Party at the beginning of this presidential campaign with the National Initiative for Democracy." The following day Gravel entered the race for the 2008 Libertarian presidential nomination, saying that he would have run as a third-party candidate all along except that he needed the public exposure that came from being in the earlier Democratic debates. Gravel's initial notion of running as a fusion candidate with other parties was met with skepticism. As a Libertarian candidate, Gravel faced resistance to his past support of big government initiatives and his unorthodox positions around direct democracy. Nevertheless, he garnered more support than he had as a Democrat, placing second and third in two April 2008 straw polls. In the May 25 balloting at the 2008 Libertarian National Convention in Denver, Gravel finished fourth out of eight candidates on the initial ballot, with 71 votes out of a total 618; he trailed former Congressman and eventual winner Bob Barr, author Mary Ruwart, and businessman Wayne Allyn Root. Gravel's position did not subsequently improve and he was eliminated on the fourth ballot. Afterwards he stated that "I just ended my political career," but he vowed to continue promoting his positions as a writer and lecturer. 2008–early 2019 In June 2008 Gravel endorsed the NYC 9/11 Ballot Initiative, saying the measure would create a "citizens commission rather than a government commission" with subpoena power against top U.S. officials to "make a true investigation as to what happened" regarding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He later said, "Individuals in and out of government may certainly have participated with the obviously known perpetrators of this dastardly act. Suspicions abound over the analysis presented by government. Obviously an act that has triggered three wars, Afghan, Iraqi and the continuing War on Terror, should be extensively investigated which was not done and which the government avoids addressing." In August 2008 Gravel was speaking to a crowd of supporters of Sami Al-Arian (who two years earlier had pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison for a charge of conspiracy in helping Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a "specially designated terrorist" organization) when he was caught on tape saying of Al-Arian's prosecutor, "Find out where he lives, find out where his kids go to school, find out where his office is: picket him all the time. Call him a racist in signs if you see him. Call him an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but in his face all the time." Gravel was criticized for potentially involving the children of the prosecutor, and Al-Arian's family disavowed the sentiments. Gravel defended Alaska Governor Sarah Palin after she was chosen as Republican presidential nominee John McCain's running mate in September 2008. He praised Palin's record in standing up to corruption among Alaskan Republicans, thought her national inexperience was an asset not a detriment, and predicted that the "Troopergate" investigation into whether she improperly fired a state official would "come out in her favor". Gravel made clear he would not support or vote for either McCain–Palin or Obama–Biden in the general election. The following year Gravel said that Palin's politics were "terrible, but that doesn't detract from the fact that she's a very talented person". He predicted that Palin would run for president in 2012 and that "she's going to surprise a lot of people". Palin did not run, but Gravel's prediction about "TrooperGate" was accurate as Palin was found not to have violated ethics laws. In 2013, by the invitation of Hamed Ghashghavi, the secretary for international affairs of the 3rd International Conference on Hollywoodism in Tehran, Iran, Gravel attended that event as an Iranian government-organized anti-Hollywood conference. Gravel noted that the conference was attended by "various elements of extremes" but said it was necessary to discuss how the U.S. film industry portrayed Iran in order to prevent "an insane war" between the two nations. In May 2013 Gravel was one of several former members of Congress to accept $20,000 from the Paradigm Research Group, an advocacy group for UFO disclosure, as part of holding what they termed a Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, modeled after congressional hearings, regarding supposed U.S. government suppression of evidence concerning UFOs. Gravel said, "Something is monitoring the planet, and they are monitoring it very cautiously, because we are a very warlike planet," and, "What we're faced with here is, in areas of the media, and the government too, an effort to marginalize and ridicule people who have specific knowledge." In December 2014 Gravel was announced as the new CEO of KUSH, a company which makes marijuana-infused products for medicinal and recreational use, and a subsidiary of Cannabis Sativa, Inc. He also became an Independent Director of Cannabis Sativa. During the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, Gravel praised Bernie Sanders and his campaign, saying "Bernie is one of the most gifted politicians I have ever observed. He's a person of great integrity and very clever." Gravel predicted that Sanders would be elected president but would be unable to get his key reforms through Congress, and thus that Sanders and his supporters should back some of the proposals of the National Initiative. In 2016, Gravel said in relation to the September 11 attacks: "We killed 58,000 American servicemen in the Vietnam War and all they did was die in vain. What's so unusual about killing 3,000 more in order to develop the grist for the mill to empower into infinity the military industrial complex?" and "There's no question in my mind that 9/11 was an inside job". The remarks were later disavowed by even Gravel supporters. By 2019 Gravel was living in Seaside, California. He was working on a book, at the time titled Human Governance, about his principal idea for direct democracy, a U.S. Constitutional Amendment to create a "Legislature of the People" that would circumvent the existing Congress. The book was self-published at the end of the year by AuthorHouse under the title The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People. 2020 presidential campaign On March 19, 2019, Gravel announced that he was considering running in the 2020 Democratic primaries. He said, "The goal will not be to win, but to bring a critique of American imperialism to the Democratic debate stage." An exploratory committee was formed, with filing a statement of organization with the Federal Election Commission on that same day. The filing was the idea of a group of teenagers, led by David Oks and Henry Williams, inspired by the podcast Chapo Trap House, and done with Gravel's consent (after a week spent convincing him of the idea's merits), but without his involvement. Intrigued by the group's commitment to amplifying his long-held policy goals, Gravel (who would be old on Inauguration Day in 2021) said he planned to meet with them in April, and to discuss a 2020 White House run with his wife. On April 2, 2019, Gravel filed to officially run for office. The campaign called itself the "#Gravelanche". Gravel's initial stated goal was merely to qualify for debates by getting the required 65,000 small donors. He discouraged people from voting for him and said his preferences were Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, both of whom favor a non-interventionist foreign policy. But on April 29, Gravel's campaign said he was running to win, not just to participate in debates. In a subsequent interview, though, Gravel emphasized the virtue of Sanders and Gabbard in some order as a presidential ticket. Statements like these caused Vox to call Gravel "2020's oddest Democratic presidential candidate". The New York Times Magazine included Gravel as an example in the rise of democratic socialism in the United States also exemplified by Sanders's 2016 race and the 2018 election of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "[Gravel's] campaign represents the most absurd form of a legitimate movement on the left that feels little obligation to the Democratic Party." In June 2019, Gravel touted the endorsement of Muntadher al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who, in December 2008, made headlines after he threw his shoes at President George W. Bush in protest of the U.S. war in Iraq. Al-Zaidi endorsed Gravel based on his promise to improve White House policies regarding Iraq and the Middle East. On June 13, 2019, the Democratic Party announced the 20 major candidates who qualified for the first debate later that month. Gravel was one of the four who missed out (the others were Montana Governor Steve Bullock, U.S. Representative Seth Moulton, and Miramar, Florida, Mayor Wayne Messam). Gravel had been unable to get the requisite number of donations, or to score one percent or better in enough polls (many polls did not even include him). Nevertheless, Gravel said he would not drop out and would try to qualify for the July debate. In early July, however, Gravel's campaign said it was still 10,000 contributions short of the 65,000-donor threshold and that it was "nearing its conclusion". It solicited suggestions for where to donate $100–150,000 of leftover campaign funds. Gravel added that he had always planned on ending the campaign before the teenagers in charge of it needed to return to school. A few days later the campaign became the first to run an attack ad against Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, using the text "Is this the best our party has to offer?" Gravel's campaign crossed the threshold of 65,000 donors on July 12, 2019, meeting the qualification mark for that month's debate. But because 20 other candidates, the maximum allowed to participate, had already met at least the polling criterion, which takes priority over the donor criterion, Gravel was not invited. The campaign officially came to a close on August 6, 2019, with Gravel endorsing both Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard for president. Gravel's campaign later stated on Twitter that they never wanted to win but saw the campaign as an "intimately democratic" project and expressed honor at working with Gravel. Gravel said he would divide remaining campaign funds between charity and a new think tank which would espouse his ideas. The Gravel Institute Gravel used some of the funds remaining from his 2020 presidential campaign to found an eponymous progressive think tank called The Gravel Institute in 2019. As noted by Vice magazine, the institute aims to do battle with PragerU from a left-wing perspective. Launched in September 2020, the new entity said it would "carry on the life's work of former U.S Senator Mike Gravel in fighting for global peace and democracy. Its mission is to promote bold and forward-looking ideas about a more peaceful and egalitarian world, and to build a robust movement of young people to win it". Contributors announced include Cornel West and Slavoj Žižek, as well as Lower Brule Indian Reservation activist Nick Estes. Other presenters have included and will include H. Jon Benjamin, Briahna Joy Gray, Bernie Sanders, Chelsea Manning, Richard Wolff, Stephanie Kelton, Zephyr Teachout, David Cross, Jabari Brisport, Zohran Mamdani, and Gravel himself (though it is unknown if his appearance will be cancelled due to his death in June 2021, or if the video has already been recorded). Death Gravel died of multiple myeloma at his home in Seaside, California, on June 26, 2021, at age 91. The obituary for him in The New York Times stated that Gravel was "a two-term Democratic senator from Alaska ... who was perhaps better known as an unabashed attention-getter" who later become known for "mounting long-shot presidential runs". The obituary in The Washington Post was similar, saying that Gravel was "an Alaska Democrat with a flair for the theatrical who rose from obscurity to brief renown" and later "ran quixotic campaigns for the presidency". The Anchorage Daily News quoted Gravel as saying of himself in 1989, "I'm an independent kind of guy. A rough and ready kind of guy. My glands work in a certain way that make me stand up, foolishly sometimes, and fight." Political positions Alan Abramowitz and Jeffrey Allan Segal described Gravel as "a maverick, if not an eccentric, in the Senate." His Americans for Democratic Action "Liberal Quotient" scores ranged from 81 out of 100 (1971) to 39 out of 100 (1980), with an average of around 61. His American Conservative Union scores ranged from 0 out of 100 (several years, including 1971 and 1972) to 38 out of 100 (1979), with an average of 14. Abramowitz and Segal note that Gravel's lowest ADA ratings coincided with his two Senate re-election bids, and for the most part his highest ACU ratings followed the same pattern. In 1972, as a young senator, Gravel published Citizen Power: A People's Platform, a manifesto outlining what Kirkus Reviews termed a "populist reform [that] would provide 'balanced political power' between the people and government and business interests." Civil rights issues On drug policy, Gravel said in 2007 that he favored decriminalization and treating addiction as a public health matter. During his 2008 presidential candidacy he condemned the War on Drugs as a failure, saying that it did "nothing but savage our inner cities and put our children at risk". Gravel called for abolition of capital punishment in his book Citizen Power, and adhered to this position during his 2008 run for president. He supported abortion rights. During the 2008 campaign Gravel was a strong supporter of LGBT rights. He supported same-sex marriage and opposed the Defense of Marriage Act and the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. He wrote in 2008 that "depriving gays and lesbians of equal rights is immoral". Foreign policy and defense issues Gravel was a critic of American imperialism. Gravel firmly opposed U.S. military action against Iran and Syria. He voiced opposition to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the use of torture, indefinite detention, and what he called "flagrant ignorance" of the Geneva Convention. In 2014 Gravel called for the release of the full, unredacted Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture. Gravel opposed the use of international sanctions as a policy tool and blamed the ones against Iraq under Saddam Hussein for the deaths of a half-million children in that country. In 2013 Gravel said that sanctions against Iran were "illegal". During his 2008 candidacy, Gravel called for a cut in military spending, variously reported to be 15 percent or 50 percent. He called for the savings to boost public education spending. To spur international nuclear nonproliferation efforts, Gravel called for unilateral reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. In 2008 Gravel criticized the decision of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to not pursue the efforts to impeach George W. Bush and the attempted impeachment of Dick Cheney, saying also that Bush and Cheney had committed crimes and deserved "to be prosecuted" at The Hague. In 2013 he expressed disdain for President Obama, calling him "a total fraud" and saying that both Bush and Obama should be tried "for the crimes and murders they've committed" in the International Court of Justice. Gravel specifically condemned Obama for the drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere. Economy, immigration, and environment During his 2008 candidacy Gravel favored a FairTax scheme, which would abolish the Internal Revenue Service, eliminate the federal income tax (which Gravel called "corrupt"), and impose a national sales tax. While Gravel described FairTax as "progressive", others have criticized it as "regressive", disproportionately benefiting the wealthiest Americans. To offset the new sales taxes on essential goods, Gravel's plan called for monthly government rebate payments to individuals and families. During his 2020 campaign Gravel also voiced support for a third legislative body that would give the people direct control of the budget as well as the implementation of a land value tax. Gravel opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during his 2008 candidacy, calling it unfair and economically harmful and needing renegotiation. Gravel believed that NAFTA was the "root cause" of illegal migration to the U.S. He favored a guest worker program and "setting up naturalization procedures that would fairly bring immigrants into legal status". In a 2007 interview, Gravel identified himself as "very much of a globalist" who believed in open markets and open borders and condemned the scapegoating of undocumented immigrants. Gravel also said that he favored eliminating the cap on H1B visas. As a senator from Alaska, Gravel favored drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but opposed it during his 2008 campaign. In 2008, Gravel supported a carbon tax to combat climate change. Gravel spoke in favor of net neutrality during his presidential campaign. Education and health care Gravel called for the cost of college tuition to be borne by the federal government, rather than students. In his 2008 campaign, he called the No Child Left Behind Act "a failure" and called for it to be "reformed and fully funded". He expressed support for universal pre-kindergarten and the expansion of the Head Start program; and expressed an openness to charter schools and school vouchers. He also suggested extending the school day and the school year, and supported merit pay for teachers. Gravel also called for publicly funded universal health care to replace the current employer-sponsored health insurance system. He supported "full funding" of the VA system. When asked in 2007 about naturopathy, homeopathy, and acupuncture, Gravel said that he was "very very much in favor" of holistic health care. Awards and honors In 2008 Gravel received the Columbia University School of General Studies' first annual Isaac Asimov Lifetime Achievement Award. Electoral history Writings Gravel, Mike. Jobs and More Jobs. Mt. McKinley Publishers, 1968. Gravel, Mike. Citizen Power: A People's Platform. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972. . revised and reissued as Citizen Power: A Mandate for Change, AuthorHouse, 2008. . Gravel, Mike and Lauria, Joe. A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and One Man's Fight to Stop It. Seven Stories Press, 2008. . Gravel, Mike and Eisenbach, David. The Kingmakers: How the Media Threatens Our Security and Our Democracy. Phoenix Books, 2008. . Gravel, Mike. Voice of a Maverick: The Speeches and Writings of Senator Mike Gravel. Brandywine House, 2008. Gravel, Mike. Foreword to Poisoned Power: The Case Against Nuclear Power Plants. John W. Goffman & Arthur R. Tamplin, Rodale Press, Inc., Emmaus, PA, June 1971. Gravel, Mike. The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People. AuthorHouse, 2020. Explanatory notes References Citations General references The Pentagon Papers Senator Gravel Edition. Vol. Five: Critical Essays. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972. 341p. plus 72p. of Index to Vol. I–IV of the Papers; Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, editors. External links Mike Gravel official website The Gravel Institute |- |- 1930 births 2021 deaths 1972 United States vice-presidential candidates 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American politicians 20th-century Roman Catholics 20th-century Unitarians 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American politicians 21st-century Unitarians 9/11 conspiracy theorists Alaska Democrats American International College alumni American Unitarian Universalists American anti–Iraq War activists American conspiracy theorists American democracy activists American male non-fiction writers American people of French-Canadian descent American political writers American real estate businesspeople American stockbrokers Anti-corporate activists Assumption University (Worcester) alumni Burials at Arlington National Cemetery Businesspeople from Anchorage, Alaska Businesspeople from Springfield, Massachusetts California Democrats Candidates in the 2008 United States presidential election Candidates in the 2020 United States presidential election Columbia University School of General Studies alumni Deaths from cancer in California Deaths from multiple myeloma Democratic Party United States senators Direct democracy activists Drug policy reform activists Former Roman Catholics Virginia Libertarians Members of the Alaska House of Representatives Military personnel from Massachusetts Non-interventionism People from Arlington County, Virginia People from Kenai Peninsula Borough, Alaska People with dyslexia Politicians from Anchorage, Alaska Politicians from Springfield, Massachusetts Speakers of the Alaska House of Representatives United States Army officers United States senators from Alaska Writers about direct democracy Writers from Anchorage, Alaska

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Who did he compete against in 1972?

Who did Mike Gravel compete against in 1972?

Mike Gravel

Gravel "decided to become a pioneer in a faraway place," and moved to pre-statehood Alaska in August 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place where someone without social or political connections could be a viable candidate for public office. Alaska's voting age of 19, less than most other states' 21, played a role in his decision, as did its newness and cooler climate. Broke when he arrived, he immediately found work in real estate sales until winter arrived. Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-Fairbanks run. Subsequently, he opened a small real estate brokerage in Anchorage (the Territory of Alaska not requiring a license) and saved enough so as not to have to work the railroad again. Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and continued a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life. Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin, who had been Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958, on April 29, 1959. They had two children, Martin Anthony Gravel and Lynne Denise Gravel, born c. 1960 and 1962 respectively. Meanwhile, he went to Washington, D.C. in 1957 to campaign for Alaskan statehood via the "Tennessee Plan": dressed as Paul Revere, he rode with a petition to the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Seeing Alaska as a wide-open place with no political establishment or entrenched interests, and using the slogan "Gravel, the Roadbed to Prosperity", he ran for the territorial legislature in 1958 but lost. He went on a national speaking tour concerning tax reform in 1959, sponsored by the Jaycees. He ran without avail for the City Council in Anchorage in 1960. During this time, he had become a successful real estate agent; after the 1960 election, he became a property developer in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Anchorage. A partner ran into financial difficulty, however, and the project went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and Gravel was forced out in 1962. In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one megaton calibration exercise for the second, and larger five megaton, Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests in Congress. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences, and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety to be created; he then made a personal appeal to President Nixon to stop the test. After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the larger Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971, Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage, in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign). Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for the commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971, Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975, he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974, Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power. Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.) in July 1971, Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with China, including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. Gravel reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971. Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in running for the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates. Towards this end he began soliciting delegates for their support in advance of the convention. He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose. At the convention's final day on July 14, 1972, presidential nominee McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice. Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations. Thus, there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska. He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination. In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting that included several other candidates as well. For his efforts, Gravel attracted some attention: famed writer Norman Mailer would say he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films", while Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances ..." Yet, the whole process had been doubly disastrous for the Democrats. The time consumed with the nominating and seconding and other speeches of all the vice-presidential candidates had lost the attention of the delegates on the floor and pushed McGovern's speech until 3:30 a.m. The haste with which Eagleton had been selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver. CANNOTANSWER

former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post

Maurice Robert Gravel ( ; May 13, 1930 – June 26, 2021) was an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981 as a member of the Democratic Party, and who, in later life, twice ran for the presidential nomination of that party. Born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, by French-Canadian immigrant parents, Gravel moved to Alaska in the late 1950s, becoming a real estate developer and entering politics. He served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963 to 1967, and also became Speaker of the Alaska House. Gravel was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1968. As a senator, Gravel became nationally known for his forceful, but unsuccessful, attempts to end the draft during the War in Vietnam, and for putting the Pentagon Papers into the public record in 1971. He conducted a campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1972 for Vice President of the United States, and then played a crucial role in obtaining Congressional approval for the Trans-Alaska pipeline in 1973. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1974, but was defeated in his bid for a third term in the primary election in 1980. An advocate of direct democracy and the National Initiative, Gravel staged a run for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President of the United States. His campaign failed to gain support, and in March 2008, he left the Democratic Party and joined the Libertarian Party to compete unsuccessfully for its presidential nomination and the inclusion of the National Initiative into the Libertarian Platform. He ran for president as a Democrat again in the 2020 election, in a campaign that ended four months after it began. Two years before his death, Gravel and his campaign staff founded the progressive think tank The Gravel Institute. Early life, military service, education Gravel was born on May 13, 1930, in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of five children of French-Canadian immigrant parents, Alphonse and Marie (née Bourassa) Gravel. His parents were part of the Quebec diaspora, and he was raised in a working-class neighborhood during the Great Depression, speaking only French until he was seven years old. Calling him "Mike" from an early age, his father valued work above all else, while his mother stressed the importance of education. Gravel was educated in parochial schools as a Roman Catholic. There he struggled, due to what he later said was undiagnosed dyslexia, and was left back in third grade. He completed elementary school in 1945 and his class voted him "most charming personality". A summer job as a soda jerk led to Gravel handing out campaign fliers for local candidates on his boss's behalf; Gravel was immediately impressed with "the awesomeness of political office". Gravel then boarded at Assumption Preparatory School in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his performance was initially mediocre. By Gravel's telling, in the summer of 1948 he intended to volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces during the 1947–1949 Palestine war, but Alexandra Tolstaya told him to return to school. There an English teacher, the Assumptionist Edgar Bourque, gave him personal attention, improving Gravel's language skills and instructing him in public speaking. Gravel's grades improved measurably in his final year and he graduated in 1949. His sister, Marguerite, became a Holy Cross nun, but Gravel himself struggled with the Catholic faith. He studied for one year at Assumption College, a Catholic school in Worcester, then transferred for his sophomore year to American International College in Springfield. Journalist I. F. Stone and philosopher Bertrand Russell strongly influenced Gravel in their willingness to challenge assumptions and oppose social convention and political authority. Around May 1951, Gravel saw that he was about to be drafted and instead enlisted in the U.S. Army for a three-year term so that he could get into the Counterintelligence Corps. After basic training and counterintelligence school at Fort Holabird in Maryland and in South Carolina, he went to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. While he expected to be sent off to the Korean War when he graduated as a second lieutenant in early 1952, he was instead assigned to Stuttgart, West Germany, as a Special Adjutant in the Army's Communications Intelligence Service. In Germany, Gravel conducted surveillance operations on civilians and paid off spies. After about a year, he transferred to Orléans, France, where his French language abilities (if not his French-Canadian accent) allowed him to infiltrate French communist rallies. He worked as a Special Agent in the Counterintelligence Corps until 1954, eventually becoming a first lieutenant. Following his discharge, Gravel entered the Columbia University School of General Studies in New York City, where he studied economics and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1956. He moved to New York "flat broke" and supported himself by working as a bar boy in a hotel, driving a taxicab, and working in the investment bond department at Bankers Trust. During this time he left the Roman Catholic faith. Move to Alaska Gravel "decided to become a pioneer in a faraway place," and moved to pre-statehood Alaska in August 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place where someone without social or political connections could be a viable candidate for public office. Alaska's voting age of 19, less than most other states' 21, played a role in his decision, as did its newness and cooler climate. Broke when he arrived, he immediately found work in real estate sales until winter arrived. Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-to-Fairbanks run. Subsequently, he opened a small real estate brokerage in Anchorage (the Territory of Alaska not requiring a license) and saved enough so as not to have to work the railroad again. The firm was named the M. R. Gravel Real Estate Company. Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and continued a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life. Seeing Alaska as a wide-open place with no political establishment or entrenched interests, Gravel quickly became part of the civic scene there. By October 1957 he was a Division Chairman for Anchorage for the Democratic Central Committee in the territory, and by June 1958 he was president of the Alaska Young Democrats organization. He also became active in the United States Junior Chamber (Jaycees), and by early 1958 his duties included handing out awards for farmer of the year. By early 1958, Gravel was running as Democratic Party primary candidate for a Third Division seat in House of Representative of the territorial legislature. (This was one of the four judicial divisions into which Alaska was sectioned at the time.) Using the slogan "Gravel, the Roadbed to Prosperity", he ran but lost. At the same time, he was also an advocate for Alaskan statehood. Gravel went on a 44-state national speaking tour concerning tax reform in 1959, sponsored by the Jaycees, often dressing for events as Paul Revere. Gravel was selected from some two thousand applications for this position. The tour received a good amount of local newspaper coverage at its various stops, with Gravel's first name sometimes given as Mike and other times as Maurice. The tour's general message was an urging of "lower taxes, more efficiency in government and a system of taxation moderate at all levels of income". At several stops Gravel stated that the "tide of socialism" had to be stopped. He elaborated at another stop, "It is part of our Jaycee creed that economic justice can best be won by free men through free enterprise. We really want to see that free enterprise become our inheritance." The tour was scheduled to conclude in Washington D.C., on Tax Day, April 15, with petition signatures accumulated for reform to be presented to U.S. lawmakers: dressed as Revere, Gravel rode with the petition to the steps of the U.S. Capitol. The tour over, Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin at the First Methodist Church of Anchorage on April 29, 1959. She was a native of Montana who had attended Billings Business College before moving to Alaska two years prior and becoming a secretary in the office of the Anchorage city manager. She had also been named Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958. They had two children, Martin Anthony Gravel and Lynne Denise Gravel, born c. 1960 and 1962 respectively. Gravel ran without avail for the City Council in Anchorage in 1960. During this time, he had become a successful real estate agent; after the 1960 election, he became a property developer in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Anchorage. After a partner ran into financial difficulty, however, the project went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Gravel was forced out in 1962. State legislator With the support of Alaska wholesale grocer Barney Gottstein and supermarket builder Larry Carr, Gravel ran for the Alaska House of Representatives representing Anchorage in 1962, initially assigned the 10th and then 8th districts. Alaska had very crowded primaries that year: Gravel was one of 33 Democrats, along with 21 Republicans, who were running for the chance to compete for the 14 House seats allocated to the 8th district. Gravel made it through the primary, and in November eight Republicans and six Democrats were elected to the House from the district, with Gravel finishing eighth overall and third among with Democrats, with 8,174 votes. Gottstein became Gravel's main financial backer during most of his subsequent campaigns. Gravel served in the Alaska House of Representatives from January 28, 1963 to January 22, 1967, winning reelection in 1964. In his first term, he served as a minority member on two House committees: Commerce, and Labor and Management. He co-authored and sponsored the act that created the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights. Gravel was the chief architect of the law that created a regional high school system for rural Alaska; this allowed Alaska Natives to attend schools near where they lived instead of having to go to schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the lower 48 states. During the half-years that the legislature was not in session, Gravel resumed his real estate work. With Gottstein and Carr's backing, he became quite successful as a property developer on the Kenai Peninsula. During 1965 and 1966, he served as the Speaker of the House, surprising observers by winning that post. Gravel convinced former Speaker Warren A. Taylor to not try for the position against him by promising Taylor chairmanship of the Rules Committee, then reneged on the promise. Gravel denied later press charges that he had promised but not delivered on other committee chairmanships. As Speaker he antagonized fellow lawmakers by imposing his will on the legislature's committees and feuded with Alaska State Senate president Robert J. McNealy. Gravel did not run for reelection in 1966, instead choosing to run for Alaska's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, losing the primary to four-term incumbent Democrat Ralph Rivers by 1,300 votes and splitting the Democratic Party in the process. Rivers lost the general election that year to Republican state Senator Howard Pollock. Following this defeat, Gravel returned to the real estate business in Anchorage. U.S. Senator Election to Senate in 1968 In 1968, Gravel ran against 81-year-old incumbent Democratic United States Senator Ernest Gruening, a popular former governor of the Alaska Territory who was considered one of the fathers of Alaska's statehood, for his party's nomination to the U.S. Senate. Gravel's campaign was primarily based on his youth and telegenic appearance rather than issue differences. He hired Joseph Napolitan, the first self-described political consultant, in late 1966. They spent over a year and a half planning a short, nine-day primary election campaign that featured the slogans "Alaska first" and "Let's do something about the state we're in", the distribution of a collection of essays titled Jobs and More Jobs, and the creation of a half-hour, well-produced, glamorized biographical film of Gravel, Man for Alaska. The film was shown twice a day on every television station in Alaska, and carried by plane and shown on home projectors in hundreds of Alaska Native villages. The heavy showings quickly reversed a 2–to–1 Gruening lead in polls into a Gravel lead. Gravel visited many remote villages by seaplane and showed a thorough understanding of the needs of the bush country and the fishing and oil industries. Gravel also benefited from maintaining a deliberately ambiguous posture about Vietnam policy. Gruening had been one of only two Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and his opposition to President Lyndon B. Johnson's war policies was harming him among the Democratic electorate; according to Gravel, "all I had to do was stand up and not deal with the subject, and people would assume that I was to the right of Ernest Gruening, when in point of fact I was to the left of him". In Man for Alaska, Gravel argued that "the liberals" would come to West Germany's defense if it was attacked, and that the same standard should apply to the United States' allies in Asia. During the campaign he also claimed that he was "more in the mainstream of American thought on Vietnam" than Gruening, despite the fact that he had written to Gruening to praise his antiwar stance four years earlier. Decades later, Gravel conceded that "I said what I said [about Vietnam] to advance my career." Gravel beat Gruening in the primary by about 2,000 votes. Gruening found "the unexpected defeat hard to take" and thought that some aspects of his opponent's biographical film had misled viewers. In the general election, Gravel faced Republican Elmer E. Rasmuson, a banker and former mayor of Anchorage. College students in the state implored Gruening to run a write-in campaign as an Independent, but legal battles prevented him from getting approval for it until only two weeks were left. A late appearance by anti-war presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy did not offset Gruening's lack of funds and endorsements; meanwhile, Gravel and Rasmuson both saturated local media with their filmed biographies. On November 5, 1968, Gravel won the general election with 45 percent of the vote to Rasmuson's 37 percent and Gruening's 18 percent. Senate assignments and style When Gravel joined the U.S.Senate in January 1969, he requested and received a seat on the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, which had direct relevance to Alaskan issues. He also got a spot on the Public Works Committee, which he held throughout his time in the Senate. Finally, he was a member of the Select Committee on Small Business. In 1971 he became chair of the Public Works Committee's Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds, and by 1973 he was chair of its Subcommittee on Water Resources, then later its Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution. Gravel was also initially named to the Joint Committee on Congressional Operations. By 1973 Gravel was off the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee and the Select Small Business Committee and instead a member of the Finance Committee, and by 1977 was chair of that body's Subcommittee on Energy and Foundations. By 1973 he had also been on the ad hoc Special Committee to Study Secret and Confidential Government Documents. By his own admission, Gravel was too new and "too abrasive" to be effective in the Senate by the usual means of seniority-based committee assignments or negotiating deals with other senators, and was sometimes seen as arrogant or a nuisance by the more senior and tradition-oriented members. Gravel relied on attention-getting gestures to achieve what he wanted, hoping national exposure would force other senators to listen to him. But even senators who agreed with him on issues considered his methods to be showboating. As part of this approach, Gravel voted with Southern Democrats to keep the Senate filibuster rule in place, and accordingly supported Russell Long and Robert Byrd but opposed Ted Kennedy in Senate leadership battles. In retrospective assessment, University of Alaska Anchorage history professor Stephen Haycox said, "Loose cannon is a good description of Gravel's Senate career. He was an off-the-wall guy, and you weren't really ever sure what he would do." Nuclear issues and the Cold War In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one-megaton calibration exercise for the second and larger five-megaton Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety; he then made a personal appeal to President Richard Nixon to stop the test. After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971 Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign). In 1971 Gravel voted against the Nixon administration's proposed anti-ballistic missile system, the Safeguard Program, having previously vacillated over the issue, suggesting that he might be willing to support it in exchange for federal lands in Alaska being opened up for private oil drilling. His vote alienated Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who had raised funds for Gravel's primary campaign. Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971 Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975 he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974 Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power. Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's July 1971 secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.), Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with the P.R.C., including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. He reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971. Vietnam War, the draft, and the Pentagon Papers Although he did not campaign against the Vietnam War during his first Senate campaign, by the end of 1970 Gravel was speaking out against United States policy in southeast Asia: in December of that year he persuaded William Fulbright to join him in a spontaneous two-day filibuster against a $155 million military aid package to Cambodia's Khmer Republic government in the Cambodian Civil War. President Richard Nixon had campaigned in 1968 on a promise to end the U.S. military draft, a decision endorsed by the February 1970 report of the Gates Commission. The existing draft law was scheduled to conclude at the end of June 1971, and the Senate faced a contentious debate about whether to extend it as the Vietnam War continued. The Nixon administration announced in February 1971 that it wanted a two-year extension to June 1973, after which the draft would end; Army planners had already been operating under the assumption of a two-year extension, after which an all-volunteer force would be in place. Skeptics such as Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Stennis thought this unrealistic and wanted a four-year extension, but the two-year proposal is what went forward in Congress. By early May 1971, Gravel had indicated his intention to filibuster the draft renewal legislation, halting conscription and thereby bringing U.S. involvement in the war to a rapid end. During this period he also supported efforts to mobilize and influence public opinion against the war, endorsing the "Vietnam War Out Now" rallies in Washington D.C. and San Francisco on April 24, 1971, and financing a broadcast campaign by the antiwar group War No More with a personal loan. In June 1972 he escorted a group of over 100 antiwar protesters, including psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, actress Candice Bergen, theater producer and director Joseph Papp, and peditrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, into the United States Capitol Building; the group was arrested after blocking a hallway outside the Senate chamber. By June 1971, some Democratic senators opposed to the war wanted to limit the renewal to a one-year extension, while others wanted to end it immediately; Gravel reiterated that he was one of the latter, saying, "It's a senseless war, and one way to do away with it is to do away with the draft." A Senate vote on June 4 indicated majority support for the two-year extension. On June 18 Gravel announced again his intention to counteract that by filibustering the renewal legislation, defending the practice against those who associated it only with blocking civil rights legislation. The first filibuster attempt failed on June 23 when, by three votes, the Senate voted cloture for only the fifth time since 1927. Protracted negotiations took place over House conference negotiations on the bill, revolving in large part around Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's eventually unsuccessful amendment to tie renewal to a troop withdrawal timetable from Vietnam; during this time the draft law expired and no more were conscripted. On August 5, the Nixon administration pleaded for a renewal before the Senate went on recess, but Gravel blocked Stennis's attempt to limit debate, and no vote was held. Finally on September 21, 1971, the Senate invoked cloture over Gravel's second filibuster attempt by one vote, and then passed the two-year draft extension. Gravel's attempts to stop the draft had failed (notwithstanding Gravel's later claims that he had stopped or shortened the draft, taken at face value in some media reports, during his 2008 presidential campaign). Meanwhile, on June 13, 1971, The New York Times began printing large portions of the Pentagon Papers. The papers were a large collection of secret government documents and studies pertaining to the Vietnam War, of which former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg had made unauthorized copies and was determined to make public. Ellsberg had for a year and a half approached members of Congress – such as William Fulbright, George McGovern, Charles Mathias, and Pete McCloskey – about publishing the documents, on the grounds that the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution would give congressional members immunity from prosecution, but all had refused. Instead, Ellsberg gave the documents to the Times. The U.S. Justice Department immediately tried to halt publication, on the grounds that the information revealed within the papers harmed the national interest. Within the next two weeks, a federal court injunction halted publication in the Times; The Washington Post and several other newspapers began publishing parts of the documents, with some of them also being halted by injunctions; and the whole matter went to the U.S. Supreme Court for arguments. Looking for an alternate publication mechanism, Ellsberg returned to his idea of having a member of Congress read them, and chose Gravel based on the latter's efforts against the draft; Gravel agreed where previously others had not. Ellsberg arranged for the papers to be given to Gravel on June 26 via an intermediary, Post editor Ben Bagdikian. Gravel used his counter-intelligence experience to choose a midnight transfer in front of the Mayflower Hotel in the center of Washington, D.C. On the night of June 29, 1971, Gravel attempted to read the papers on the floor of the Senate as part of his filibuster against the draft, but was thwarted when no quorum could be formed. Gravel instead convened a session of the Buildings and Grounds subcommittee that he chaired. He got New York Congressman John G. Dow to testify that the war had soaked up funding for public buildings, thus making discussion of the war relevant to the committee. He began reading from the papers with the press in attendance, omitting supporting documents that he felt might compromise national security, and declaring, "It is my constitutional obligation to protect the security of the people by fostering the free flow of information absolutely essential to their democratic decision-making." He read until 1 a.m., culminating by saying "Arms are being severed. Metal is clashing through human bodies because of the public policy this government and all its branches continue to support." Then with tears and sobs he said that he could no longer physically continue, the previous three nights of sleeplessness and fear about the future having taken their toll. Gravel ended the session by, with no other senators present, establishing unanimous consent to insert 4,100 pages of the Papers into the Congressional Record of his subcommittee. The following day, the Supreme Court's New York Times Co. v. United States decision ruled in favor of the newspapers and publication in the Times and others resumed. In July 1971 Bantam Books published an inexpensive paperback edition of the papers containing the material the Times had published. Gravel, too, wanted to privately publish the portion of the papers he had read into the record, believing that "immediate disclosure of the contents of these papers will change the policy that supports the war". After being turned down by many commercial publishers, on August 4 he reached agreement with Beacon Press, the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which Gravel was a member. Announced on August 17 and published on October 22, 1971, this four-volume, relatively expensive set became the "Senator Gravel Edition", which studies from Cornell University and the Annenberg Center for Communication have labeled as the most complete edition of the Pentagon Papers to be published. The "Gravel Edition" was edited and annotated by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, and included an additional volume of analytical articles on the origins and progress of the war, also edited by Chomsky and Zinn. Beacon Press then was subjected to a FBI investigation; an outgrowth of this was the Gravel v. United States court case, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled upon in June 1972; it held that the Speech or Debate Clause did grant immunity to Gravel for his reading the papers in his subcommittee, did grant some immunity to Gravel's congressional aide, but granted no immunity to Beacon Press in relation to their publishing the same papers. The U.S. Senate Democratic Caucus backed Gravel in the case, but due to Republican opposition it did not pay Gravel's legal fees, leaving him owing $25,000 (the equivalent of $150,000 in 2019, adjusted for inflation). The events of 1971 changed Gravel in the following months from an obscure freshman senator to a nationally visible political figure. He became a sought-after speaker on the college circuit as well as at political fundraisers, opportunities he welcomed as lectures were "the one honest way a Senator has to supplement his income". But his speaking tours caused him to accrue one of the worst absentee records in the Senate. The Democratic candidates for the 1972 presidential election sought his endorsement. In January 1972 Gravel endorsed Maine Senator Ed Muskie, hoping that his support would help Muskie with the party's left wing and in ethnic French-Canadian areas during the first primary contest in New Hampshire (Muskie won, but not overwhelmingly, and his campaign faltered soon after). In April 1972 Gravel appeared on all three networks' nightly newscasts to decry the Nixon administration's reliance on Vietnamization by making reference to the secret National Security Study Memorandum 1 document, which stated it would take 8–13 years for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam to defend South Vietnam. Gravel made excerpts from the study public, but senators Robert P. Griffin and William B. Saxbe blocked his attempt to read NSSM 1 into the Congressional Record. Domestic policy In 1970 Gravel co-sponsored legislation to establish a guaranteed minimum income, entitling poor families to up to $6,300 a year (the equivalent of $42,000 in 2019 after adjustment for inflation). He subsequently voted for a "work bonus" program, which would have entitled low-income working families with dependent children if they were paying Social Security or Railroad Retirement taxes to a non-taxable bonus of up to 10 percent of their wages. Gravel also supported extending Social Security to all federal employees and introduced a campaign finance reform bill in 1971 that would have enacted full disclosure of campaign financing, placed limits on large donations, media spending and individual candidate spending. In 1969, Gravel was the only Democratic Senator outside of the South to vote for Nixon's Supreme Court nominee Clement Haynsworth. The following year Gravel opposed Nixon's next pick, G. Harrold Carswell. Run for vice president in 1972 Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates. Toward this end he began soliciting delegates for their support. He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose. On the convention's final day, July 14, 1972, McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice. Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations. Thus there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska. He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination. In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting that included several other candidates. Gravel attracted some attention for his efforts: writer Norman Mailer said he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films", while Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances". Yet the process was doubly disastrous for the Democrats. In the time consumed by nominating and seconding and all the vice-presidential candidates' speeches, the attention of the delegates on the floor was lost and McGovern's speech was pushed to 3:30 a.m. The haste with which Eagleton was selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver. Reelection to Senate in 1974 Several years earlier, Alaska politicians had speculated that Gravel would have a hard time getting both renominated and elected when his first term expired, given that he was originally elected without a base party organization and tended to focus on national rather than local issues. Nonetheless, after receiving support from national and local labor leaders, securing key earmarks, and producing another half-hour TV advertorial, in 1974 Gravel was reelected to the Senate, with 58 percent of the vote to 42 percent for Republican State Senator C. R. Lewis, who was a national officer of the John Birch Society. Second term Gravel's reelection campaign left him $65,000–$75,000 in debt. In 1975 The Washington Post reported on a memo by his executive assistant laying out a fundraising strategy to tackle this, including raising funds from oil companies, meeting with previous donors and "inquir[ing] into the governmental priorities of these people and their groups in the coming session", as well as obtaining further speaking fees to reduce his personal debt. This was followed by a number of stories about links between Gravel, lobbyists and fundraisers, including one that was widely publicized in Alaska about his holding a share in a Colorado resort with two Washington lobbyists he was working with on land and energy legislation. Gravel had been open about the investment and had opposing views to one of the lobbyists on nuclear power. In 1980 the Wall Street Journal published details about his fundraising activities, including writing to individuals and PACs in the oil industry, pledging to kill off proposals for a windfall profits tax on the sector, and traveling in the Middle East with the business partner of one of his donors to sell Alaskan land to businessmen. Gravel suggested that critics of his fundraising were "naive". In 1975 Gravel introduced an amendment to cut the number of troops overseas by 200,000, but it was defeated on a voice vote. In September 1975 Gravel was named as one of several Congressional Advisers to the Seventh Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly, which met to discuss problems related to economic development and international economic cooperation. In June 1976 Gravel was the focus of a federal investigation into allegations that he was involved in a sex-for-vote arrangement. Congressional staff clerk Elizabeth Ray (who had already been involved in a sex scandal that led to the downfall of Representative Wayne Hays) said that in August 1972 she had sex with Gravel aboard a houseboat on the Potomac River, under the instruction of Representative Kenneth J. Gray, her boss at the time. Gray allegedly wanted to secure Gravel's support for further funding for construction of the National Visitor Center in Washington, a troubled project that was under the jurisdiction of subcommittees that both members chaired. Another Congressional staffer said she witnessed the boat encounter, but Gravel said at the time that he had never met either of the women. Gravel and Gray strongly denied that they had made any arrangement regarding legislation, and neither was ever charged with any wrongdoing. Decades later Gravel wrote that he had indeed had sex with Ray, but had not changed any votes because of it. Gravel and his main financial backer, Gottstein, had a falling out in 1978, during the Congressional debate over whether to allow a controversial sale of U.S. F-15 fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia. An ardent backer of Israel, Gottstein opposed the sale and asked Gravel to vote against it. But Gravel not only voted for it but made an emotional speech attacking the anti-sale campaign. Gravel wrote in 2008 that it was the only time Gottstein had ever asked him for a favor, and the rupture resulted in their never speaking to each other again. Alaskan issues By 1971 Gravel was urging construction of the much-argued Trans-Alaska pipeline, addressing environmental concerns by saying that the pipeline's builders and operators should have "total and absolute" responsibility for any consequent environmental damage. Two years later the debate over the pipeline came to a crux, with The New York Times describing it as "environmentalists [in] a holy war with the major oil companies". In February 1973 the U.S. Court of Appeals blocked the issuance of permits for construction; Gravel and fellow Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens reacted by urging Congress to pass legislation overturning the court's decision. Environmentalists opposed to the pipeline, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club then sought to use the recently passed National Environmental Policy Act to their advantage; Gravel designed an amendment to the pipeline bill that would immunize the pipeline from any further court challenges under that law, and thus speed its construction. Passage of the amendment became the key battle regarding the pipeline. On July 17, 1973, in a dramatic roll-call vote, the Gravel amendment was approved as a 49–49 tie was broken in favor by Vice President Spiro Agnew. The actual bill enabling the pipeline then passed easily; Gravel had triumphed in what became perhaps his most lasting accomplishment as a senator. In opposition to the Alaskan fishing industry, Gravel advocated American participation in the formation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. For two years he opposed legislation that established a Exclusive Economic Zone for marine resources. He was one of only 19 senators to vote against Senate approval for the expanded zone in 1976, saying it would undermine the U.S. position in Law of the Sea negotiations and that nations arbitrarily extending their fishing rights limits would "produce anarchy of the seas". The legislation was passed, and the United States has signed but never ratified the Law of the Sea treaty. Gravel accumulated a complicated record on Indian affairs during his time in the Senate. During his first year in the Senate Gravel urged abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, criticizing the agency for the pace of development of schools in Alaska, its paternalistic attitudes and the culturally inappropriate nature of its education, and advocating greater shared decision-making between the federal government and native communities in Alaska. Later, his views changed; in the early 1970s Gravel supported a demonstration project that established links between Alaskan villages and the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, for medical diagnostic communications. In 1971, he fended off accusations from Alaskan natives that he was not spending enough time working on their land claims. Gravel helped secure a private grant to facilitate the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference in 1977, attended by Inuit representatives from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. These conferences now also include representatives from Russia. In 1977, Gravel helped lead an effort to have the U.S. Interior Department rename Mount McKinley to Denali; this eventually led to Denali National Park being so named. Subsequently, Gravel proposed a never-built "Denali City" development above the Tokositna River near the mountain, to consist of a giant Teflon dome enclosing hotels, golf courses, condominiums, and commercial buildings. A related idea of his to build a high-speed rail line to Denali also failed to gain traction. A key, emotional issue in the state at the time was "locking up Alaska", making reference to allocation of its vast, mostly uninhabited land. President Jimmy Carter desired to put large portions of this land under federal protection against development, a move that some Alaskans vociferously opposed. In 1978 Gravel blocked passage, via procedural delays such as walking out of House–Senate conference committee meetings, of a complex bill which represented a compromise on land use policy. The bill would have put some of Alaska's vast federal land holdings under state control while preserving other portions for federal parks and refuges; the blocking action earned Gravel the enmity of fellow Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who had supported the compromise. In 1980, a new lands bill came up for consideration, that was less favorable to Alaskan interests and more liked by environmentalists; it set aside of Alaska's for national parks, conservation areas, and other restricted federal uses. Gravel blocked it, as not ensuring enough future development in the state. A new compromise version of the 1980 bill came forward, which reduced the land set aside to . Representing Alaskan interests, Gravel tried to stop the bill, including by filibuster. But the Senate voted for cloture and passed the bill. Frustrated, Gravel said, "the legislation denies Alaska its rights as a state, and denies the U.S. crucial strategic resources," and opined that the Senate was "a little bit like a tank of barracudas". Nonetheless, the bill, known as the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, was signed by President Carter shortly before leaving the White House, and led to millions of acres being set aside in the state for national parks, wildlife refuges, and other kinds of areas under protection. In 1978 Gravel authored and secured the passage into federal law of the General Stock Ownership Corporation, that became Subchapter U of the Tax Code under the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. This gave states the ability to create corporations that would invest in for-profit enterprises, with all citizens within the state owning shares in the corporation. Gravel's attempt to convince the Alaska state legislature to create such a corporation failed, as did a 1980 state ballot initiative towards the same end, but nevertheless the creation of the General Stock Ownership Corporation in federal law turned out to be significant in the development of binary economics. Loss of Senate seat in 1980 In 1980 Gravel was challenged for the Democratic Party's nomination by State Representative Clark Gruening, the grandson of the man Gravel had defeated in a primary 12 years earlier. One of Gruening's supporters was Gravel's former backer Gottstein. Several factors made Gravel vulnerable. As an insurgent candidate in 1968 Gravel had never established a firm party base. Not liking to hunt or fish, he was also always culturally suspect in the state. The primary campaign was bitterly fought. A group of Democrats, including future governor Steve Cowper, led the campaign against Gravel, with Gravel's actions in respect to the 1978 and 1980 Alaskan lands bills a major issue. This was especially so given that the 1980 bill's dénouement happened but a week before the primary. The sources of Gravel's campaign funds, some of which Gravel readily acknowledged came from political action committees outside the state, also became an issue in the contest. Gruening had pledged that he would not take special interest group money, but Gravel said that Gruening was "dishonest" in accepting individual contributors from Jewish donors living outside the state because to him such contributors comprised "a special interest group ... that seeks to influence the foreign policy of the U.S." Gruening won the primary with about 55 percent of the vote to Gravel's 44 percent. Gravel later conceded that by the time of his defeat, he had alienated "almost every constituency in Alaska". Another factor may have been Alaska's blanket primary system of the time, which allowed unlimited voting across party lines and from its many independents; Republicans believed Gruening would be an easier candidate to defeat in the general election. Gruening lost the general election to Republican Frank Murkowski. Gravel was the last Democrat to represent Alaska in Congress for 28 years, until Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich defeated Ted Stevens, by then an aged, iconic figure who had just been convicted of seven felonies for taking unreported gifts, in a very close and protracted election result in 2008. Stevens's conviction was subsequently vacated due to prosecutorial misconduct. Career after leaving the Senate Of his 1980 defeat, Gravel later recalled: "I had lost my career. I lost my marriage. I was in the doldrums for ten years after my defeat," and "Nobody wanted to hire me for anything important. I felt like I was worthless. I didn't know what I could do." By his own later description, Gravel was a womanizer, and had an affair while in the Senate, and in December 1980 he and his wife Rita separated. They filed for divorce in September 1981; she later received all of his Senate pension income. During the 1980s Gravel was a real estate developer in Anchorage and Kenai, Alaska, a consultant, and a stockbroker. One of his real estate ventures, a condominium business, was forced to declare bankruptcy and a lawsuit ensued. In 1986 Gravel worked in partnership with Merrill Lynch Capital Markets to buy losses that financially troubled Alaska Native Corporations could not take as tax deductions and sell them to large national companies looking for tax writeoffs. Gravel also learned computer programming at some point but never practiced it. In 1984 Gravel married his second wife, Whitney Stewart Gravel, a former administrative assistant for Senator Jacob Javits. Return to politics In 1989 Gravel reentered politics. He founded and led The Democracy Foundation, which promotes direct democracy. He established the Philadelphia II corporation, which seeks to replicate the original 1787 Constitutional Convention and have a Second Constitutional Convention to bring about direct democracy Gravel led an effort to get a United States Constitutional amendment to allow voter-initiated federal legislation similar to state ballot initiatives. He argued that Americans are able to legislate responsibly, and that the Act and Amendment in the National Initiative would allow American citizens to become "law makers". However such efforts met with little success. In 2001, Gravel became director of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, where he admired institute co-founder Gregory Fossedal's work on direct democracy in Switzerland. By 2004, Gravel had become chair of the institute, and Fossedal (who in turn was a director of the Democracy Foundation) gave the introduction at Gravel's presidential announcement. In 2003 Gravel gave a speech on direct democracy at a conference hosted by the American Free Press. The event was cosponsored by the Barnes Review, a journal that endorses Holocaust denial. After some controversy over his appearance, Gravel apologized, saying he did not realize the group's ties. Gravel said repeatedly that he did not share the group's views on the Holocaust, stating, "You better believe I know that six million Jews were killed. [The Barnes Review publishers] are nutty as loons if they don't think it happened". The group invited Gravel to speak again, but he declined. Mike and Whitney Gravel lived in Arlington County, Virginia, until 2010 and then resided in Burlingame, California. They have the two grown children from his first marriage, Martin Gravel and Lynne Gravel Mosier, and four grandchildren. Whitney Gravel's income sustained the couple from 1998 on. In the 2000s, Gravel suffered poor health, requiring three surgeries in 2003 for back pain and neuropathy. Due to unreimbursed medical expenses and debts from his political causes, he declared personal bankruptcy in 2004. He began taking a salary from the non-profit organizations for which he was working; much of that income was lent to his presidential campaign. In 2007, he declared that he had "zero net worth". 2008 presidential campaign Democratic Party primaries At the start of 2006 Gravel decided the best way he could promote direct democracy and the National Initiative was to run for president. On April 17, 2006, Gravel became the first candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election, announcing his run in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Short on campaign cash, he took public transportation to get to his announcement. (Gravel called for public financing of elections.) Other principal Gravel positions were the FairTax, as well as withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days and a single payer national health care system. Gravel had opposed the Iraq War, and President George W. Bush's rationale for it, from the beginning, and in 2006 said that U.S. troops in Iraq, as in Vietnam, had "died in vain". He also favored a regional peace initiative, as well as reparation payments for Iraqis. Gravel also called for a "U.S. corporate withdrawal from Iraq", with reconstruction contracts held by U.S. companies to be turned over to Iraqi firms. Gravel campaigned almost full-time in New Hampshire, the first primary state, following his announcement. Opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination showed Gravel with 1 percent or less support. By the end of March 2007, Gravel's campaign had less than $500 in cash on hand against debts of nearly $90,000. Because of his time in the Senate, Gravel was invited to many of the early Democratic presidential debates. During the initial one at South Carolina State University on April 26, 2007, he suggested a bill requiring the president to withdraw from Iraq on pain of criminal penalties. He also advocated positions such as opposing preemptive nuclear war. He stated that the Iraq War had the effect of creating more terrorists and that the "war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis". Regarding his fellow candidates, he said, "I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me – they frighten me." In one such exchange, Gravel said, "Tell me, Barack, who do you want to nuke?" to which Obama responded, "I'm not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike, I promise." Media stories said that Gravel was responsible for much of whatever "heat" and "flashpoints" had taken place during the Democratic debates. Gravel gained considerable publicity by shaking up the normally staid multiple-candidate format; The New York Times' media critic said that what Gravel had done was "steal a debate with outrageous, curmudgeonly statements". The Internet was a benefit: a YouTube video of his responses in the debate was viewed more than 225,892 times, ranking seventeenth in most views for week and first among news and politics clips; his name became the fifteenth most searched-for in the blogosphere; and his website garnered more traffic than those of frontrunners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards. Gravel appeared on the popular Colbert Report on television on May 2, and his campaign and career were profiled in national publications such as Salon. Two wordless, Warholesque campaign videos, "Rock" and "Fire", were released on YouTube in late May and became hits, and eventually gained over 760,000 and 185,000 views respectively. "Rock", in turn, was given airtime during an episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Some thirty-five years after he first achieved the national spotlight, he had found it again. All this did not improve his performance in the polls; a May 2007 CNN poll showed him with less than 0.5 percent support among Democrats. Gravel was in the next several debates, in one case after CNN reversed a decision to exclude him. Like some of the other second-tier candidates, Gravel did not get as much time as the leaders; during the June 2, 2007, New Hampshire debate, which lasted two hours, he was asked 10 questions and allowed to speak for five minutes and 37 seconds. During the July 23, 2007, CNN-YouTube presidential debate, Gravel responded to audience applause when he had complained of a lack of airtime and said: "Thank you. Has it been fair thus far?" Detractors began to liken him to "the cranky uncle who lives in the attic," or "the angry old guy that just seemed to want to become angrier". Berkeley political scientist David Terr found that moderator George Stephanopoulos directed roughly five percent of his questions to Gravel; in a poll asking who did the best in the debate, Gravel placed seventh among the eight candidates. National opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination continued to show Gravel with one percent or zero percent numbers. By the end of the third-quarter 2007, Gravel had about $17,500 in cash on hand, had collected a total of about $380,000 during the 2008 election cycle, and was continuing to run a threadbare campaign with minimal staff. Beginning with the October 30, 2007, Philadelphia event, Gravel was excluded from most of the debates, with the debate sponsors or the Democratic National Committee saying Gravel's campaign had not met fund-raising, polling, or local campaign organizational thresholds. For the Philadelphia exclusion, Gravel blamed corporate censorship on the part of sponsor owner and alleged military-industrial complex member General Electric for his exclusion and mounted a counter-gathering and debate against a video screen a short distance away, but he had lost his easiest publicity. In reaction, supporters organized "mass donation days" to try to help the campaign gain momentum and funds, such as on December 5, 2007, the anniversary of the Repeal of Prohibition. Gravel did not compete in the initial 2008 vote, the Iowa caucuses, but was still subjected to a false report from MSNBC that he had pulled out of the race afterward. Gravel did focus his attention on the second 2008 vote, the New Hampshire primary. In early January, Mother Jones' investigative reporter James Ridgeway was filmed interviewing and following Gravel in New Hampshire, in which Gravel is interviewed on the phone by Neal Conan for NPR's, Talk of the Nation. He received about 400 votes out of some 280,000 cast in New Hampshire, or 0.14 percent, before taking time off to improve his health. He resumed campaigning, but fared no better in subsequent states. By the end of January 2008, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Gravel were the only remaining Democrats from the initial debates still running; Gravel vowed to stay in the presidential campaign until November. On March 11, 2008, Gravel continued to remain in the Democratic race but additionally endorsed a Green Party candidate for president, Jesse Johnson, saying he wanted to help Johnson prevail against Green Party rivals Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader. By late March, Gravel had almost no fundraising and was only on the ballot in one of the next ten Democratic primaries. Switch to Libertarian Party On March 25, 2008, Gravel announced that he would leave the Democrats and join the Libertarian Party, saying: "My libertarian views, as well as my strong stance against war, the military industrial complex and American imperialism, seem not to be tolerated by Democratic Party elites who are out of touch with the average American; elites that reject the empowerment of American citizens I offered to the Democratic Party at the beginning of this presidential campaign with the National Initiative for Democracy." The following day Gravel entered the race for the 2008 Libertarian presidential nomination, saying that he would have run as a third-party candidate all along except that he needed the public exposure that came from being in the earlier Democratic debates. Gravel's initial notion of running as a fusion candidate with other parties was met with skepticism. As a Libertarian candidate, Gravel faced resistance to his past support of big government initiatives and his unorthodox positions around direct democracy. Nevertheless, he garnered more support than he had as a Democrat, placing second and third in two April 2008 straw polls. In the May 25 balloting at the 2008 Libertarian National Convention in Denver, Gravel finished fourth out of eight candidates on the initial ballot, with 71 votes out of a total 618; he trailed former Congressman and eventual winner Bob Barr, author Mary Ruwart, and businessman Wayne Allyn Root. Gravel's position did not subsequently improve and he was eliminated on the fourth ballot. Afterwards he stated that "I just ended my political career," but he vowed to continue promoting his positions as a writer and lecturer. 2008–early 2019 In June 2008 Gravel endorsed the NYC 9/11 Ballot Initiative, saying the measure would create a "citizens commission rather than a government commission" with subpoena power against top U.S. officials to "make a true investigation as to what happened" regarding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He later said, "Individuals in and out of government may certainly have participated with the obviously known perpetrators of this dastardly act. Suspicions abound over the analysis presented by government. Obviously an act that has triggered three wars, Afghan, Iraqi and the continuing War on Terror, should be extensively investigated which was not done and which the government avoids addressing." In August 2008 Gravel was speaking to a crowd of supporters of Sami Al-Arian (who two years earlier had pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison for a charge of conspiracy in helping Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a "specially designated terrorist" organization) when he was caught on tape saying of Al-Arian's prosecutor, "Find out where he lives, find out where his kids go to school, find out where his office is: picket him all the time. Call him a racist in signs if you see him. Call him an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but in his face all the time." Gravel was criticized for potentially involving the children of the prosecutor, and Al-Arian's family disavowed the sentiments. Gravel defended Alaska Governor Sarah Palin after she was chosen as Republican presidential nominee John McCain's running mate in September 2008. He praised Palin's record in standing up to corruption among Alaskan Republicans, thought her national inexperience was an asset not a detriment, and predicted that the "Troopergate" investigation into whether she improperly fired a state official would "come out in her favor". Gravel made clear he would not support or vote for either McCain–Palin or Obama–Biden in the general election. The following year Gravel said that Palin's politics were "terrible, but that doesn't detract from the fact that she's a very talented person". He predicted that Palin would run for president in 2012 and that "she's going to surprise a lot of people". Palin did not run, but Gravel's prediction about "TrooperGate" was accurate as Palin was found not to have violated ethics laws. In 2013, by the invitation of Hamed Ghashghavi, the secretary for international affairs of the 3rd International Conference on Hollywoodism in Tehran, Iran, Gravel attended that event as an Iranian government-organized anti-Hollywood conference. Gravel noted that the conference was attended by "various elements of extremes" but said it was necessary to discuss how the U.S. film industry portrayed Iran in order to prevent "an insane war" between the two nations. In May 2013 Gravel was one of several former members of Congress to accept $20,000 from the Paradigm Research Group, an advocacy group for UFO disclosure, as part of holding what they termed a Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, modeled after congressional hearings, regarding supposed U.S. government suppression of evidence concerning UFOs. Gravel said, "Something is monitoring the planet, and they are monitoring it very cautiously, because we are a very warlike planet," and, "What we're faced with here is, in areas of the media, and the government too, an effort to marginalize and ridicule people who have specific knowledge." In December 2014 Gravel was announced as the new CEO of KUSH, a company which makes marijuana-infused products for medicinal and recreational use, and a subsidiary of Cannabis Sativa, Inc. He also became an Independent Director of Cannabis Sativa. During the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, Gravel praised Bernie Sanders and his campaign, saying "Bernie is one of the most gifted politicians I have ever observed. He's a person of great integrity and very clever." Gravel predicted that Sanders would be elected president but would be unable to get his key reforms through Congress, and thus that Sanders and his supporters should back some of the proposals of the National Initiative. In 2016, Gravel said in relation to the September 11 attacks: "We killed 58,000 American servicemen in the Vietnam War and all they did was die in vain. What's so unusual about killing 3,000 more in order to develop the grist for the mill to empower into infinity the military industrial complex?" and "There's no question in my mind that 9/11 was an inside job". The remarks were later disavowed by even Gravel supporters. By 2019 Gravel was living in Seaside, California. He was working on a book, at the time titled Human Governance, about his principal idea for direct democracy, a U.S. Constitutional Amendment to create a "Legislature of the People" that would circumvent the existing Congress. The book was self-published at the end of the year by AuthorHouse under the title The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People. 2020 presidential campaign On March 19, 2019, Gravel announced that he was considering running in the 2020 Democratic primaries. He said, "The goal will not be to win, but to bring a critique of American imperialism to the Democratic debate stage." An exploratory committee was formed, with filing a statement of organization with the Federal Election Commission on that same day. The filing was the idea of a group of teenagers, led by David Oks and Henry Williams, inspired by the podcast Chapo Trap House, and done with Gravel's consent (after a week spent convincing him of the idea's merits), but without his involvement. Intrigued by the group's commitment to amplifying his long-held policy goals, Gravel (who would be old on Inauguration Day in 2021) said he planned to meet with them in April, and to discuss a 2020 White House run with his wife. On April 2, 2019, Gravel filed to officially run for office. The campaign called itself the "#Gravelanche". Gravel's initial stated goal was merely to qualify for debates by getting the required 65,000 small donors. He discouraged people from voting for him and said his preferences were Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, both of whom favor a non-interventionist foreign policy. But on April 29, Gravel's campaign said he was running to win, not just to participate in debates. In a subsequent interview, though, Gravel emphasized the virtue of Sanders and Gabbard in some order as a presidential ticket. Statements like these caused Vox to call Gravel "2020's oddest Democratic presidential candidate". The New York Times Magazine included Gravel as an example in the rise of democratic socialism in the United States also exemplified by Sanders's 2016 race and the 2018 election of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "[Gravel's] campaign represents the most absurd form of a legitimate movement on the left that feels little obligation to the Democratic Party." In June 2019, Gravel touted the endorsement of Muntadher al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who, in December 2008, made headlines after he threw his shoes at President George W. Bush in protest of the U.S. war in Iraq. Al-Zaidi endorsed Gravel based on his promise to improve White House policies regarding Iraq and the Middle East. On June 13, 2019, the Democratic Party announced the 20 major candidates who qualified for the first debate later that month. Gravel was one of the four who missed out (the others were Montana Governor Steve Bullock, U.S. Representative Seth Moulton, and Miramar, Florida, Mayor Wayne Messam). Gravel had been unable to get the requisite number of donations, or to score one percent or better in enough polls (many polls did not even include him). Nevertheless, Gravel said he would not drop out and would try to qualify for the July debate. In early July, however, Gravel's campaign said it was still 10,000 contributions short of the 65,000-donor threshold and that it was "nearing its conclusion". It solicited suggestions for where to donate $100–150,000 of leftover campaign funds. Gravel added that he had always planned on ending the campaign before the teenagers in charge of it needed to return to school. A few days later the campaign became the first to run an attack ad against Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, using the text "Is this the best our party has to offer?" Gravel's campaign crossed the threshold of 65,000 donors on July 12, 2019, meeting the qualification mark for that month's debate. But because 20 other candidates, the maximum allowed to participate, had already met at least the polling criterion, which takes priority over the donor criterion, Gravel was not invited. The campaign officially came to a close on August 6, 2019, with Gravel endorsing both Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard for president. Gravel's campaign later stated on Twitter that they never wanted to win but saw the campaign as an "intimately democratic" project and expressed honor at working with Gravel. Gravel said he would divide remaining campaign funds between charity and a new think tank which would espouse his ideas. The Gravel Institute Gravel used some of the funds remaining from his 2020 presidential campaign to found an eponymous progressive think tank called The Gravel Institute in 2019. As noted by Vice magazine, the institute aims to do battle with PragerU from a left-wing perspective. Launched in September 2020, the new entity said it would "carry on the life's work of former U.S Senator Mike Gravel in fighting for global peace and democracy. Its mission is to promote bold and forward-looking ideas about a more peaceful and egalitarian world, and to build a robust movement of young people to win it". Contributors announced include Cornel West and Slavoj Žižek, as well as Lower Brule Indian Reservation activist Nick Estes. Other presenters have included and will include H. Jon Benjamin, Briahna Joy Gray, Bernie Sanders, Chelsea Manning, Richard Wolff, Stephanie Kelton, Zephyr Teachout, David Cross, Jabari Brisport, Zohran Mamdani, and Gravel himself (though it is unknown if his appearance will be cancelled due to his death in June 2021, or if the video has already been recorded). Death Gravel died of multiple myeloma at his home in Seaside, California, on June 26, 2021, at age 91. The obituary for him in The New York Times stated that Gravel was "a two-term Democratic senator from Alaska ... who was perhaps better known as an unabashed attention-getter" who later become known for "mounting long-shot presidential runs". The obituary in The Washington Post was similar, saying that Gravel was "an Alaska Democrat with a flair for the theatrical who rose from obscurity to brief renown" and later "ran quixotic campaigns for the presidency". The Anchorage Daily News quoted Gravel as saying of himself in 1989, "I'm an independent kind of guy. A rough and ready kind of guy. My glands work in a certain way that make me stand up, foolishly sometimes, and fight." Political positions Alan Abramowitz and Jeffrey Allan Segal described Gravel as "a maverick, if not an eccentric, in the Senate." His Americans for Democratic Action "Liberal Quotient" scores ranged from 81 out of 100 (1971) to 39 out of 100 (1980), with an average of around 61. His American Conservative Union scores ranged from 0 out of 100 (several years, including 1971 and 1972) to 38 out of 100 (1979), with an average of 14. Abramowitz and Segal note that Gravel's lowest ADA ratings coincided with his two Senate re-election bids, and for the most part his highest ACU ratings followed the same pattern. In 1972, as a young senator, Gravel published Citizen Power: A People's Platform, a manifesto outlining what Kirkus Reviews termed a "populist reform [that] would provide 'balanced political power' between the people and government and business interests." Civil rights issues On drug policy, Gravel said in 2007 that he favored decriminalization and treating addiction as a public health matter. During his 2008 presidential candidacy he condemned the War on Drugs as a failure, saying that it did "nothing but savage our inner cities and put our children at risk". Gravel called for abolition of capital punishment in his book Citizen Power, and adhered to this position during his 2008 run for president. He supported abortion rights. During the 2008 campaign Gravel was a strong supporter of LGBT rights. He supported same-sex marriage and opposed the Defense of Marriage Act and the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. He wrote in 2008 that "depriving gays and lesbians of equal rights is immoral". Foreign policy and defense issues Gravel was a critic of American imperialism. Gravel firmly opposed U.S. military action against Iran and Syria. He voiced opposition to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the use of torture, indefinite detention, and what he called "flagrant ignorance" of the Geneva Convention. In 2014 Gravel called for the release of the full, unredacted Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture. Gravel opposed the use of international sanctions as a policy tool and blamed the ones against Iraq under Saddam Hussein for the deaths of a half-million children in that country. In 2013 Gravel said that sanctions against Iran were "illegal". During his 2008 candidacy, Gravel called for a cut in military spending, variously reported to be 15 percent or 50 percent. He called for the savings to boost public education spending. To spur international nuclear nonproliferation efforts, Gravel called for unilateral reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. In 2008 Gravel criticized the decision of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to not pursue the efforts to impeach George W. Bush and the attempted impeachment of Dick Cheney, saying also that Bush and Cheney had committed crimes and deserved "to be prosecuted" at The Hague. In 2013 he expressed disdain for President Obama, calling him "a total fraud" and saying that both Bush and Obama should be tried "for the crimes and murders they've committed" in the International Court of Justice. Gravel specifically condemned Obama for the drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere. Economy, immigration, and environment During his 2008 candidacy Gravel favored a FairTax scheme, which would abolish the Internal Revenue Service, eliminate the federal income tax (which Gravel called "corrupt"), and impose a national sales tax. While Gravel described FairTax as "progressive", others have criticized it as "regressive", disproportionately benefiting the wealthiest Americans. To offset the new sales taxes on essential goods, Gravel's plan called for monthly government rebate payments to individuals and families. During his 2020 campaign Gravel also voiced support for a third legislative body that would give the people direct control of the budget as well as the implementation of a land value tax. Gravel opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during his 2008 candidacy, calling it unfair and economically harmful and needing renegotiation. Gravel believed that NAFTA was the "root cause" of illegal migration to the U.S. He favored a guest worker program and "setting up naturalization procedures that would fairly bring immigrants into legal status". In a 2007 interview, Gravel identified himself as "very much of a globalist" who believed in open markets and open borders and condemned the scapegoating of undocumented immigrants. Gravel also said that he favored eliminating the cap on H1B visas. As a senator from Alaska, Gravel favored drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but opposed it during his 2008 campaign. In 2008, Gravel supported a carbon tax to combat climate change. Gravel spoke in favor of net neutrality during his presidential campaign. Education and health care Gravel called for the cost of college tuition to be borne by the federal government, rather than students. In his 2008 campaign, he called the No Child Left Behind Act "a failure" and called for it to be "reformed and fully funded". He expressed support for universal pre-kindergarten and the expansion of the Head Start program; and expressed an openness to charter schools and school vouchers. He also suggested extending the school day and the school year, and supported merit pay for teachers. Gravel also called for publicly funded universal health care to replace the current employer-sponsored health insurance system. He supported "full funding" of the VA system. When asked in 2007 about naturopathy, homeopathy, and acupuncture, Gravel said that he was "very very much in favor" of holistic health care. Awards and honors In 2008 Gravel received the Columbia University School of General Studies' first annual Isaac Asimov Lifetime Achievement Award. Electoral history Writings Gravel, Mike. Jobs and More Jobs. Mt. McKinley Publishers, 1968. Gravel, Mike. Citizen Power: A People's Platform. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972. . revised and reissued as Citizen Power: A Mandate for Change, AuthorHouse, 2008. . Gravel, Mike and Lauria, Joe. A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and One Man's Fight to Stop It. Seven Stories Press, 2008. . Gravel, Mike and Eisenbach, David. The Kingmakers: How the Media Threatens Our Security and Our Democracy. Phoenix Books, 2008. . Gravel, Mike. Voice of a Maverick: The Speeches and Writings of Senator Mike Gravel. Brandywine House, 2008. Gravel, Mike. Foreword to Poisoned Power: The Case Against Nuclear Power Plants. John W. Goffman & Arthur R. Tamplin, Rodale Press, Inc., Emmaus, PA, June 1971. Gravel, Mike. The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People. AuthorHouse, 2020. Explanatory notes References Citations General references The Pentagon Papers Senator Gravel Edition. Vol. Five: Critical Essays. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972. 341p. plus 72p. of Index to Vol. I–IV of the Papers; Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, editors. External links Mike Gravel official website The Gravel Institute |- |- 1930 births 2021 deaths 1972 United States vice-presidential candidates 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American politicians 20th-century Roman Catholics 20th-century Unitarians 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American politicians 21st-century Unitarians 9/11 conspiracy theorists Alaska Democrats American International College alumni American Unitarian Universalists American anti–Iraq War activists American conspiracy theorists American democracy activists American male non-fiction writers American people of French-Canadian descent American political writers American real estate businesspeople American stockbrokers Anti-corporate activists Assumption University (Worcester) alumni Burials at Arlington National Cemetery Businesspeople from Anchorage, Alaska Businesspeople from Springfield, Massachusetts California Democrats Candidates in the 2008 United States presidential election Candidates in the 2020 United States presidential election Columbia University School of General Studies alumni Deaths from cancer in California Deaths from multiple myeloma Democratic Party United States senators Direct democracy activists Drug policy reform activists Former Roman Catholics Virginia Libertarians Members of the Alaska House of Representatives Military personnel from Massachusetts Non-interventionism People from Arlington County, Virginia People from Kenai Peninsula Borough, Alaska People with dyslexia Politicians from Anchorage, Alaska Politicians from Springfield, Massachusetts Speakers of the Alaska House of Representatives United States Army officers United States senators from Alaska Writers about direct democracy Writers from Anchorage, Alaska

C_99b905b192ab4470bbae0787f5f31d5c_1

What significant events happened during the campaign?

What significant events happened during Mike Gravel's 1972 campaign?

Mike Gravel

Gravel "decided to become a pioneer in a faraway place," and moved to pre-statehood Alaska in August 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place where someone without social or political connections could be a viable candidate for public office. Alaska's voting age of 19, less than most other states' 21, played a role in his decision, as did its newness and cooler climate. Broke when he arrived, he immediately found work in real estate sales until winter arrived. Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-Fairbanks run. Subsequently, he opened a small real estate brokerage in Anchorage (the Territory of Alaska not requiring a license) and saved enough so as not to have to work the railroad again. Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and continued a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life. Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin, who had been Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958, on April 29, 1959. They had two children, Martin Anthony Gravel and Lynne Denise Gravel, born c. 1960 and 1962 respectively. Meanwhile, he went to Washington, D.C. in 1957 to campaign for Alaskan statehood via the "Tennessee Plan": dressed as Paul Revere, he rode with a petition to the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Seeing Alaska as a wide-open place with no political establishment or entrenched interests, and using the slogan "Gravel, the Roadbed to Prosperity", he ran for the territorial legislature in 1958 but lost. He went on a national speaking tour concerning tax reform in 1959, sponsored by the Jaycees. He ran without avail for the City Council in Anchorage in 1960. During this time, he had become a successful real estate agent; after the 1960 election, he became a property developer in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Anchorage. A partner ran into financial difficulty, however, and the project went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and Gravel was forced out in 1962. In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one megaton calibration exercise for the second, and larger five megaton, Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests in Congress. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences, and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety to be created; he then made a personal appeal to President Nixon to stop the test. After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the larger Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971, Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage, in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign). Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for the commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971, Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975, he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974, Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power. Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.) in July 1971, Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with China, including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. Gravel reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971. Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in running for the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates. Towards this end he began soliciting delegates for their support in advance of the convention. He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose. At the convention's final day on July 14, 1972, presidential nominee McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice. Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations. Thus, there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska. He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination. In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting that included several other candidates as well. For his efforts, Gravel attracted some attention: famed writer Norman Mailer would say he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films", while Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances ..." Yet, the whole process had been doubly disastrous for the Democrats. The time consumed with the nominating and seconding and other speeches of all the vice-presidential candidates had lost the attention of the delegates on the floor and pushed McGovern's speech until 3:30 a.m. The haste with which Eagleton had been selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver. CANNOTANSWER

At the convention's final day on July 14, 1972, presidential nominee McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice.

Maurice Robert Gravel ( ; May 13, 1930 – June 26, 2021) was an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981 as a member of the Democratic Party, and who, in later life, twice ran for the presidential nomination of that party. Born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, by French-Canadian immigrant parents, Gravel moved to Alaska in the late 1950s, becoming a real estate developer and entering politics. He served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963 to 1967, and also became Speaker of the Alaska House. Gravel was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1968. As a senator, Gravel became nationally known for his forceful, but unsuccessful, attempts to end the draft during the War in Vietnam, and for putting the Pentagon Papers into the public record in 1971. He conducted a campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1972 for Vice President of the United States, and then played a crucial role in obtaining Congressional approval for the Trans-Alaska pipeline in 1973. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1974, but was defeated in his bid for a third term in the primary election in 1980. An advocate of direct democracy and the National Initiative, Gravel staged a run for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President of the United States. His campaign failed to gain support, and in March 2008, he left the Democratic Party and joined the Libertarian Party to compete unsuccessfully for its presidential nomination and the inclusion of the National Initiative into the Libertarian Platform. He ran for president as a Democrat again in the 2020 election, in a campaign that ended four months after it began. Two years before his death, Gravel and his campaign staff founded the progressive think tank The Gravel Institute. Early life, military service, education Gravel was born on May 13, 1930, in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of five children of French-Canadian immigrant parents, Alphonse and Marie (née Bourassa) Gravel. His parents were part of the Quebec diaspora, and he was raised in a working-class neighborhood during the Great Depression, speaking only French until he was seven years old. Calling him "Mike" from an early age, his father valued work above all else, while his mother stressed the importance of education. Gravel was educated in parochial schools as a Roman Catholic. There he struggled, due to what he later said was undiagnosed dyslexia, and was left back in third grade. He completed elementary school in 1945 and his class voted him "most charming personality". A summer job as a soda jerk led to Gravel handing out campaign fliers for local candidates on his boss's behalf; Gravel was immediately impressed with "the awesomeness of political office". Gravel then boarded at Assumption Preparatory School in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his performance was initially mediocre. By Gravel's telling, in the summer of 1948 he intended to volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces during the 1947–1949 Palestine war, but Alexandra Tolstaya told him to return to school. There an English teacher, the Assumptionist Edgar Bourque, gave him personal attention, improving Gravel's language skills and instructing him in public speaking. Gravel's grades improved measurably in his final year and he graduated in 1949. His sister, Marguerite, became a Holy Cross nun, but Gravel himself struggled with the Catholic faith. He studied for one year at Assumption College, a Catholic school in Worcester, then transferred for his sophomore year to American International College in Springfield. Journalist I. F. Stone and philosopher Bertrand Russell strongly influenced Gravel in their willingness to challenge assumptions and oppose social convention and political authority. Around May 1951, Gravel saw that he was about to be drafted and instead enlisted in the U.S. Army for a three-year term so that he could get into the Counterintelligence Corps. After basic training and counterintelligence school at Fort Holabird in Maryland and in South Carolina, he went to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. While he expected to be sent off to the Korean War when he graduated as a second lieutenant in early 1952, he was instead assigned to Stuttgart, West Germany, as a Special Adjutant in the Army's Communications Intelligence Service. In Germany, Gravel conducted surveillance operations on civilians and paid off spies. After about a year, he transferred to Orléans, France, where his French language abilities (if not his French-Canadian accent) allowed him to infiltrate French communist rallies. He worked as a Special Agent in the Counterintelligence Corps until 1954, eventually becoming a first lieutenant. Following his discharge, Gravel entered the Columbia University School of General Studies in New York City, where he studied economics and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1956. He moved to New York "flat broke" and supported himself by working as a bar boy in a hotel, driving a taxicab, and working in the investment bond department at Bankers Trust. During this time he left the Roman Catholic faith. Move to Alaska Gravel "decided to become a pioneer in a faraway place," and moved to pre-statehood Alaska in August 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place where someone without social or political connections could be a viable candidate for public office. Alaska's voting age of 19, less than most other states' 21, played a role in his decision, as did its newness and cooler climate. Broke when he arrived, he immediately found work in real estate sales until winter arrived. Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-to-Fairbanks run. Subsequently, he opened a small real estate brokerage in Anchorage (the Territory of Alaska not requiring a license) and saved enough so as not to have to work the railroad again. The firm was named the M. R. Gravel Real Estate Company. Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and continued a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life. Seeing Alaska as a wide-open place with no political establishment or entrenched interests, Gravel quickly became part of the civic scene there. By October 1957 he was a Division Chairman for Anchorage for the Democratic Central Committee in the territory, and by June 1958 he was president of the Alaska Young Democrats organization. He also became active in the United States Junior Chamber (Jaycees), and by early 1958 his duties included handing out awards for farmer of the year. By early 1958, Gravel was running as Democratic Party primary candidate for a Third Division seat in House of Representative of the territorial legislature. (This was one of the four judicial divisions into which Alaska was sectioned at the time.) Using the slogan "Gravel, the Roadbed to Prosperity", he ran but lost. At the same time, he was also an advocate for Alaskan statehood. Gravel went on a 44-state national speaking tour concerning tax reform in 1959, sponsored by the Jaycees, often dressing for events as Paul Revere. Gravel was selected from some two thousand applications for this position. The tour received a good amount of local newspaper coverage at its various stops, with Gravel's first name sometimes given as Mike and other times as Maurice. The tour's general message was an urging of "lower taxes, more efficiency in government and a system of taxation moderate at all levels of income". At several stops Gravel stated that the "tide of socialism" had to be stopped. He elaborated at another stop, "It is part of our Jaycee creed that economic justice can best be won by free men through free enterprise. We really want to see that free enterprise become our inheritance." The tour was scheduled to conclude in Washington D.C., on Tax Day, April 15, with petition signatures accumulated for reform to be presented to U.S. lawmakers: dressed as Revere, Gravel rode with the petition to the steps of the U.S. Capitol. The tour over, Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin at the First Methodist Church of Anchorage on April 29, 1959. She was a native of Montana who had attended Billings Business College before moving to Alaska two years prior and becoming a secretary in the office of the Anchorage city manager. She had also been named Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958. They had two children, Martin Anthony Gravel and Lynne Denise Gravel, born c. 1960 and 1962 respectively. Gravel ran without avail for the City Council in Anchorage in 1960. During this time, he had become a successful real estate agent; after the 1960 election, he became a property developer in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Anchorage. After a partner ran into financial difficulty, however, the project went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Gravel was forced out in 1962. State legislator With the support of Alaska wholesale grocer Barney Gottstein and supermarket builder Larry Carr, Gravel ran for the Alaska House of Representatives representing Anchorage in 1962, initially assigned the 10th and then 8th districts. Alaska had very crowded primaries that year: Gravel was one of 33 Democrats, along with 21 Republicans, who were running for the chance to compete for the 14 House seats allocated to the 8th district. Gravel made it through the primary, and in November eight Republicans and six Democrats were elected to the House from the district, with Gravel finishing eighth overall and third among with Democrats, with 8,174 votes. Gottstein became Gravel's main financial backer during most of his subsequent campaigns. Gravel served in the Alaska House of Representatives from January 28, 1963 to January 22, 1967, winning reelection in 1964. In his first term, he served as a minority member on two House committees: Commerce, and Labor and Management. He co-authored and sponsored the act that created the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights. Gravel was the chief architect of the law that created a regional high school system for rural Alaska; this allowed Alaska Natives to attend schools near where they lived instead of having to go to schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the lower 48 states. During the half-years that the legislature was not in session, Gravel resumed his real estate work. With Gottstein and Carr's backing, he became quite successful as a property developer on the Kenai Peninsula. During 1965 and 1966, he served as the Speaker of the House, surprising observers by winning that post. Gravel convinced former Speaker Warren A. Taylor to not try for the position against him by promising Taylor chairmanship of the Rules Committee, then reneged on the promise. Gravel denied later press charges that he had promised but not delivered on other committee chairmanships. As Speaker he antagonized fellow lawmakers by imposing his will on the legislature's committees and feuded with Alaska State Senate president Robert J. McNealy. Gravel did not run for reelection in 1966, instead choosing to run for Alaska's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, losing the primary to four-term incumbent Democrat Ralph Rivers by 1,300 votes and splitting the Democratic Party in the process. Rivers lost the general election that year to Republican state Senator Howard Pollock. Following this defeat, Gravel returned to the real estate business in Anchorage. U.S. Senator Election to Senate in 1968 In 1968, Gravel ran against 81-year-old incumbent Democratic United States Senator Ernest Gruening, a popular former governor of the Alaska Territory who was considered one of the fathers of Alaska's statehood, for his party's nomination to the U.S. Senate. Gravel's campaign was primarily based on his youth and telegenic appearance rather than issue differences. He hired Joseph Napolitan, the first self-described political consultant, in late 1966. They spent over a year and a half planning a short, nine-day primary election campaign that featured the slogans "Alaska first" and "Let's do something about the state we're in", the distribution of a collection of essays titled Jobs and More Jobs, and the creation of a half-hour, well-produced, glamorized biographical film of Gravel, Man for Alaska. The film was shown twice a day on every television station in Alaska, and carried by plane and shown on home projectors in hundreds of Alaska Native villages. The heavy showings quickly reversed a 2–to–1 Gruening lead in polls into a Gravel lead. Gravel visited many remote villages by seaplane and showed a thorough understanding of the needs of the bush country and the fishing and oil industries. Gravel also benefited from maintaining a deliberately ambiguous posture about Vietnam policy. Gruening had been one of only two Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and his opposition to President Lyndon B. Johnson's war policies was harming him among the Democratic electorate; according to Gravel, "all I had to do was stand up and not deal with the subject, and people would assume that I was to the right of Ernest Gruening, when in point of fact I was to the left of him". In Man for Alaska, Gravel argued that "the liberals" would come to West Germany's defense if it was attacked, and that the same standard should apply to the United States' allies in Asia. During the campaign he also claimed that he was "more in the mainstream of American thought on Vietnam" than Gruening, despite the fact that he had written to Gruening to praise his antiwar stance four years earlier. Decades later, Gravel conceded that "I said what I said [about Vietnam] to advance my career." Gravel beat Gruening in the primary by about 2,000 votes. Gruening found "the unexpected defeat hard to take" and thought that some aspects of his opponent's biographical film had misled viewers. In the general election, Gravel faced Republican Elmer E. Rasmuson, a banker and former mayor of Anchorage. College students in the state implored Gruening to run a write-in campaign as an Independent, but legal battles prevented him from getting approval for it until only two weeks were left. A late appearance by anti-war presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy did not offset Gruening's lack of funds and endorsements; meanwhile, Gravel and Rasmuson both saturated local media with their filmed biographies. On November 5, 1968, Gravel won the general election with 45 percent of the vote to Rasmuson's 37 percent and Gruening's 18 percent. Senate assignments and style When Gravel joined the U.S.Senate in January 1969, he requested and received a seat on the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, which had direct relevance to Alaskan issues. He also got a spot on the Public Works Committee, which he held throughout his time in the Senate. Finally, he was a member of the Select Committee on Small Business. In 1971 he became chair of the Public Works Committee's Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds, and by 1973 he was chair of its Subcommittee on Water Resources, then later its Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution. Gravel was also initially named to the Joint Committee on Congressional Operations. By 1973 Gravel was off the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee and the Select Small Business Committee and instead a member of the Finance Committee, and by 1977 was chair of that body's Subcommittee on Energy and Foundations. By 1973 he had also been on the ad hoc Special Committee to Study Secret and Confidential Government Documents. By his own admission, Gravel was too new and "too abrasive" to be effective in the Senate by the usual means of seniority-based committee assignments or negotiating deals with other senators, and was sometimes seen as arrogant or a nuisance by the more senior and tradition-oriented members. Gravel relied on attention-getting gestures to achieve what he wanted, hoping national exposure would force other senators to listen to him. But even senators who agreed with him on issues considered his methods to be showboating. As part of this approach, Gravel voted with Southern Democrats to keep the Senate filibuster rule in place, and accordingly supported Russell Long and Robert Byrd but opposed Ted Kennedy in Senate leadership battles. In retrospective assessment, University of Alaska Anchorage history professor Stephen Haycox said, "Loose cannon is a good description of Gravel's Senate career. He was an off-the-wall guy, and you weren't really ever sure what he would do." Nuclear issues and the Cold War In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one-megaton calibration exercise for the second and larger five-megaton Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety; he then made a personal appeal to President Richard Nixon to stop the test. After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971 Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign). In 1971 Gravel voted against the Nixon administration's proposed anti-ballistic missile system, the Safeguard Program, having previously vacillated over the issue, suggesting that he might be willing to support it in exchange for federal lands in Alaska being opened up for private oil drilling. His vote alienated Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who had raised funds for Gravel's primary campaign. Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971 Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975 he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974 Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power. Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's July 1971 secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.), Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with the P.R.C., including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. He reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971. Vietnam War, the draft, and the Pentagon Papers Although he did not campaign against the Vietnam War during his first Senate campaign, by the end of 1970 Gravel was speaking out against United States policy in southeast Asia: in December of that year he persuaded William Fulbright to join him in a spontaneous two-day filibuster against a $155 million military aid package to Cambodia's Khmer Republic government in the Cambodian Civil War. President Richard Nixon had campaigned in 1968 on a promise to end the U.S. military draft, a decision endorsed by the February 1970 report of the Gates Commission. The existing draft law was scheduled to conclude at the end of June 1971, and the Senate faced a contentious debate about whether to extend it as the Vietnam War continued. The Nixon administration announced in February 1971 that it wanted a two-year extension to June 1973, after which the draft would end; Army planners had already been operating under the assumption of a two-year extension, after which an all-volunteer force would be in place. Skeptics such as Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Stennis thought this unrealistic and wanted a four-year extension, but the two-year proposal is what went forward in Congress. By early May 1971, Gravel had indicated his intention to filibuster the draft renewal legislation, halting conscription and thereby bringing U.S. involvement in the war to a rapid end. During this period he also supported efforts to mobilize and influence public opinion against the war, endorsing the "Vietnam War Out Now" rallies in Washington D.C. and San Francisco on April 24, 1971, and financing a broadcast campaign by the antiwar group War No More with a personal loan. In June 1972 he escorted a group of over 100 antiwar protesters, including psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, actress Candice Bergen, theater producer and director Joseph Papp, and peditrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, into the United States Capitol Building; the group was arrested after blocking a hallway outside the Senate chamber. By June 1971, some Democratic senators opposed to the war wanted to limit the renewal to a one-year extension, while others wanted to end it immediately; Gravel reiterated that he was one of the latter, saying, "It's a senseless war, and one way to do away with it is to do away with the draft." A Senate vote on June 4 indicated majority support for the two-year extension. On June 18 Gravel announced again his intention to counteract that by filibustering the renewal legislation, defending the practice against those who associated it only with blocking civil rights legislation. The first filibuster attempt failed on June 23 when, by three votes, the Senate voted cloture for only the fifth time since 1927. Protracted negotiations took place over House conference negotiations on the bill, revolving in large part around Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's eventually unsuccessful amendment to tie renewal to a troop withdrawal timetable from Vietnam; during this time the draft law expired and no more were conscripted. On August 5, the Nixon administration pleaded for a renewal before the Senate went on recess, but Gravel blocked Stennis's attempt to limit debate, and no vote was held. Finally on September 21, 1971, the Senate invoked cloture over Gravel's second filibuster attempt by one vote, and then passed the two-year draft extension. Gravel's attempts to stop the draft had failed (notwithstanding Gravel's later claims that he had stopped or shortened the draft, taken at face value in some media reports, during his 2008 presidential campaign). Meanwhile, on June 13, 1971, The New York Times began printing large portions of the Pentagon Papers. The papers were a large collection of secret government documents and studies pertaining to the Vietnam War, of which former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg had made unauthorized copies and was determined to make public. Ellsberg had for a year and a half approached members of Congress – such as William Fulbright, George McGovern, Charles Mathias, and Pete McCloskey – about publishing the documents, on the grounds that the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution would give congressional members immunity from prosecution, but all had refused. Instead, Ellsberg gave the documents to the Times. The U.S. Justice Department immediately tried to halt publication, on the grounds that the information revealed within the papers harmed the national interest. Within the next two weeks, a federal court injunction halted publication in the Times; The Washington Post and several other newspapers began publishing parts of the documents, with some of them also being halted by injunctions; and the whole matter went to the U.S. Supreme Court for arguments. Looking for an alternate publication mechanism, Ellsberg returned to his idea of having a member of Congress read them, and chose Gravel based on the latter's efforts against the draft; Gravel agreed where previously others had not. Ellsberg arranged for the papers to be given to Gravel on June 26 via an intermediary, Post editor Ben Bagdikian. Gravel used his counter-intelligence experience to choose a midnight transfer in front of the Mayflower Hotel in the center of Washington, D.C. On the night of June 29, 1971, Gravel attempted to read the papers on the floor of the Senate as part of his filibuster against the draft, but was thwarted when no quorum could be formed. Gravel instead convened a session of the Buildings and Grounds subcommittee that he chaired. He got New York Congressman John G. Dow to testify that the war had soaked up funding for public buildings, thus making discussion of the war relevant to the committee. He began reading from the papers with the press in attendance, omitting supporting documents that he felt might compromise national security, and declaring, "It is my constitutional obligation to protect the security of the people by fostering the free flow of information absolutely essential to their democratic decision-making." He read until 1 a.m., culminating by saying "Arms are being severed. Metal is clashing through human bodies because of the public policy this government and all its branches continue to support." Then with tears and sobs he said that he could no longer physically continue, the previous three nights of sleeplessness and fear about the future having taken their toll. Gravel ended the session by, with no other senators present, establishing unanimous consent to insert 4,100 pages of the Papers into the Congressional Record of his subcommittee. The following day, the Supreme Court's New York Times Co. v. United States decision ruled in favor of the newspapers and publication in the Times and others resumed. In July 1971 Bantam Books published an inexpensive paperback edition of the papers containing the material the Times had published. Gravel, too, wanted to privately publish the portion of the papers he had read into the record, believing that "immediate disclosure of the contents of these papers will change the policy that supports the war". After being turned down by many commercial publishers, on August 4 he reached agreement with Beacon Press, the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which Gravel was a member. Announced on August 17 and published on October 22, 1971, this four-volume, relatively expensive set became the "Senator Gravel Edition", which studies from Cornell University and the Annenberg Center for Communication have labeled as the most complete edition of the Pentagon Papers to be published. The "Gravel Edition" was edited and annotated by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, and included an additional volume of analytical articles on the origins and progress of the war, also edited by Chomsky and Zinn. Beacon Press then was subjected to a FBI investigation; an outgrowth of this was the Gravel v. United States court case, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled upon in June 1972; it held that the Speech or Debate Clause did grant immunity to Gravel for his reading the papers in his subcommittee, did grant some immunity to Gravel's congressional aide, but granted no immunity to Beacon Press in relation to their publishing the same papers. The U.S. Senate Democratic Caucus backed Gravel in the case, but due to Republican opposition it did not pay Gravel's legal fees, leaving him owing $25,000 (the equivalent of $150,000 in 2019, adjusted for inflation). The events of 1971 changed Gravel in the following months from an obscure freshman senator to a nationally visible political figure. He became a sought-after speaker on the college circuit as well as at political fundraisers, opportunities he welcomed as lectures were "the one honest way a Senator has to supplement his income". But his speaking tours caused him to accrue one of the worst absentee records in the Senate. The Democratic candidates for the 1972 presidential election sought his endorsement. In January 1972 Gravel endorsed Maine Senator Ed Muskie, hoping that his support would help Muskie with the party's left wing and in ethnic French-Canadian areas during the first primary contest in New Hampshire (Muskie won, but not overwhelmingly, and his campaign faltered soon after). In April 1972 Gravel appeared on all three networks' nightly newscasts to decry the Nixon administration's reliance on Vietnamization by making reference to the secret National Security Study Memorandum 1 document, which stated it would take 8–13 years for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam to defend South Vietnam. Gravel made excerpts from the study public, but senators Robert P. Griffin and William B. Saxbe blocked his attempt to read NSSM 1 into the Congressional Record. Domestic policy In 1970 Gravel co-sponsored legislation to establish a guaranteed minimum income, entitling poor families to up to $6,300 a year (the equivalent of $42,000 in 2019 after adjustment for inflation). He subsequently voted for a "work bonus" program, which would have entitled low-income working families with dependent children if they were paying Social Security or Railroad Retirement taxes to a non-taxable bonus of up to 10 percent of their wages. Gravel also supported extending Social Security to all federal employees and introduced a campaign finance reform bill in 1971 that would have enacted full disclosure of campaign financing, placed limits on large donations, media spending and individual candidate spending. In 1969, Gravel was the only Democratic Senator outside of the South to vote for Nixon's Supreme Court nominee Clement Haynsworth. The following year Gravel opposed Nixon's next pick, G. Harrold Carswell. Run for vice president in 1972 Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates. Toward this end he began soliciting delegates for their support. He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose. On the convention's final day, July 14, 1972, McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice. Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations. Thus there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska. He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination. In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting that included several other candidates. Gravel attracted some attention for his efforts: writer Norman Mailer said he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films", while Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances". Yet the process was doubly disastrous for the Democrats. In the time consumed by nominating and seconding and all the vice-presidential candidates' speeches, the attention of the delegates on the floor was lost and McGovern's speech was pushed to 3:30 a.m. The haste with which Eagleton was selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver. Reelection to Senate in 1974 Several years earlier, Alaska politicians had speculated that Gravel would have a hard time getting both renominated and elected when his first term expired, given that he was originally elected without a base party organization and tended to focus on national rather than local issues. Nonetheless, after receiving support from national and local labor leaders, securing key earmarks, and producing another half-hour TV advertorial, in 1974 Gravel was reelected to the Senate, with 58 percent of the vote to 42 percent for Republican State Senator C. R. Lewis, who was a national officer of the John Birch Society. Second term Gravel's reelection campaign left him $65,000–$75,000 in debt. In 1975 The Washington Post reported on a memo by his executive assistant laying out a fundraising strategy to tackle this, including raising funds from oil companies, meeting with previous donors and "inquir[ing] into the governmental priorities of these people and their groups in the coming session", as well as obtaining further speaking fees to reduce his personal debt. This was followed by a number of stories about links between Gravel, lobbyists and fundraisers, including one that was widely publicized in Alaska about his holding a share in a Colorado resort with two Washington lobbyists he was working with on land and energy legislation. Gravel had been open about the investment and had opposing views to one of the lobbyists on nuclear power. In 1980 the Wall Street Journal published details about his fundraising activities, including writing to individuals and PACs in the oil industry, pledging to kill off proposals for a windfall profits tax on the sector, and traveling in the Middle East with the business partner of one of his donors to sell Alaskan land to businessmen. Gravel suggested that critics of his fundraising were "naive". In 1975 Gravel introduced an amendment to cut the number of troops overseas by 200,000, but it was defeated on a voice vote. In September 1975 Gravel was named as one of several Congressional Advisers to the Seventh Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly, which met to discuss problems related to economic development and international economic cooperation. In June 1976 Gravel was the focus of a federal investigation into allegations that he was involved in a sex-for-vote arrangement. Congressional staff clerk Elizabeth Ray (who had already been involved in a sex scandal that led to the downfall of Representative Wayne Hays) said that in August 1972 she had sex with Gravel aboard a houseboat on the Potomac River, under the instruction of Representative Kenneth J. Gray, her boss at the time. Gray allegedly wanted to secure Gravel's support for further funding for construction of the National Visitor Center in Washington, a troubled project that was under the jurisdiction of subcommittees that both members chaired. Another Congressional staffer said she witnessed the boat encounter, but Gravel said at the time that he had never met either of the women. Gravel and Gray strongly denied that they had made any arrangement regarding legislation, and neither was ever charged with any wrongdoing. Decades later Gravel wrote that he had indeed had sex with Ray, but had not changed any votes because of it. Gravel and his main financial backer, Gottstein, had a falling out in 1978, during the Congressional debate over whether to allow a controversial sale of U.S. F-15 fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia. An ardent backer of Israel, Gottstein opposed the sale and asked Gravel to vote against it. But Gravel not only voted for it but made an emotional speech attacking the anti-sale campaign. Gravel wrote in 2008 that it was the only time Gottstein had ever asked him for a favor, and the rupture resulted in their never speaking to each other again. Alaskan issues By 1971 Gravel was urging construction of the much-argued Trans-Alaska pipeline, addressing environmental concerns by saying that the pipeline's builders and operators should have "total and absolute" responsibility for any consequent environmental damage. Two years later the debate over the pipeline came to a crux, with The New York Times describing it as "environmentalists [in] a holy war with the major oil companies". In February 1973 the U.S. Court of Appeals blocked the issuance of permits for construction; Gravel and fellow Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens reacted by urging Congress to pass legislation overturning the court's decision. Environmentalists opposed to the pipeline, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club then sought to use the recently passed National Environmental Policy Act to their advantage; Gravel designed an amendment to the pipeline bill that would immunize the pipeline from any further court challenges under that law, and thus speed its construction. Passage of the amendment became the key battle regarding the pipeline. On July 17, 1973, in a dramatic roll-call vote, the Gravel amendment was approved as a 49–49 tie was broken in favor by Vice President Spiro Agnew. The actual bill enabling the pipeline then passed easily; Gravel had triumphed in what became perhaps his most lasting accomplishment as a senator. In opposition to the Alaskan fishing industry, Gravel advocated American participation in the formation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. For two years he opposed legislation that established a Exclusive Economic Zone for marine resources. He was one of only 19 senators to vote against Senate approval for the expanded zone in 1976, saying it would undermine the U.S. position in Law of the Sea negotiations and that nations arbitrarily extending their fishing rights limits would "produce anarchy of the seas". The legislation was passed, and the United States has signed but never ratified the Law of the Sea treaty. Gravel accumulated a complicated record on Indian affairs during his time in the Senate. During his first year in the Senate Gravel urged abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, criticizing the agency for the pace of development of schools in Alaska, its paternalistic attitudes and the culturally inappropriate nature of its education, and advocating greater shared decision-making between the federal government and native communities in Alaska. Later, his views changed; in the early 1970s Gravel supported a demonstration project that established links between Alaskan villages and the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, for medical diagnostic communications. In 1971, he fended off accusations from Alaskan natives that he was not spending enough time working on their land claims. Gravel helped secure a private grant to facilitate the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference in 1977, attended by Inuit representatives from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. These conferences now also include representatives from Russia. In 1977, Gravel helped lead an effort to have the U.S. Interior Department rename Mount McKinley to Denali; this eventually led to Denali National Park being so named. Subsequently, Gravel proposed a never-built "Denali City" development above the Tokositna River near the mountain, to consist of a giant Teflon dome enclosing hotels, golf courses, condominiums, and commercial buildings. A related idea of his to build a high-speed rail line to Denali also failed to gain traction. A key, emotional issue in the state at the time was "locking up Alaska", making reference to allocation of its vast, mostly uninhabited land. President Jimmy Carter desired to put large portions of this land under federal protection against development, a move that some Alaskans vociferously opposed. In 1978 Gravel blocked passage, via procedural delays such as walking out of House–Senate conference committee meetings, of a complex bill which represented a compromise on land use policy. The bill would have put some of Alaska's vast federal land holdings under state control while preserving other portions for federal parks and refuges; the blocking action earned Gravel the enmity of fellow Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who had supported the compromise. In 1980, a new lands bill came up for consideration, that was less favorable to Alaskan interests and more liked by environmentalists; it set aside of Alaska's for national parks, conservation areas, and other restricted federal uses. Gravel blocked it, as not ensuring enough future development in the state. A new compromise version of the 1980 bill came forward, which reduced the land set aside to . Representing Alaskan interests, Gravel tried to stop the bill, including by filibuster. But the Senate voted for cloture and passed the bill. Frustrated, Gravel said, "the legislation denies Alaska its rights as a state, and denies the U.S. crucial strategic resources," and opined that the Senate was "a little bit like a tank of barracudas". Nonetheless, the bill, known as the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, was signed by President Carter shortly before leaving the White House, and led to millions of acres being set aside in the state for national parks, wildlife refuges, and other kinds of areas under protection. In 1978 Gravel authored and secured the passage into federal law of the General Stock Ownership Corporation, that became Subchapter U of the Tax Code under the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. This gave states the ability to create corporations that would invest in for-profit enterprises, with all citizens within the state owning shares in the corporation. Gravel's attempt to convince the Alaska state legislature to create such a corporation failed, as did a 1980 state ballot initiative towards the same end, but nevertheless the creation of the General Stock Ownership Corporation in federal law turned out to be significant in the development of binary economics. Loss of Senate seat in 1980 In 1980 Gravel was challenged for the Democratic Party's nomination by State Representative Clark Gruening, the grandson of the man Gravel had defeated in a primary 12 years earlier. One of Gruening's supporters was Gravel's former backer Gottstein. Several factors made Gravel vulnerable. As an insurgent candidate in 1968 Gravel had never established a firm party base. Not liking to hunt or fish, he was also always culturally suspect in the state. The primary campaign was bitterly fought. A group of Democrats, including future governor Steve Cowper, led the campaign against Gravel, with Gravel's actions in respect to the 1978 and 1980 Alaskan lands bills a major issue. This was especially so given that the 1980 bill's dénouement happened but a week before the primary. The sources of Gravel's campaign funds, some of which Gravel readily acknowledged came from political action committees outside the state, also became an issue in the contest. Gruening had pledged that he would not take special interest group money, but Gravel said that Gruening was "dishonest" in accepting individual contributors from Jewish donors living outside the state because to him such contributors comprised "a special interest group ... that seeks to influence the foreign policy of the U.S." Gruening won the primary with about 55 percent of the vote to Gravel's 44 percent. Gravel later conceded that by the time of his defeat, he had alienated "almost every constituency in Alaska". Another factor may have been Alaska's blanket primary system of the time, which allowed unlimited voting across party lines and from its many independents; Republicans believed Gruening would be an easier candidate to defeat in the general election. Gruening lost the general election to Republican Frank Murkowski. Gravel was the last Democrat to represent Alaska in Congress for 28 years, until Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich defeated Ted Stevens, by then an aged, iconic figure who had just been convicted of seven felonies for taking unreported gifts, in a very close and protracted election result in 2008. Stevens's conviction was subsequently vacated due to prosecutorial misconduct. Career after leaving the Senate Of his 1980 defeat, Gravel later recalled: "I had lost my career. I lost my marriage. I was in the doldrums for ten years after my defeat," and "Nobody wanted to hire me for anything important. I felt like I was worthless. I didn't know what I could do." By his own later description, Gravel was a womanizer, and had an affair while in the Senate, and in December 1980 he and his wife Rita separated. They filed for divorce in September 1981; she later received all of his Senate pension income. During the 1980s Gravel was a real estate developer in Anchorage and Kenai, Alaska, a consultant, and a stockbroker. One of his real estate ventures, a condominium business, was forced to declare bankruptcy and a lawsuit ensued. In 1986 Gravel worked in partnership with Merrill Lynch Capital Markets to buy losses that financially troubled Alaska Native Corporations could not take as tax deductions and sell them to large national companies looking for tax writeoffs. Gravel also learned computer programming at some point but never practiced it. In 1984 Gravel married his second wife, Whitney Stewart Gravel, a former administrative assistant for Senator Jacob Javits. Return to politics In 1989 Gravel reentered politics. He founded and led The Democracy Foundation, which promotes direct democracy. He established the Philadelphia II corporation, which seeks to replicate the original 1787 Constitutional Convention and have a Second Constitutional Convention to bring about direct democracy Gravel led an effort to get a United States Constitutional amendment to allow voter-initiated federal legislation similar to state ballot initiatives. He argued that Americans are able to legislate responsibly, and that the Act and Amendment in the National Initiative would allow American citizens to become "law makers". However such efforts met with little success. In 2001, Gravel became director of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, where he admired institute co-founder Gregory Fossedal's work on direct democracy in Switzerland. By 2004, Gravel had become chair of the institute, and Fossedal (who in turn was a director of the Democracy Foundation) gave the introduction at Gravel's presidential announcement. In 2003 Gravel gave a speech on direct democracy at a conference hosted by the American Free Press. The event was cosponsored by the Barnes Review, a journal that endorses Holocaust denial. After some controversy over his appearance, Gravel apologized, saying he did not realize the group's ties. Gravel said repeatedly that he did not share the group's views on the Holocaust, stating, "You better believe I know that six million Jews were killed. [The Barnes Review publishers] are nutty as loons if they don't think it happened". The group invited Gravel to speak again, but he declined. Mike and Whitney Gravel lived in Arlington County, Virginia, until 2010 and then resided in Burlingame, California. They have the two grown children from his first marriage, Martin Gravel and Lynne Gravel Mosier, and four grandchildren. Whitney Gravel's income sustained the couple from 1998 on. In the 2000s, Gravel suffered poor health, requiring three surgeries in 2003 for back pain and neuropathy. Due to unreimbursed medical expenses and debts from his political causes, he declared personal bankruptcy in 2004. He began taking a salary from the non-profit organizations for which he was working; much of that income was lent to his presidential campaign. In 2007, he declared that he had "zero net worth". 2008 presidential campaign Democratic Party primaries At the start of 2006 Gravel decided the best way he could promote direct democracy and the National Initiative was to run for president. On April 17, 2006, Gravel became the first candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election, announcing his run in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Short on campaign cash, he took public transportation to get to his announcement. (Gravel called for public financing of elections.) Other principal Gravel positions were the FairTax, as well as withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days and a single payer national health care system. Gravel had opposed the Iraq War, and President George W. Bush's rationale for it, from the beginning, and in 2006 said that U.S. troops in Iraq, as in Vietnam, had "died in vain". He also favored a regional peace initiative, as well as reparation payments for Iraqis. Gravel also called for a "U.S. corporate withdrawal from Iraq", with reconstruction contracts held by U.S. companies to be turned over to Iraqi firms. Gravel campaigned almost full-time in New Hampshire, the first primary state, following his announcement. Opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination showed Gravel with 1 percent or less support. By the end of March 2007, Gravel's campaign had less than $500 in cash on hand against debts of nearly $90,000. Because of his time in the Senate, Gravel was invited to many of the early Democratic presidential debates. During the initial one at South Carolina State University on April 26, 2007, he suggested a bill requiring the president to withdraw from Iraq on pain of criminal penalties. He also advocated positions such as opposing preemptive nuclear war. He stated that the Iraq War had the effect of creating more terrorists and that the "war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis". Regarding his fellow candidates, he said, "I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me – they frighten me." In one such exchange, Gravel said, "Tell me, Barack, who do you want to nuke?" to which Obama responded, "I'm not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike, I promise." Media stories said that Gravel was responsible for much of whatever "heat" and "flashpoints" had taken place during the Democratic debates. Gravel gained considerable publicity by shaking up the normally staid multiple-candidate format; The New York Times' media critic said that what Gravel had done was "steal a debate with outrageous, curmudgeonly statements". The Internet was a benefit: a YouTube video of his responses in the debate was viewed more than 225,892 times, ranking seventeenth in most views for week and first among news and politics clips; his name became the fifteenth most searched-for in the blogosphere; and his website garnered more traffic than those of frontrunners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards. Gravel appeared on the popular Colbert Report on television on May 2, and his campaign and career were profiled in national publications such as Salon. Two wordless, Warholesque campaign videos, "Rock" and "Fire", were released on YouTube in late May and became hits, and eventually gained over 760,000 and 185,000 views respectively. "Rock", in turn, was given airtime during an episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Some thirty-five years after he first achieved the national spotlight, he had found it again. All this did not improve his performance in the polls; a May 2007 CNN poll showed him with less than 0.5 percent support among Democrats. Gravel was in the next several debates, in one case after CNN reversed a decision to exclude him. Like some of the other second-tier candidates, Gravel did not get as much time as the leaders; during the June 2, 2007, New Hampshire debate, which lasted two hours, he was asked 10 questions and allowed to speak for five minutes and 37 seconds. During the July 23, 2007, CNN-YouTube presidential debate, Gravel responded to audience applause when he had complained of a lack of airtime and said: "Thank you. Has it been fair thus far?" Detractors began to liken him to "the cranky uncle who lives in the attic," or "the angry old guy that just seemed to want to become angrier". Berkeley political scientist David Terr found that moderator George Stephanopoulos directed roughly five percent of his questions to Gravel; in a poll asking who did the best in the debate, Gravel placed seventh among the eight candidates. National opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination continued to show Gravel with one percent or zero percent numbers. By the end of the third-quarter 2007, Gravel had about $17,500 in cash on hand, had collected a total of about $380,000 during the 2008 election cycle, and was continuing to run a threadbare campaign with minimal staff. Beginning with the October 30, 2007, Philadelphia event, Gravel was excluded from most of the debates, with the debate sponsors or the Democratic National Committee saying Gravel's campaign had not met fund-raising, polling, or local campaign organizational thresholds. For the Philadelphia exclusion, Gravel blamed corporate censorship on the part of sponsor owner and alleged military-industrial complex member General Electric for his exclusion and mounted a counter-gathering and debate against a video screen a short distance away, but he had lost his easiest publicity. In reaction, supporters organized "mass donation days" to try to help the campaign gain momentum and funds, such as on December 5, 2007, the anniversary of the Repeal of Prohibition. Gravel did not compete in the initial 2008 vote, the Iowa caucuses, but was still subjected to a false report from MSNBC that he had pulled out of the race afterward. Gravel did focus his attention on the second 2008 vote, the New Hampshire primary. In early January, Mother Jones' investigative reporter James Ridgeway was filmed interviewing and following Gravel in New Hampshire, in which Gravel is interviewed on the phone by Neal Conan for NPR's, Talk of the Nation. He received about 400 votes out of some 280,000 cast in New Hampshire, or 0.14 percent, before taking time off to improve his health. He resumed campaigning, but fared no better in subsequent states. By the end of January 2008, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Gravel were the only remaining Democrats from the initial debates still running; Gravel vowed to stay in the presidential campaign until November. On March 11, 2008, Gravel continued to remain in the Democratic race but additionally endorsed a Green Party candidate for president, Jesse Johnson, saying he wanted to help Johnson prevail against Green Party rivals Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader. By late March, Gravel had almost no fundraising and was only on the ballot in one of the next ten Democratic primaries. Switch to Libertarian Party On March 25, 2008, Gravel announced that he would leave the Democrats and join the Libertarian Party, saying: "My libertarian views, as well as my strong stance against war, the military industrial complex and American imperialism, seem not to be tolerated by Democratic Party elites who are out of touch with the average American; elites that reject the empowerment of American citizens I offered to the Democratic Party at the beginning of this presidential campaign with the National Initiative for Democracy." The following day Gravel entered the race for the 2008 Libertarian presidential nomination, saying that he would have run as a third-party candidate all along except that he needed the public exposure that came from being in the earlier Democratic debates. Gravel's initial notion of running as a fusion candidate with other parties was met with skepticism. As a Libertarian candidate, Gravel faced resistance to his past support of big government initiatives and his unorthodox positions around direct democracy. Nevertheless, he garnered more support than he had as a Democrat, placing second and third in two April 2008 straw polls. In the May 25 balloting at the 2008 Libertarian National Convention in Denver, Gravel finished fourth out of eight candidates on the initial ballot, with 71 votes out of a total 618; he trailed former Congressman and eventual winner Bob Barr, author Mary Ruwart, and businessman Wayne Allyn Root. Gravel's position did not subsequently improve and he was eliminated on the fourth ballot. Afterwards he stated that "I just ended my political career," but he vowed to continue promoting his positions as a writer and lecturer. 2008–early 2019 In June 2008 Gravel endorsed the NYC 9/11 Ballot Initiative, saying the measure would create a "citizens commission rather than a government commission" with subpoena power against top U.S. officials to "make a true investigation as to what happened" regarding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He later said, "Individuals in and out of government may certainly have participated with the obviously known perpetrators of this dastardly act. Suspicions abound over the analysis presented by government. Obviously an act that has triggered three wars, Afghan, Iraqi and the continuing War on Terror, should be extensively investigated which was not done and which the government avoids addressing." In August 2008 Gravel was speaking to a crowd of supporters of Sami Al-Arian (who two years earlier had pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison for a charge of conspiracy in helping Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a "specially designated terrorist" organization) when he was caught on tape saying of Al-Arian's prosecutor, "Find out where he lives, find out where his kids go to school, find out where his office is: picket him all the time. Call him a racist in signs if you see him. Call him an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but in his face all the time." Gravel was criticized for potentially involving the children of the prosecutor, and Al-Arian's family disavowed the sentiments. Gravel defended Alaska Governor Sarah Palin after she was chosen as Republican presidential nominee John McCain's running mate in September 2008. He praised Palin's record in standing up to corruption among Alaskan Republicans, thought her national inexperience was an asset not a detriment, and predicted that the "Troopergate" investigation into whether she improperly fired a state official would "come out in her favor". Gravel made clear he would not support or vote for either McCain–Palin or Obama–Biden in the general election. The following year Gravel said that Palin's politics were "terrible, but that doesn't detract from the fact that she's a very talented person". He predicted that Palin would run for president in 2012 and that "she's going to surprise a lot of people". Palin did not run, but Gravel's prediction about "TrooperGate" was accurate as Palin was found not to have violated ethics laws. In 2013, by the invitation of Hamed Ghashghavi, the secretary for international affairs of the 3rd International Conference on Hollywoodism in Tehran, Iran, Gravel attended that event as an Iranian government-organized anti-Hollywood conference. Gravel noted that the conference was attended by "various elements of extremes" but said it was necessary to discuss how the U.S. film industry portrayed Iran in order to prevent "an insane war" between the two nations. In May 2013 Gravel was one of several former members of Congress to accept $20,000 from the Paradigm Research Group, an advocacy group for UFO disclosure, as part of holding what they termed a Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, modeled after congressional hearings, regarding supposed U.S. government suppression of evidence concerning UFOs. Gravel said, "Something is monitoring the planet, and they are monitoring it very cautiously, because we are a very warlike planet," and, "What we're faced with here is, in areas of the media, and the government too, an effort to marginalize and ridicule people who have specific knowledge." In December 2014 Gravel was announced as the new CEO of KUSH, a company which makes marijuana-infused products for medicinal and recreational use, and a subsidiary of Cannabis Sativa, Inc. He also became an Independent Director of Cannabis Sativa. During the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, Gravel praised Bernie Sanders and his campaign, saying "Bernie is one of the most gifted politicians I have ever observed. He's a person of great integrity and very clever." Gravel predicted that Sanders would be elected president but would be unable to get his key reforms through Congress, and thus that Sanders and his supporters should back some of the proposals of the National Initiative. In 2016, Gravel said in relation to the September 11 attacks: "We killed 58,000 American servicemen in the Vietnam War and all they did was die in vain. What's so unusual about killing 3,000 more in order to develop the grist for the mill to empower into infinity the military industrial complex?" and "There's no question in my mind that 9/11 was an inside job". The remarks were later disavowed by even Gravel supporters. By 2019 Gravel was living in Seaside, California. He was working on a book, at the time titled Human Governance, about his principal idea for direct democracy, a U.S. Constitutional Amendment to create a "Legislature of the People" that would circumvent the existing Congress. The book was self-published at the end of the year by AuthorHouse under the title The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People. 2020 presidential campaign On March 19, 2019, Gravel announced that he was considering running in the 2020 Democratic primaries. He said, "The goal will not be to win, but to bring a critique of American imperialism to the Democratic debate stage." An exploratory committee was formed, with filing a statement of organization with the Federal Election Commission on that same day. The filing was the idea of a group of teenagers, led by David Oks and Henry Williams, inspired by the podcast Chapo Trap House, and done with Gravel's consent (after a week spent convincing him of the idea's merits), but without his involvement. Intrigued by the group's commitment to amplifying his long-held policy goals, Gravel (who would be old on Inauguration Day in 2021) said he planned to meet with them in April, and to discuss a 2020 White House run with his wife. On April 2, 2019, Gravel filed to officially run for office. The campaign called itself the "#Gravelanche". Gravel's initial stated goal was merely to qualify for debates by getting the required 65,000 small donors. He discouraged people from voting for him and said his preferences were Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, both of whom favor a non-interventionist foreign policy. But on April 29, Gravel's campaign said he was running to win, not just to participate in debates. In a subsequent interview, though, Gravel emphasized the virtue of Sanders and Gabbard in some order as a presidential ticket. Statements like these caused Vox to call Gravel "2020's oddest Democratic presidential candidate". The New York Times Magazine included Gravel as an example in the rise of democratic socialism in the United States also exemplified by Sanders's 2016 race and the 2018 election of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "[Gravel's] campaign represents the most absurd form of a legitimate movement on the left that feels little obligation to the Democratic Party." In June 2019, Gravel touted the endorsement of Muntadher al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who, in December 2008, made headlines after he threw his shoes at President George W. Bush in protest of the U.S. war in Iraq. Al-Zaidi endorsed Gravel based on his promise to improve White House policies regarding Iraq and the Middle East. On June 13, 2019, the Democratic Party announced the 20 major candidates who qualified for the first debate later that month. Gravel was one of the four who missed out (the others were Montana Governor Steve Bullock, U.S. Representative Seth Moulton, and Miramar, Florida, Mayor Wayne Messam). Gravel had been unable to get the requisite number of donations, or to score one percent or better in enough polls (many polls did not even include him). Nevertheless, Gravel said he would not drop out and would try to qualify for the July debate. In early July, however, Gravel's campaign said it was still 10,000 contributions short of the 65,000-donor threshold and that it was "nearing its conclusion". It solicited suggestions for where to donate $100–150,000 of leftover campaign funds. Gravel added that he had always planned on ending the campaign before the teenagers in charge of it needed to return to school. A few days later the campaign became the first to run an attack ad against Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, using the text "Is this the best our party has to offer?" Gravel's campaign crossed the threshold of 65,000 donors on July 12, 2019, meeting the qualification mark for that month's debate. But because 20 other candidates, the maximum allowed to participate, had already met at least the polling criterion, which takes priority over the donor criterion, Gravel was not invited. The campaign officially came to a close on August 6, 2019, with Gravel endorsing both Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard for president. Gravel's campaign later stated on Twitter that they never wanted to win but saw the campaign as an "intimately democratic" project and expressed honor at working with Gravel. Gravel said he would divide remaining campaign funds between charity and a new think tank which would espouse his ideas. The Gravel Institute Gravel used some of the funds remaining from his 2020 presidential campaign to found an eponymous progressive think tank called The Gravel Institute in 2019. As noted by Vice magazine, the institute aims to do battle with PragerU from a left-wing perspective. Launched in September 2020, the new entity said it would "carry on the life's work of former U.S Senator Mike Gravel in fighting for global peace and democracy. Its mission is to promote bold and forward-looking ideas about a more peaceful and egalitarian world, and to build a robust movement of young people to win it". Contributors announced include Cornel West and Slavoj Žižek, as well as Lower Brule Indian Reservation activist Nick Estes. Other presenters have included and will include H. Jon Benjamin, Briahna Joy Gray, Bernie Sanders, Chelsea Manning, Richard Wolff, Stephanie Kelton, Zephyr Teachout, David Cross, Jabari Brisport, Zohran Mamdani, and Gravel himself (though it is unknown if his appearance will be cancelled due to his death in June 2021, or if the video has already been recorded). Death Gravel died of multiple myeloma at his home in Seaside, California, on June 26, 2021, at age 91. The obituary for him in The New York Times stated that Gravel was "a two-term Democratic senator from Alaska ... who was perhaps better known as an unabashed attention-getter" who later become known for "mounting long-shot presidential runs". The obituary in The Washington Post was similar, saying that Gravel was "an Alaska Democrat with a flair for the theatrical who rose from obscurity to brief renown" and later "ran quixotic campaigns for the presidency". The Anchorage Daily News quoted Gravel as saying of himself in 1989, "I'm an independent kind of guy. A rough and ready kind of guy. My glands work in a certain way that make me stand up, foolishly sometimes, and fight." Political positions Alan Abramowitz and Jeffrey Allan Segal described Gravel as "a maverick, if not an eccentric, in the Senate." His Americans for Democratic Action "Liberal Quotient" scores ranged from 81 out of 100 (1971) to 39 out of 100 (1980), with an average of around 61. His American Conservative Union scores ranged from 0 out of 100 (several years, including 1971 and 1972) to 38 out of 100 (1979), with an average of 14. Abramowitz and Segal note that Gravel's lowest ADA ratings coincided with his two Senate re-election bids, and for the most part his highest ACU ratings followed the same pattern. In 1972, as a young senator, Gravel published Citizen Power: A People's Platform, a manifesto outlining what Kirkus Reviews termed a "populist reform [that] would provide 'balanced political power' between the people and government and business interests." Civil rights issues On drug policy, Gravel said in 2007 that he favored decriminalization and treating addiction as a public health matter. During his 2008 presidential candidacy he condemned the War on Drugs as a failure, saying that it did "nothing but savage our inner cities and put our children at risk". Gravel called for abolition of capital punishment in his book Citizen Power, and adhered to this position during his 2008 run for president. He supported abortion rights. During the 2008 campaign Gravel was a strong supporter of LGBT rights. He supported same-sex marriage and opposed the Defense of Marriage Act and the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. He wrote in 2008 that "depriving gays and lesbians of equal rights is immoral". Foreign policy and defense issues Gravel was a critic of American imperialism. Gravel firmly opposed U.S. military action against Iran and Syria. He voiced opposition to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the use of torture, indefinite detention, and what he called "flagrant ignorance" of the Geneva Convention. In 2014 Gravel called for the release of the full, unredacted Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture. Gravel opposed the use of international sanctions as a policy tool and blamed the ones against Iraq under Saddam Hussein for the deaths of a half-million children in that country. In 2013 Gravel said that sanctions against Iran were "illegal". During his 2008 candidacy, Gravel called for a cut in military spending, variously reported to be 15 percent or 50 percent. He called for the savings to boost public education spending. To spur international nuclear nonproliferation efforts, Gravel called for unilateral reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. In 2008 Gravel criticized the decision of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to not pursue the efforts to impeach George W. Bush and the attempted impeachment of Dick Cheney, saying also that Bush and Cheney had committed crimes and deserved "to be prosecuted" at The Hague. In 2013 he expressed disdain for President Obama, calling him "a total fraud" and saying that both Bush and Obama should be tried "for the crimes and murders they've committed" in the International Court of Justice. Gravel specifically condemned Obama for the drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere. Economy, immigration, and environment During his 2008 candidacy Gravel favored a FairTax scheme, which would abolish the Internal Revenue Service, eliminate the federal income tax (which Gravel called "corrupt"), and impose a national sales tax. While Gravel described FairTax as "progressive", others have criticized it as "regressive", disproportionately benefiting the wealthiest Americans. To offset the new sales taxes on essential goods, Gravel's plan called for monthly government rebate payments to individuals and families. During his 2020 campaign Gravel also voiced support for a third legislative body that would give the people direct control of the budget as well as the implementation of a land value tax. Gravel opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during his 2008 candidacy, calling it unfair and economically harmful and needing renegotiation. Gravel believed that NAFTA was the "root cause" of illegal migration to the U.S. He favored a guest worker program and "setting up naturalization procedures that would fairly bring immigrants into legal status". In a 2007 interview, Gravel identified himself as "very much of a globalist" who believed in open markets and open borders and condemned the scapegoating of undocumented immigrants. Gravel also said that he favored eliminating the cap on H1B visas. As a senator from Alaska, Gravel favored drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but opposed it during his 2008 campaign. In 2008, Gravel supported a carbon tax to combat climate change. Gravel spoke in favor of net neutrality during his presidential campaign. Education and health care Gravel called for the cost of college tuition to be borne by the federal government, rather than students. In his 2008 campaign, he called the No Child Left Behind Act "a failure" and called for it to be "reformed and fully funded". He expressed support for universal pre-kindergarten and the expansion of the Head Start program; and expressed an openness to charter schools and school vouchers. He also suggested extending the school day and the school year, and supported merit pay for teachers. Gravel also called for publicly funded universal health care to replace the current employer-sponsored health insurance system. He supported "full funding" of the VA system. When asked in 2007 about naturopathy, homeopathy, and acupuncture, Gravel said that he was "very very much in favor" of holistic health care. Awards and honors In 2008 Gravel received the Columbia University School of General Studies' first annual Isaac Asimov Lifetime Achievement Award. Electoral history Writings Gravel, Mike. Jobs and More Jobs. Mt. McKinley Publishers, 1968. Gravel, Mike. Citizen Power: A People's Platform. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972. . revised and reissued as Citizen Power: A Mandate for Change, AuthorHouse, 2008. . Gravel, Mike and Lauria, Joe. A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and One Man's Fight to Stop It. Seven Stories Press, 2008. . Gravel, Mike and Eisenbach, David. The Kingmakers: How the Media Threatens Our Security and Our Democracy. Phoenix Books, 2008. . Gravel, Mike. Voice of a Maverick: The Speeches and Writings of Senator Mike Gravel. Brandywine House, 2008. Gravel, Mike. Foreword to Poisoned Power: The Case Against Nuclear Power Plants. John W. Goffman & Arthur R. Tamplin, Rodale Press, Inc., Emmaus, PA, June 1971. Gravel, Mike. The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People. AuthorHouse, 2020. Explanatory notes References Citations General references The Pentagon Papers Senator Gravel Edition. Vol. Five: Critical Essays. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972. 341p. plus 72p. of Index to Vol. I–IV of the Papers; Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, editors. External links Mike Gravel official website The Gravel Institute |- |- 1930 births 2021 deaths 1972 United States vice-presidential candidates 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American politicians 20th-century Roman Catholics 20th-century Unitarians 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American politicians 21st-century Unitarians 9/11 conspiracy theorists Alaska Democrats American International College alumni American Unitarian Universalists American anti–Iraq War activists American conspiracy theorists American democracy activists American male non-fiction writers American people of French-Canadian descent American political writers American real estate businesspeople American stockbrokers Anti-corporate activists Assumption University (Worcester) alumni Burials at Arlington National Cemetery Businesspeople from Anchorage, Alaska Businesspeople from Springfield, Massachusetts California Democrats Candidates in the 2008 United States presidential election Candidates in the 2020 United States presidential election Columbia University School of General Studies alumni Deaths from cancer in California Deaths from multiple myeloma Democratic Party United States senators Direct democracy activists Drug policy reform activists Former Roman Catholics Virginia Libertarians Members of the Alaska House of Representatives Military personnel from Massachusetts Non-interventionism People from Arlington County, Virginia People from Kenai Peninsula Borough, Alaska People with dyslexia Politicians from Anchorage, Alaska Politicians from Springfield, Massachusetts Speakers of the Alaska House of Representatives United States Army officers United States senators from Alaska Writers about direct democracy Writers from Anchorage, Alaska

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What did Gravel do afterward?

What did Mike Gravel do after Senator Thomas Eagleton became McGovern's vice-presidential choice?

Mike Gravel

Gravel "decided to become a pioneer in a faraway place," and moved to pre-statehood Alaska in August 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place where someone without social or political connections could be a viable candidate for public office. Alaska's voting age of 19, less than most other states' 21, played a role in his decision, as did its newness and cooler climate. Broke when he arrived, he immediately found work in real estate sales until winter arrived. Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-Fairbanks run. Subsequently, he opened a small real estate brokerage in Anchorage (the Territory of Alaska not requiring a license) and saved enough so as not to have to work the railroad again. Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and continued a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life. Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin, who had been Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958, on April 29, 1959. They had two children, Martin Anthony Gravel and Lynne Denise Gravel, born c. 1960 and 1962 respectively. Meanwhile, he went to Washington, D.C. in 1957 to campaign for Alaskan statehood via the "Tennessee Plan": dressed as Paul Revere, he rode with a petition to the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Seeing Alaska as a wide-open place with no political establishment or entrenched interests, and using the slogan "Gravel, the Roadbed to Prosperity", he ran for the territorial legislature in 1958 but lost. He went on a national speaking tour concerning tax reform in 1959, sponsored by the Jaycees. He ran without avail for the City Council in Anchorage in 1960. During this time, he had become a successful real estate agent; after the 1960 election, he became a property developer in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Anchorage. A partner ran into financial difficulty, however, and the project went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and Gravel was forced out in 1962. In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one megaton calibration exercise for the second, and larger five megaton, Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests in Congress. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences, and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety to be created; he then made a personal appeal to President Nixon to stop the test. After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the larger Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971, Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage, in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign). Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for the commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971, Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975, he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974, Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power. Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.) in July 1971, Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with China, including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. Gravel reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971. Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in running for the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates. Towards this end he began soliciting delegates for their support in advance of the convention. He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose. At the convention's final day on July 14, 1972, presidential nominee McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice. Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations. Thus, there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska. He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination. In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting that included several other candidates as well. For his efforts, Gravel attracted some attention: famed writer Norman Mailer would say he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films", while Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances ..." Yet, the whole process had been doubly disastrous for the Democrats. The time consumed with the nominating and seconding and other speeches of all the vice-presidential candidates had lost the attention of the delegates on the floor and pushed McGovern's speech until 3:30 a.m. The haste with which Eagleton had been selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver. CANNOTANSWER

Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska.

Maurice Robert Gravel ( ; May 13, 1930 – June 26, 2021) was an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981 as a member of the Democratic Party, and who, in later life, twice ran for the presidential nomination of that party. Born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, by French-Canadian immigrant parents, Gravel moved to Alaska in the late 1950s, becoming a real estate developer and entering politics. He served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963 to 1967, and also became Speaker of the Alaska House. Gravel was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1968. As a senator, Gravel became nationally known for his forceful, but unsuccessful, attempts to end the draft during the War in Vietnam, and for putting the Pentagon Papers into the public record in 1971. He conducted a campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1972 for Vice President of the United States, and then played a crucial role in obtaining Congressional approval for the Trans-Alaska pipeline in 1973. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1974, but was defeated in his bid for a third term in the primary election in 1980. An advocate of direct democracy and the National Initiative, Gravel staged a run for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President of the United States. His campaign failed to gain support, and in March 2008, he left the Democratic Party and joined the Libertarian Party to compete unsuccessfully for its presidential nomination and the inclusion of the National Initiative into the Libertarian Platform. He ran for president as a Democrat again in the 2020 election, in a campaign that ended four months after it began. Two years before his death, Gravel and his campaign staff founded the progressive think tank The Gravel Institute. Early life, military service, education Gravel was born on May 13, 1930, in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of five children of French-Canadian immigrant parents, Alphonse and Marie (née Bourassa) Gravel. His parents were part of the Quebec diaspora, and he was raised in a working-class neighborhood during the Great Depression, speaking only French until he was seven years old. Calling him "Mike" from an early age, his father valued work above all else, while his mother stressed the importance of education. Gravel was educated in parochial schools as a Roman Catholic. There he struggled, due to what he later said was undiagnosed dyslexia, and was left back in third grade. He completed elementary school in 1945 and his class voted him "most charming personality". A summer job as a soda jerk led to Gravel handing out campaign fliers for local candidates on his boss's behalf; Gravel was immediately impressed with "the awesomeness of political office". Gravel then boarded at Assumption Preparatory School in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his performance was initially mediocre. By Gravel's telling, in the summer of 1948 he intended to volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces during the 1947–1949 Palestine war, but Alexandra Tolstaya told him to return to school. There an English teacher, the Assumptionist Edgar Bourque, gave him personal attention, improving Gravel's language skills and instructing him in public speaking. Gravel's grades improved measurably in his final year and he graduated in 1949. His sister, Marguerite, became a Holy Cross nun, but Gravel himself struggled with the Catholic faith. He studied for one year at Assumption College, a Catholic school in Worcester, then transferred for his sophomore year to American International College in Springfield. Journalist I. F. Stone and philosopher Bertrand Russell strongly influenced Gravel in their willingness to challenge assumptions and oppose social convention and political authority. Around May 1951, Gravel saw that he was about to be drafted and instead enlisted in the U.S. Army for a three-year term so that he could get into the Counterintelligence Corps. After basic training and counterintelligence school at Fort Holabird in Maryland and in South Carolina, he went to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. While he expected to be sent off to the Korean War when he graduated as a second lieutenant in early 1952, he was instead assigned to Stuttgart, West Germany, as a Special Adjutant in the Army's Communications Intelligence Service. In Germany, Gravel conducted surveillance operations on civilians and paid off spies. After about a year, he transferred to Orléans, France, where his French language abilities (if not his French-Canadian accent) allowed him to infiltrate French communist rallies. He worked as a Special Agent in the Counterintelligence Corps until 1954, eventually becoming a first lieutenant. Following his discharge, Gravel entered the Columbia University School of General Studies in New York City, where he studied economics and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1956. He moved to New York "flat broke" and supported himself by working as a bar boy in a hotel, driving a taxicab, and working in the investment bond department at Bankers Trust. During this time he left the Roman Catholic faith. Move to Alaska Gravel "decided to become a pioneer in a faraway place," and moved to pre-statehood Alaska in August 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place where someone without social or political connections could be a viable candidate for public office. Alaska's voting age of 19, less than most other states' 21, played a role in his decision, as did its newness and cooler climate. Broke when he arrived, he immediately found work in real estate sales until winter arrived. Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-to-Fairbanks run. Subsequently, he opened a small real estate brokerage in Anchorage (the Territory of Alaska not requiring a license) and saved enough so as not to have to work the railroad again. The firm was named the M. R. Gravel Real Estate Company. Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and continued a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life. Seeing Alaska as a wide-open place with no political establishment or entrenched interests, Gravel quickly became part of the civic scene there. By October 1957 he was a Division Chairman for Anchorage for the Democratic Central Committee in the territory, and by June 1958 he was president of the Alaska Young Democrats organization. He also became active in the United States Junior Chamber (Jaycees), and by early 1958 his duties included handing out awards for farmer of the year. By early 1958, Gravel was running as Democratic Party primary candidate for a Third Division seat in House of Representative of the territorial legislature. (This was one of the four judicial divisions into which Alaska was sectioned at the time.) Using the slogan "Gravel, the Roadbed to Prosperity", he ran but lost. At the same time, he was also an advocate for Alaskan statehood. Gravel went on a 44-state national speaking tour concerning tax reform in 1959, sponsored by the Jaycees, often dressing for events as Paul Revere. Gravel was selected from some two thousand applications for this position. The tour received a good amount of local newspaper coverage at its various stops, with Gravel's first name sometimes given as Mike and other times as Maurice. The tour's general message was an urging of "lower taxes, more efficiency in government and a system of taxation moderate at all levels of income". At several stops Gravel stated that the "tide of socialism" had to be stopped. He elaborated at another stop, "It is part of our Jaycee creed that economic justice can best be won by free men through free enterprise. We really want to see that free enterprise become our inheritance." The tour was scheduled to conclude in Washington D.C., on Tax Day, April 15, with petition signatures accumulated for reform to be presented to U.S. lawmakers: dressed as Revere, Gravel rode with the petition to the steps of the U.S. Capitol. The tour over, Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin at the First Methodist Church of Anchorage on April 29, 1959. She was a native of Montana who had attended Billings Business College before moving to Alaska two years prior and becoming a secretary in the office of the Anchorage city manager. She had also been named Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958. They had two children, Martin Anthony Gravel and Lynne Denise Gravel, born c. 1960 and 1962 respectively. Gravel ran without avail for the City Council in Anchorage in 1960. During this time, he had become a successful real estate agent; after the 1960 election, he became a property developer in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Anchorage. After a partner ran into financial difficulty, however, the project went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Gravel was forced out in 1962. State legislator With the support of Alaska wholesale grocer Barney Gottstein and supermarket builder Larry Carr, Gravel ran for the Alaska House of Representatives representing Anchorage in 1962, initially assigned the 10th and then 8th districts. Alaska had very crowded primaries that year: Gravel was one of 33 Democrats, along with 21 Republicans, who were running for the chance to compete for the 14 House seats allocated to the 8th district. Gravel made it through the primary, and in November eight Republicans and six Democrats were elected to the House from the district, with Gravel finishing eighth overall and third among with Democrats, with 8,174 votes. Gottstein became Gravel's main financial backer during most of his subsequent campaigns. Gravel served in the Alaska House of Representatives from January 28, 1963 to January 22, 1967, winning reelection in 1964. In his first term, he served as a minority member on two House committees: Commerce, and Labor and Management. He co-authored and sponsored the act that created the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights. Gravel was the chief architect of the law that created a regional high school system for rural Alaska; this allowed Alaska Natives to attend schools near where they lived instead of having to go to schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the lower 48 states. During the half-years that the legislature was not in session, Gravel resumed his real estate work. With Gottstein and Carr's backing, he became quite successful as a property developer on the Kenai Peninsula. During 1965 and 1966, he served as the Speaker of the House, surprising observers by winning that post. Gravel convinced former Speaker Warren A. Taylor to not try for the position against him by promising Taylor chairmanship of the Rules Committee, then reneged on the promise. Gravel denied later press charges that he had promised but not delivered on other committee chairmanships. As Speaker he antagonized fellow lawmakers by imposing his will on the legislature's committees and feuded with Alaska State Senate president Robert J. McNealy. Gravel did not run for reelection in 1966, instead choosing to run for Alaska's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, losing the primary to four-term incumbent Democrat Ralph Rivers by 1,300 votes and splitting the Democratic Party in the process. Rivers lost the general election that year to Republican state Senator Howard Pollock. Following this defeat, Gravel returned to the real estate business in Anchorage. U.S. Senator Election to Senate in 1968 In 1968, Gravel ran against 81-year-old incumbent Democratic United States Senator Ernest Gruening, a popular former governor of the Alaska Territory who was considered one of the fathers of Alaska's statehood, for his party's nomination to the U.S. Senate. Gravel's campaign was primarily based on his youth and telegenic appearance rather than issue differences. He hired Joseph Napolitan, the first self-described political consultant, in late 1966. They spent over a year and a half planning a short, nine-day primary election campaign that featured the slogans "Alaska first" and "Let's do something about the state we're in", the distribution of a collection of essays titled Jobs and More Jobs, and the creation of a half-hour, well-produced, glamorized biographical film of Gravel, Man for Alaska. The film was shown twice a day on every television station in Alaska, and carried by plane and shown on home projectors in hundreds of Alaska Native villages. The heavy showings quickly reversed a 2–to–1 Gruening lead in polls into a Gravel lead. Gravel visited many remote villages by seaplane and showed a thorough understanding of the needs of the bush country and the fishing and oil industries. Gravel also benefited from maintaining a deliberately ambiguous posture about Vietnam policy. Gruening had been one of only two Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and his opposition to President Lyndon B. Johnson's war policies was harming him among the Democratic electorate; according to Gravel, "all I had to do was stand up and not deal with the subject, and people would assume that I was to the right of Ernest Gruening, when in point of fact I was to the left of him". In Man for Alaska, Gravel argued that "the liberals" would come to West Germany's defense if it was attacked, and that the same standard should apply to the United States' allies in Asia. During the campaign he also claimed that he was "more in the mainstream of American thought on Vietnam" than Gruening, despite the fact that he had written to Gruening to praise his antiwar stance four years earlier. Decades later, Gravel conceded that "I said what I said [about Vietnam] to advance my career." Gravel beat Gruening in the primary by about 2,000 votes. Gruening found "the unexpected defeat hard to take" and thought that some aspects of his opponent's biographical film had misled viewers. In the general election, Gravel faced Republican Elmer E. Rasmuson, a banker and former mayor of Anchorage. College students in the state implored Gruening to run a write-in campaign as an Independent, but legal battles prevented him from getting approval for it until only two weeks were left. A late appearance by anti-war presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy did not offset Gruening's lack of funds and endorsements; meanwhile, Gravel and Rasmuson both saturated local media with their filmed biographies. On November 5, 1968, Gravel won the general election with 45 percent of the vote to Rasmuson's 37 percent and Gruening's 18 percent. Senate assignments and style When Gravel joined the U.S.Senate in January 1969, he requested and received a seat on the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, which had direct relevance to Alaskan issues. He also got a spot on the Public Works Committee, which he held throughout his time in the Senate. Finally, he was a member of the Select Committee on Small Business. In 1971 he became chair of the Public Works Committee's Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds, and by 1973 he was chair of its Subcommittee on Water Resources, then later its Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution. Gravel was also initially named to the Joint Committee on Congressional Operations. By 1973 Gravel was off the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee and the Select Small Business Committee and instead a member of the Finance Committee, and by 1977 was chair of that body's Subcommittee on Energy and Foundations. By 1973 he had also been on the ad hoc Special Committee to Study Secret and Confidential Government Documents. By his own admission, Gravel was too new and "too abrasive" to be effective in the Senate by the usual means of seniority-based committee assignments or negotiating deals with other senators, and was sometimes seen as arrogant or a nuisance by the more senior and tradition-oriented members. Gravel relied on attention-getting gestures to achieve what he wanted, hoping national exposure would force other senators to listen to him. But even senators who agreed with him on issues considered his methods to be showboating. As part of this approach, Gravel voted with Southern Democrats to keep the Senate filibuster rule in place, and accordingly supported Russell Long and Robert Byrd but opposed Ted Kennedy in Senate leadership battles. In retrospective assessment, University of Alaska Anchorage history professor Stephen Haycox said, "Loose cannon is a good description of Gravel's Senate career. He was an off-the-wall guy, and you weren't really ever sure what he would do." Nuclear issues and the Cold War In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one-megaton calibration exercise for the second and larger five-megaton Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety; he then made a personal appeal to President Richard Nixon to stop the test. After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971 Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign). In 1971 Gravel voted against the Nixon administration's proposed anti-ballistic missile system, the Safeguard Program, having previously vacillated over the issue, suggesting that he might be willing to support it in exchange for federal lands in Alaska being opened up for private oil drilling. His vote alienated Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who had raised funds for Gravel's primary campaign. Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971 Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975 he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974 Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power. Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's July 1971 secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.), Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with the P.R.C., including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. He reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971. Vietnam War, the draft, and the Pentagon Papers Although he did not campaign against the Vietnam War during his first Senate campaign, by the end of 1970 Gravel was speaking out against United States policy in southeast Asia: in December of that year he persuaded William Fulbright to join him in a spontaneous two-day filibuster against a $155 million military aid package to Cambodia's Khmer Republic government in the Cambodian Civil War. President Richard Nixon had campaigned in 1968 on a promise to end the U.S. military draft, a decision endorsed by the February 1970 report of the Gates Commission. The existing draft law was scheduled to conclude at the end of June 1971, and the Senate faced a contentious debate about whether to extend it as the Vietnam War continued. The Nixon administration announced in February 1971 that it wanted a two-year extension to June 1973, after which the draft would end; Army planners had already been operating under the assumption of a two-year extension, after which an all-volunteer force would be in place. Skeptics such as Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Stennis thought this unrealistic and wanted a four-year extension, but the two-year proposal is what went forward in Congress. By early May 1971, Gravel had indicated his intention to filibuster the draft renewal legislation, halting conscription and thereby bringing U.S. involvement in the war to a rapid end. During this period he also supported efforts to mobilize and influence public opinion against the war, endorsing the "Vietnam War Out Now" rallies in Washington D.C. and San Francisco on April 24, 1971, and financing a broadcast campaign by the antiwar group War No More with a personal loan. In June 1972 he escorted a group of over 100 antiwar protesters, including psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, actress Candice Bergen, theater producer and director Joseph Papp, and peditrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, into the United States Capitol Building; the group was arrested after blocking a hallway outside the Senate chamber. By June 1971, some Democratic senators opposed to the war wanted to limit the renewal to a one-year extension, while others wanted to end it immediately; Gravel reiterated that he was one of the latter, saying, "It's a senseless war, and one way to do away with it is to do away with the draft." A Senate vote on June 4 indicated majority support for the two-year extension. On June 18 Gravel announced again his intention to counteract that by filibustering the renewal legislation, defending the practice against those who associated it only with blocking civil rights legislation. The first filibuster attempt failed on June 23 when, by three votes, the Senate voted cloture for only the fifth time since 1927. Protracted negotiations took place over House conference negotiations on the bill, revolving in large part around Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's eventually unsuccessful amendment to tie renewal to a troop withdrawal timetable from Vietnam; during this time the draft law expired and no more were conscripted. On August 5, the Nixon administration pleaded for a renewal before the Senate went on recess, but Gravel blocked Stennis's attempt to limit debate, and no vote was held. Finally on September 21, 1971, the Senate invoked cloture over Gravel's second filibuster attempt by one vote, and then passed the two-year draft extension. Gravel's attempts to stop the draft had failed (notwithstanding Gravel's later claims that he had stopped or shortened the draft, taken at face value in some media reports, during his 2008 presidential campaign). Meanwhile, on June 13, 1971, The New York Times began printing large portions of the Pentagon Papers. The papers were a large collection of secret government documents and studies pertaining to the Vietnam War, of which former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg had made unauthorized copies and was determined to make public. Ellsberg had for a year and a half approached members of Congress – such as William Fulbright, George McGovern, Charles Mathias, and Pete McCloskey – about publishing the documents, on the grounds that the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution would give congressional members immunity from prosecution, but all had refused. Instead, Ellsberg gave the documents to the Times. The U.S. Justice Department immediately tried to halt publication, on the grounds that the information revealed within the papers harmed the national interest. Within the next two weeks, a federal court injunction halted publication in the Times; The Washington Post and several other newspapers began publishing parts of the documents, with some of them also being halted by injunctions; and the whole matter went to the U.S. Supreme Court for arguments. Looking for an alternate publication mechanism, Ellsberg returned to his idea of having a member of Congress read them, and chose Gravel based on the latter's efforts against the draft; Gravel agreed where previously others had not. Ellsberg arranged for the papers to be given to Gravel on June 26 via an intermediary, Post editor Ben Bagdikian. Gravel used his counter-intelligence experience to choose a midnight transfer in front of the Mayflower Hotel in the center of Washington, D.C. On the night of June 29, 1971, Gravel attempted to read the papers on the floor of the Senate as part of his filibuster against the draft, but was thwarted when no quorum could be formed. Gravel instead convened a session of the Buildings and Grounds subcommittee that he chaired. He got New York Congressman John G. Dow to testify that the war had soaked up funding for public buildings, thus making discussion of the war relevant to the committee. He began reading from the papers with the press in attendance, omitting supporting documents that he felt might compromise national security, and declaring, "It is my constitutional obligation to protect the security of the people by fostering the free flow of information absolutely essential to their democratic decision-making." He read until 1 a.m., culminating by saying "Arms are being severed. Metal is clashing through human bodies because of the public policy this government and all its branches continue to support." Then with tears and sobs he said that he could no longer physically continue, the previous three nights of sleeplessness and fear about the future having taken their toll. Gravel ended the session by, with no other senators present, establishing unanimous consent to insert 4,100 pages of the Papers into the Congressional Record of his subcommittee. The following day, the Supreme Court's New York Times Co. v. United States decision ruled in favor of the newspapers and publication in the Times and others resumed. In July 1971 Bantam Books published an inexpensive paperback edition of the papers containing the material the Times had published. Gravel, too, wanted to privately publish the portion of the papers he had read into the record, believing that "immediate disclosure of the contents of these papers will change the policy that supports the war". After being turned down by many commercial publishers, on August 4 he reached agreement with Beacon Press, the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which Gravel was a member. Announced on August 17 and published on October 22, 1971, this four-volume, relatively expensive set became the "Senator Gravel Edition", which studies from Cornell University and the Annenberg Center for Communication have labeled as the most complete edition of the Pentagon Papers to be published. The "Gravel Edition" was edited and annotated by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, and included an additional volume of analytical articles on the origins and progress of the war, also edited by Chomsky and Zinn. Beacon Press then was subjected to a FBI investigation; an outgrowth of this was the Gravel v. United States court case, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled upon in June 1972; it held that the Speech or Debate Clause did grant immunity to Gravel for his reading the papers in his subcommittee, did grant some immunity to Gravel's congressional aide, but granted no immunity to Beacon Press in relation to their publishing the same papers. The U.S. Senate Democratic Caucus backed Gravel in the case, but due to Republican opposition it did not pay Gravel's legal fees, leaving him owing $25,000 (the equivalent of $150,000 in 2019, adjusted for inflation). The events of 1971 changed Gravel in the following months from an obscure freshman senator to a nationally visible political figure. He became a sought-after speaker on the college circuit as well as at political fundraisers, opportunities he welcomed as lectures were "the one honest way a Senator has to supplement his income". But his speaking tours caused him to accrue one of the worst absentee records in the Senate. The Democratic candidates for the 1972 presidential election sought his endorsement. In January 1972 Gravel endorsed Maine Senator Ed Muskie, hoping that his support would help Muskie with the party's left wing and in ethnic French-Canadian areas during the first primary contest in New Hampshire (Muskie won, but not overwhelmingly, and his campaign faltered soon after). In April 1972 Gravel appeared on all three networks' nightly newscasts to decry the Nixon administration's reliance on Vietnamization by making reference to the secret National Security Study Memorandum 1 document, which stated it would take 8–13 years for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam to defend South Vietnam. Gravel made excerpts from the study public, but senators Robert P. Griffin and William B. Saxbe blocked his attempt to read NSSM 1 into the Congressional Record. Domestic policy In 1970 Gravel co-sponsored legislation to establish a guaranteed minimum income, entitling poor families to up to $6,300 a year (the equivalent of $42,000 in 2019 after adjustment for inflation). He subsequently voted for a "work bonus" program, which would have entitled low-income working families with dependent children if they were paying Social Security or Railroad Retirement taxes to a non-taxable bonus of up to 10 percent of their wages. Gravel also supported extending Social Security to all federal employees and introduced a campaign finance reform bill in 1971 that would have enacted full disclosure of campaign financing, placed limits on large donations, media spending and individual candidate spending. In 1969, Gravel was the only Democratic Senator outside of the South to vote for Nixon's Supreme Court nominee Clement Haynsworth. The following year Gravel opposed Nixon's next pick, G. Harrold Carswell. Run for vice president in 1972 Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates. Toward this end he began soliciting delegates for their support. He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose. On the convention's final day, July 14, 1972, McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice. Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations. Thus there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska. He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination. In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting that included several other candidates. Gravel attracted some attention for his efforts: writer Norman Mailer said he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films", while Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances". Yet the process was doubly disastrous for the Democrats. In the time consumed by nominating and seconding and all the vice-presidential candidates' speeches, the attention of the delegates on the floor was lost and McGovern's speech was pushed to 3:30 a.m. The haste with which Eagleton was selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver. Reelection to Senate in 1974 Several years earlier, Alaska politicians had speculated that Gravel would have a hard time getting both renominated and elected when his first term expired, given that he was originally elected without a base party organization and tended to focus on national rather than local issues. Nonetheless, after receiving support from national and local labor leaders, securing key earmarks, and producing another half-hour TV advertorial, in 1974 Gravel was reelected to the Senate, with 58 percent of the vote to 42 percent for Republican State Senator C. R. Lewis, who was a national officer of the John Birch Society. Second term Gravel's reelection campaign left him $65,000–$75,000 in debt. In 1975 The Washington Post reported on a memo by his executive assistant laying out a fundraising strategy to tackle this, including raising funds from oil companies, meeting with previous donors and "inquir[ing] into the governmental priorities of these people and their groups in the coming session", as well as obtaining further speaking fees to reduce his personal debt. This was followed by a number of stories about links between Gravel, lobbyists and fundraisers, including one that was widely publicized in Alaska about his holding a share in a Colorado resort with two Washington lobbyists he was working with on land and energy legislation. Gravel had been open about the investment and had opposing views to one of the lobbyists on nuclear power. In 1980 the Wall Street Journal published details about his fundraising activities, including writing to individuals and PACs in the oil industry, pledging to kill off proposals for a windfall profits tax on the sector, and traveling in the Middle East with the business partner of one of his donors to sell Alaskan land to businessmen. Gravel suggested that critics of his fundraising were "naive". In 1975 Gravel introduced an amendment to cut the number of troops overseas by 200,000, but it was defeated on a voice vote. In September 1975 Gravel was named as one of several Congressional Advisers to the Seventh Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly, which met to discuss problems related to economic development and international economic cooperation. In June 1976 Gravel was the focus of a federal investigation into allegations that he was involved in a sex-for-vote arrangement. Congressional staff clerk Elizabeth Ray (who had already been involved in a sex scandal that led to the downfall of Representative Wayne Hays) said that in August 1972 she had sex with Gravel aboard a houseboat on the Potomac River, under the instruction of Representative Kenneth J. Gray, her boss at the time. Gray allegedly wanted to secure Gravel's support for further funding for construction of the National Visitor Center in Washington, a troubled project that was under the jurisdiction of subcommittees that both members chaired. Another Congressional staffer said she witnessed the boat encounter, but Gravel said at the time that he had never met either of the women. Gravel and Gray strongly denied that they had made any arrangement regarding legislation, and neither was ever charged with any wrongdoing. Decades later Gravel wrote that he had indeed had sex with Ray, but had not changed any votes because of it. Gravel and his main financial backer, Gottstein, had a falling out in 1978, during the Congressional debate over whether to allow a controversial sale of U.S. F-15 fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia. An ardent backer of Israel, Gottstein opposed the sale and asked Gravel to vote against it. But Gravel not only voted for it but made an emotional speech attacking the anti-sale campaign. Gravel wrote in 2008 that it was the only time Gottstein had ever asked him for a favor, and the rupture resulted in their never speaking to each other again. Alaskan issues By 1971 Gravel was urging construction of the much-argued Trans-Alaska pipeline, addressing environmental concerns by saying that the pipeline's builders and operators should have "total and absolute" responsibility for any consequent environmental damage. Two years later the debate over the pipeline came to a crux, with The New York Times describing it as "environmentalists [in] a holy war with the major oil companies". In February 1973 the U.S. Court of Appeals blocked the issuance of permits for construction; Gravel and fellow Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens reacted by urging Congress to pass legislation overturning the court's decision. Environmentalists opposed to the pipeline, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club then sought to use the recently passed National Environmental Policy Act to their advantage; Gravel designed an amendment to the pipeline bill that would immunize the pipeline from any further court challenges under that law, and thus speed its construction. Passage of the amendment became the key battle regarding the pipeline. On July 17, 1973, in a dramatic roll-call vote, the Gravel amendment was approved as a 49–49 tie was broken in favor by Vice President Spiro Agnew. The actual bill enabling the pipeline then passed easily; Gravel had triumphed in what became perhaps his most lasting accomplishment as a senator. In opposition to the Alaskan fishing industry, Gravel advocated American participation in the formation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. For two years he opposed legislation that established a Exclusive Economic Zone for marine resources. He was one of only 19 senators to vote against Senate approval for the expanded zone in 1976, saying it would undermine the U.S. position in Law of the Sea negotiations and that nations arbitrarily extending their fishing rights limits would "produce anarchy of the seas". The legislation was passed, and the United States has signed but never ratified the Law of the Sea treaty. Gravel accumulated a complicated record on Indian affairs during his time in the Senate. During his first year in the Senate Gravel urged abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, criticizing the agency for the pace of development of schools in Alaska, its paternalistic attitudes and the culturally inappropriate nature of its education, and advocating greater shared decision-making between the federal government and native communities in Alaska. Later, his views changed; in the early 1970s Gravel supported a demonstration project that established links between Alaskan villages and the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, for medical diagnostic communications. In 1971, he fended off accusations from Alaskan natives that he was not spending enough time working on their land claims. Gravel helped secure a private grant to facilitate the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference in 1977, attended by Inuit representatives from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. These conferences now also include representatives from Russia. In 1977, Gravel helped lead an effort to have the U.S. Interior Department rename Mount McKinley to Denali; this eventually led to Denali National Park being so named. Subsequently, Gravel proposed a never-built "Denali City" development above the Tokositna River near the mountain, to consist of a giant Teflon dome enclosing hotels, golf courses, condominiums, and commercial buildings. A related idea of his to build a high-speed rail line to Denali also failed to gain traction. A key, emotional issue in the state at the time was "locking up Alaska", making reference to allocation of its vast, mostly uninhabited land. President Jimmy Carter desired to put large portions of this land under federal protection against development, a move that some Alaskans vociferously opposed. In 1978 Gravel blocked passage, via procedural delays such as walking out of House–Senate conference committee meetings, of a complex bill which represented a compromise on land use policy. The bill would have put some of Alaska's vast federal land holdings under state control while preserving other portions for federal parks and refuges; the blocking action earned Gravel the enmity of fellow Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who had supported the compromise. In 1980, a new lands bill came up for consideration, that was less favorable to Alaskan interests and more liked by environmentalists; it set aside of Alaska's for national parks, conservation areas, and other restricted federal uses. Gravel blocked it, as not ensuring enough future development in the state. A new compromise version of the 1980 bill came forward, which reduced the land set aside to . Representing Alaskan interests, Gravel tried to stop the bill, including by filibuster. But the Senate voted for cloture and passed the bill. Frustrated, Gravel said, "the legislation denies Alaska its rights as a state, and denies the U.S. crucial strategic resources," and opined that the Senate was "a little bit like a tank of barracudas". Nonetheless, the bill, known as the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, was signed by President Carter shortly before leaving the White House, and led to millions of acres being set aside in the state for national parks, wildlife refuges, and other kinds of areas under protection. In 1978 Gravel authored and secured the passage into federal law of the General Stock Ownership Corporation, that became Subchapter U of the Tax Code under the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. This gave states the ability to create corporations that would invest in for-profit enterprises, with all citizens within the state owning shares in the corporation. Gravel's attempt to convince the Alaska state legislature to create such a corporation failed, as did a 1980 state ballot initiative towards the same end, but nevertheless the creation of the General Stock Ownership Corporation in federal law turned out to be significant in the development of binary economics. Loss of Senate seat in 1980 In 1980 Gravel was challenged for the Democratic Party's nomination by State Representative Clark Gruening, the grandson of the man Gravel had defeated in a primary 12 years earlier. One of Gruening's supporters was Gravel's former backer Gottstein. Several factors made Gravel vulnerable. As an insurgent candidate in 1968 Gravel had never established a firm party base. Not liking to hunt or fish, he was also always culturally suspect in the state. The primary campaign was bitterly fought. A group of Democrats, including future governor Steve Cowper, led the campaign against Gravel, with Gravel's actions in respect to the 1978 and 1980 Alaskan lands bills a major issue. This was especially so given that the 1980 bill's dénouement happened but a week before the primary. The sources of Gravel's campaign funds, some of which Gravel readily acknowledged came from political action committees outside the state, also became an issue in the contest. Gruening had pledged that he would not take special interest group money, but Gravel said that Gruening was "dishonest" in accepting individual contributors from Jewish donors living outside the state because to him such contributors comprised "a special interest group ... that seeks to influence the foreign policy of the U.S." Gruening won the primary with about 55 percent of the vote to Gravel's 44 percent. Gravel later conceded that by the time of his defeat, he had alienated "almost every constituency in Alaska". Another factor may have been Alaska's blanket primary system of the time, which allowed unlimited voting across party lines and from its many independents; Republicans believed Gruening would be an easier candidate to defeat in the general election. Gruening lost the general election to Republican Frank Murkowski. Gravel was the last Democrat to represent Alaska in Congress for 28 years, until Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich defeated Ted Stevens, by then an aged, iconic figure who had just been convicted of seven felonies for taking unreported gifts, in a very close and protracted election result in 2008. Stevens's conviction was subsequently vacated due to prosecutorial misconduct. Career after leaving the Senate Of his 1980 defeat, Gravel later recalled: "I had lost my career. I lost my marriage. I was in the doldrums for ten years after my defeat," and "Nobody wanted to hire me for anything important. I felt like I was worthless. I didn't know what I could do." By his own later description, Gravel was a womanizer, and had an affair while in the Senate, and in December 1980 he and his wife Rita separated. They filed for divorce in September 1981; she later received all of his Senate pension income. During the 1980s Gravel was a real estate developer in Anchorage and Kenai, Alaska, a consultant, and a stockbroker. One of his real estate ventures, a condominium business, was forced to declare bankruptcy and a lawsuit ensued. In 1986 Gravel worked in partnership with Merrill Lynch Capital Markets to buy losses that financially troubled Alaska Native Corporations could not take as tax deductions and sell them to large national companies looking for tax writeoffs. Gravel also learned computer programming at some point but never practiced it. In 1984 Gravel married his second wife, Whitney Stewart Gravel, a former administrative assistant for Senator Jacob Javits. Return to politics In 1989 Gravel reentered politics. He founded and led The Democracy Foundation, which promotes direct democracy. He established the Philadelphia II corporation, which seeks to replicate the original 1787 Constitutional Convention and have a Second Constitutional Convention to bring about direct democracy Gravel led an effort to get a United States Constitutional amendment to allow voter-initiated federal legislation similar to state ballot initiatives. He argued that Americans are able to legislate responsibly, and that the Act and Amendment in the National Initiative would allow American citizens to become "law makers". However such efforts met with little success. In 2001, Gravel became director of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, where he admired institute co-founder Gregory Fossedal's work on direct democracy in Switzerland. By 2004, Gravel had become chair of the institute, and Fossedal (who in turn was a director of the Democracy Foundation) gave the introduction at Gravel's presidential announcement. In 2003 Gravel gave a speech on direct democracy at a conference hosted by the American Free Press. The event was cosponsored by the Barnes Review, a journal that endorses Holocaust denial. After some controversy over his appearance, Gravel apologized, saying he did not realize the group's ties. Gravel said repeatedly that he did not share the group's views on the Holocaust, stating, "You better believe I know that six million Jews were killed. [The Barnes Review publishers] are nutty as loons if they don't think it happened". The group invited Gravel to speak again, but he declined. Mike and Whitney Gravel lived in Arlington County, Virginia, until 2010 and then resided in Burlingame, California. They have the two grown children from his first marriage, Martin Gravel and Lynne Gravel Mosier, and four grandchildren. Whitney Gravel's income sustained the couple from 1998 on. In the 2000s, Gravel suffered poor health, requiring three surgeries in 2003 for back pain and neuropathy. Due to unreimbursed medical expenses and debts from his political causes, he declared personal bankruptcy in 2004. He began taking a salary from the non-profit organizations for which he was working; much of that income was lent to his presidential campaign. In 2007, he declared that he had "zero net worth". 2008 presidential campaign Democratic Party primaries At the start of 2006 Gravel decided the best way he could promote direct democracy and the National Initiative was to run for president. On April 17, 2006, Gravel became the first candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election, announcing his run in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Short on campaign cash, he took public transportation to get to his announcement. (Gravel called for public financing of elections.) Other principal Gravel positions were the FairTax, as well as withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days and a single payer national health care system. Gravel had opposed the Iraq War, and President George W. Bush's rationale for it, from the beginning, and in 2006 said that U.S. troops in Iraq, as in Vietnam, had "died in vain". He also favored a regional peace initiative, as well as reparation payments for Iraqis. Gravel also called for a "U.S. corporate withdrawal from Iraq", with reconstruction contracts held by U.S. companies to be turned over to Iraqi firms. Gravel campaigned almost full-time in New Hampshire, the first primary state, following his announcement. Opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination showed Gravel with 1 percent or less support. By the end of March 2007, Gravel's campaign had less than $500 in cash on hand against debts of nearly $90,000. Because of his time in the Senate, Gravel was invited to many of the early Democratic presidential debates. During the initial one at South Carolina State University on April 26, 2007, he suggested a bill requiring the president to withdraw from Iraq on pain of criminal penalties. He also advocated positions such as opposing preemptive nuclear war. He stated that the Iraq War had the effect of creating more terrorists and that the "war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis". Regarding his fellow candidates, he said, "I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me – they frighten me." In one such exchange, Gravel said, "Tell me, Barack, who do you want to nuke?" to which Obama responded, "I'm not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike, I promise." Media stories said that Gravel was responsible for much of whatever "heat" and "flashpoints" had taken place during the Democratic debates. Gravel gained considerable publicity by shaking up the normally staid multiple-candidate format; The New York Times' media critic said that what Gravel had done was "steal a debate with outrageous, curmudgeonly statements". The Internet was a benefit: a YouTube video of his responses in the debate was viewed more than 225,892 times, ranking seventeenth in most views for week and first among news and politics clips; his name became the fifteenth most searched-for in the blogosphere; and his website garnered more traffic than those of frontrunners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards. Gravel appeared on the popular Colbert Report on television on May 2, and his campaign and career were profiled in national publications such as Salon. Two wordless, Warholesque campaign videos, "Rock" and "Fire", were released on YouTube in late May and became hits, and eventually gained over 760,000 and 185,000 views respectively. "Rock", in turn, was given airtime during an episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Some thirty-five years after he first achieved the national spotlight, he had found it again. All this did not improve his performance in the polls; a May 2007 CNN poll showed him with less than 0.5 percent support among Democrats. Gravel was in the next several debates, in one case after CNN reversed a decision to exclude him. Like some of the other second-tier candidates, Gravel did not get as much time as the leaders; during the June 2, 2007, New Hampshire debate, which lasted two hours, he was asked 10 questions and allowed to speak for five minutes and 37 seconds. During the July 23, 2007, CNN-YouTube presidential debate, Gravel responded to audience applause when he had complained of a lack of airtime and said: "Thank you. Has it been fair thus far?" Detractors began to liken him to "the cranky uncle who lives in the attic," or "the angry old guy that just seemed to want to become angrier". Berkeley political scientist David Terr found that moderator George Stephanopoulos directed roughly five percent of his questions to Gravel; in a poll asking who did the best in the debate, Gravel placed seventh among the eight candidates. National opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination continued to show Gravel with one percent or zero percent numbers. By the end of the third-quarter 2007, Gravel had about $17,500 in cash on hand, had collected a total of about $380,000 during the 2008 election cycle, and was continuing to run a threadbare campaign with minimal staff. Beginning with the October 30, 2007, Philadelphia event, Gravel was excluded from most of the debates, with the debate sponsors or the Democratic National Committee saying Gravel's campaign had not met fund-raising, polling, or local campaign organizational thresholds. For the Philadelphia exclusion, Gravel blamed corporate censorship on the part of sponsor owner and alleged military-industrial complex member General Electric for his exclusion and mounted a counter-gathering and debate against a video screen a short distance away, but he had lost his easiest publicity. In reaction, supporters organized "mass donation days" to try to help the campaign gain momentum and funds, such as on December 5, 2007, the anniversary of the Repeal of Prohibition. Gravel did not compete in the initial 2008 vote, the Iowa caucuses, but was still subjected to a false report from MSNBC that he had pulled out of the race afterward. Gravel did focus his attention on the second 2008 vote, the New Hampshire primary. In early January, Mother Jones' investigative reporter James Ridgeway was filmed interviewing and following Gravel in New Hampshire, in which Gravel is interviewed on the phone by Neal Conan for NPR's, Talk of the Nation. He received about 400 votes out of some 280,000 cast in New Hampshire, or 0.14 percent, before taking time off to improve his health. He resumed campaigning, but fared no better in subsequent states. By the end of January 2008, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Gravel were the only remaining Democrats from the initial debates still running; Gravel vowed to stay in the presidential campaign until November. On March 11, 2008, Gravel continued to remain in the Democratic race but additionally endorsed a Green Party candidate for president, Jesse Johnson, saying he wanted to help Johnson prevail against Green Party rivals Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader. By late March, Gravel had almost no fundraising and was only on the ballot in one of the next ten Democratic primaries. Switch to Libertarian Party On March 25, 2008, Gravel announced that he would leave the Democrats and join the Libertarian Party, saying: "My libertarian views, as well as my strong stance against war, the military industrial complex and American imperialism, seem not to be tolerated by Democratic Party elites who are out of touch with the average American; elites that reject the empowerment of American citizens I offered to the Democratic Party at the beginning of this presidential campaign with the National Initiative for Democracy." The following day Gravel entered the race for the 2008 Libertarian presidential nomination, saying that he would have run as a third-party candidate all along except that he needed the public exposure that came from being in the earlier Democratic debates. Gravel's initial notion of running as a fusion candidate with other parties was met with skepticism. As a Libertarian candidate, Gravel faced resistance to his past support of big government initiatives and his unorthodox positions around direct democracy. Nevertheless, he garnered more support than he had as a Democrat, placing second and third in two April 2008 straw polls. In the May 25 balloting at the 2008 Libertarian National Convention in Denver, Gravel finished fourth out of eight candidates on the initial ballot, with 71 votes out of a total 618; he trailed former Congressman and eventual winner Bob Barr, author Mary Ruwart, and businessman Wayne Allyn Root. Gravel's position did not subsequently improve and he was eliminated on the fourth ballot. Afterwards he stated that "I just ended my political career," but he vowed to continue promoting his positions as a writer and lecturer. 2008–early 2019 In June 2008 Gravel endorsed the NYC 9/11 Ballot Initiative, saying the measure would create a "citizens commission rather than a government commission" with subpoena power against top U.S. officials to "make a true investigation as to what happened" regarding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He later said, "Individuals in and out of government may certainly have participated with the obviously known perpetrators of this dastardly act. Suspicions abound over the analysis presented by government. Obviously an act that has triggered three wars, Afghan, Iraqi and the continuing War on Terror, should be extensively investigated which was not done and which the government avoids addressing." In August 2008 Gravel was speaking to a crowd of supporters of Sami Al-Arian (who two years earlier had pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison for a charge of conspiracy in helping Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a "specially designated terrorist" organization) when he was caught on tape saying of Al-Arian's prosecutor, "Find out where he lives, find out where his kids go to school, find out where his office is: picket him all the time. Call him a racist in signs if you see him. Call him an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but in his face all the time." Gravel was criticized for potentially involving the children of the prosecutor, and Al-Arian's family disavowed the sentiments. Gravel defended Alaska Governor Sarah Palin after she was chosen as Republican presidential nominee John McCain's running mate in September 2008. He praised Palin's record in standing up to corruption among Alaskan Republicans, thought her national inexperience was an asset not a detriment, and predicted that the "Troopergate" investigation into whether she improperly fired a state official would "come out in her favor". Gravel made clear he would not support or vote for either McCain–Palin or Obama–Biden in the general election. The following year Gravel said that Palin's politics were "terrible, but that doesn't detract from the fact that she's a very talented person". He predicted that Palin would run for president in 2012 and that "she's going to surprise a lot of people". Palin did not run, but Gravel's prediction about "TrooperGate" was accurate as Palin was found not to have violated ethics laws. In 2013, by the invitation of Hamed Ghashghavi, the secretary for international affairs of the 3rd International Conference on Hollywoodism in Tehran, Iran, Gravel attended that event as an Iranian government-organized anti-Hollywood conference. Gravel noted that the conference was attended by "various elements of extremes" but said it was necessary to discuss how the U.S. film industry portrayed Iran in order to prevent "an insane war" between the two nations. In May 2013 Gravel was one of several former members of Congress to accept $20,000 from the Paradigm Research Group, an advocacy group for UFO disclosure, as part of holding what they termed a Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, modeled after congressional hearings, regarding supposed U.S. government suppression of evidence concerning UFOs. Gravel said, "Something is monitoring the planet, and they are monitoring it very cautiously, because we are a very warlike planet," and, "What we're faced with here is, in areas of the media, and the government too, an effort to marginalize and ridicule people who have specific knowledge." In December 2014 Gravel was announced as the new CEO of KUSH, a company which makes marijuana-infused products for medicinal and recreational use, and a subsidiary of Cannabis Sativa, Inc. He also became an Independent Director of Cannabis Sativa. During the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, Gravel praised Bernie Sanders and his campaign, saying "Bernie is one of the most gifted politicians I have ever observed. He's a person of great integrity and very clever." Gravel predicted that Sanders would be elected president but would be unable to get his key reforms through Congress, and thus that Sanders and his supporters should back some of the proposals of the National Initiative. In 2016, Gravel said in relation to the September 11 attacks: "We killed 58,000 American servicemen in the Vietnam War and all they did was die in vain. What's so unusual about killing 3,000 more in order to develop the grist for the mill to empower into infinity the military industrial complex?" and "There's no question in my mind that 9/11 was an inside job". The remarks were later disavowed by even Gravel supporters. By 2019 Gravel was living in Seaside, California. He was working on a book, at the time titled Human Governance, about his principal idea for direct democracy, a U.S. Constitutional Amendment to create a "Legislature of the People" that would circumvent the existing Congress. The book was self-published at the end of the year by AuthorHouse under the title The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People. 2020 presidential campaign On March 19, 2019, Gravel announced that he was considering running in the 2020 Democratic primaries. He said, "The goal will not be to win, but to bring a critique of American imperialism to the Democratic debate stage." An exploratory committee was formed, with filing a statement of organization with the Federal Election Commission on that same day. The filing was the idea of a group of teenagers, led by David Oks and Henry Williams, inspired by the podcast Chapo Trap House, and done with Gravel's consent (after a week spent convincing him of the idea's merits), but without his involvement. Intrigued by the group's commitment to amplifying his long-held policy goals, Gravel (who would be old on Inauguration Day in 2021) said he planned to meet with them in April, and to discuss a 2020 White House run with his wife. On April 2, 2019, Gravel filed to officially run for office. The campaign called itself the "#Gravelanche". Gravel's initial stated goal was merely to qualify for debates by getting the required 65,000 small donors. He discouraged people from voting for him and said his preferences were Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, both of whom favor a non-interventionist foreign policy. But on April 29, Gravel's campaign said he was running to win, not just to participate in debates. In a subsequent interview, though, Gravel emphasized the virtue of Sanders and Gabbard in some order as a presidential ticket. Statements like these caused Vox to call Gravel "2020's oddest Democratic presidential candidate". The New York Times Magazine included Gravel as an example in the rise of democratic socialism in the United States also exemplified by Sanders's 2016 race and the 2018 election of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "[Gravel's] campaign represents the most absurd form of a legitimate movement on the left that feels little obligation to the Democratic Party." In June 2019, Gravel touted the endorsement of Muntadher al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who, in December 2008, made headlines after he threw his shoes at President George W. Bush in protest of the U.S. war in Iraq. Al-Zaidi endorsed Gravel based on his promise to improve White House policies regarding Iraq and the Middle East. On June 13, 2019, the Democratic Party announced the 20 major candidates who qualified for the first debate later that month. Gravel was one of the four who missed out (the others were Montana Governor Steve Bullock, U.S. Representative Seth Moulton, and Miramar, Florida, Mayor Wayne Messam). Gravel had been unable to get the requisite number of donations, or to score one percent or better in enough polls (many polls did not even include him). Nevertheless, Gravel said he would not drop out and would try to qualify for the July debate. In early July, however, Gravel's campaign said it was still 10,000 contributions short of the 65,000-donor threshold and that it was "nearing its conclusion". It solicited suggestions for where to donate $100–150,000 of leftover campaign funds. Gravel added that he had always planned on ending the campaign before the teenagers in charge of it needed to return to school. A few days later the campaign became the first to run an attack ad against Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, using the text "Is this the best our party has to offer?" Gravel's campaign crossed the threshold of 65,000 donors on July 12, 2019, meeting the qualification mark for that month's debate. But because 20 other candidates, the maximum allowed to participate, had already met at least the polling criterion, which takes priority over the donor criterion, Gravel was not invited. The campaign officially came to a close on August 6, 2019, with Gravel endorsing both Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard for president. Gravel's campaign later stated on Twitter that they never wanted to win but saw the campaign as an "intimately democratic" project and expressed honor at working with Gravel. Gravel said he would divide remaining campaign funds between charity and a new think tank which would espouse his ideas. The Gravel Institute Gravel used some of the funds remaining from his 2020 presidential campaign to found an eponymous progressive think tank called The Gravel Institute in 2019. As noted by Vice magazine, the institute aims to do battle with PragerU from a left-wing perspective. Launched in September 2020, the new entity said it would "carry on the life's work of former U.S Senator Mike Gravel in fighting for global peace and democracy. Its mission is to promote bold and forward-looking ideas about a more peaceful and egalitarian world, and to build a robust movement of young people to win it". Contributors announced include Cornel West and Slavoj Žižek, as well as Lower Brule Indian Reservation activist Nick Estes. Other presenters have included and will include H. Jon Benjamin, Briahna Joy Gray, Bernie Sanders, Chelsea Manning, Richard Wolff, Stephanie Kelton, Zephyr Teachout, David Cross, Jabari Brisport, Zohran Mamdani, and Gravel himself (though it is unknown if his appearance will be cancelled due to his death in June 2021, or if the video has already been recorded). Death Gravel died of multiple myeloma at his home in Seaside, California, on June 26, 2021, at age 91. The obituary for him in The New York Times stated that Gravel was "a two-term Democratic senator from Alaska ... who was perhaps better known as an unabashed attention-getter" who later become known for "mounting long-shot presidential runs". The obituary in The Washington Post was similar, saying that Gravel was "an Alaska Democrat with a flair for the theatrical who rose from obscurity to brief renown" and later "ran quixotic campaigns for the presidency". The Anchorage Daily News quoted Gravel as saying of himself in 1989, "I'm an independent kind of guy. A rough and ready kind of guy. My glands work in a certain way that make me stand up, foolishly sometimes, and fight." Political positions Alan Abramowitz and Jeffrey Allan Segal described Gravel as "a maverick, if not an eccentric, in the Senate." His Americans for Democratic Action "Liberal Quotient" scores ranged from 81 out of 100 (1971) to 39 out of 100 (1980), with an average of around 61. His American Conservative Union scores ranged from 0 out of 100 (several years, including 1971 and 1972) to 38 out of 100 (1979), with an average of 14. Abramowitz and Segal note that Gravel's lowest ADA ratings coincided with his two Senate re-election bids, and for the most part his highest ACU ratings followed the same pattern. In 1972, as a young senator, Gravel published Citizen Power: A People's Platform, a manifesto outlining what Kirkus Reviews termed a "populist reform [that] would provide 'balanced political power' between the people and government and business interests." Civil rights issues On drug policy, Gravel said in 2007 that he favored decriminalization and treating addiction as a public health matter. During his 2008 presidential candidacy he condemned the War on Drugs as a failure, saying that it did "nothing but savage our inner cities and put our children at risk". Gravel called for abolition of capital punishment in his book Citizen Power, and adhered to this position during his 2008 run for president. He supported abortion rights. During the 2008 campaign Gravel was a strong supporter of LGBT rights. He supported same-sex marriage and opposed the Defense of Marriage Act and the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. He wrote in 2008 that "depriving gays and lesbians of equal rights is immoral". Foreign policy and defense issues Gravel was a critic of American imperialism. Gravel firmly opposed U.S. military action against Iran and Syria. He voiced opposition to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the use of torture, indefinite detention, and what he called "flagrant ignorance" of the Geneva Convention. In 2014 Gravel called for the release of the full, unredacted Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture. Gravel opposed the use of international sanctions as a policy tool and blamed the ones against Iraq under Saddam Hussein for the deaths of a half-million children in that country. In 2013 Gravel said that sanctions against Iran were "illegal". During his 2008 candidacy, Gravel called for a cut in military spending, variously reported to be 15 percent or 50 percent. He called for the savings to boost public education spending. To spur international nuclear nonproliferation efforts, Gravel called for unilateral reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. In 2008 Gravel criticized the decision of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to not pursue the efforts to impeach George W. Bush and the attempted impeachment of Dick Cheney, saying also that Bush and Cheney had committed crimes and deserved "to be prosecuted" at The Hague. In 2013 he expressed disdain for President Obama, calling him "a total fraud" and saying that both Bush and Obama should be tried "for the crimes and murders they've committed" in the International Court of Justice. Gravel specifically condemned Obama for the drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere. Economy, immigration, and environment During his 2008 candidacy Gravel favored a FairTax scheme, which would abolish the Internal Revenue Service, eliminate the federal income tax (which Gravel called "corrupt"), and impose a national sales tax. While Gravel described FairTax as "progressive", others have criticized it as "regressive", disproportionately benefiting the wealthiest Americans. To offset the new sales taxes on essential goods, Gravel's plan called for monthly government rebate payments to individuals and families. During his 2020 campaign Gravel also voiced support for a third legislative body that would give the people direct control of the budget as well as the implementation of a land value tax. Gravel opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during his 2008 candidacy, calling it unfair and economically harmful and needing renegotiation. Gravel believed that NAFTA was the "root cause" of illegal migration to the U.S. He favored a guest worker program and "setting up naturalization procedures that would fairly bring immigrants into legal status". In a 2007 interview, Gravel identified himself as "very much of a globalist" who believed in open markets and open borders and condemned the scapegoating of undocumented immigrants. Gravel also said that he favored eliminating the cap on H1B visas. As a senator from Alaska, Gravel favored drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but opposed it during his 2008 campaign. In 2008, Gravel supported a carbon tax to combat climate change. Gravel spoke in favor of net neutrality during his presidential campaign. Education and health care Gravel called for the cost of college tuition to be borne by the federal government, rather than students. In his 2008 campaign, he called the No Child Left Behind Act "a failure" and called for it to be "reformed and fully funded". He expressed support for universal pre-kindergarten and the expansion of the Head Start program; and expressed an openness to charter schools and school vouchers. He also suggested extending the school day and the school year, and supported merit pay for teachers. Gravel also called for publicly funded universal health care to replace the current employer-sponsored health insurance system. He supported "full funding" of the VA system. When asked in 2007 about naturopathy, homeopathy, and acupuncture, Gravel said that he was "very very much in favor" of holistic health care. Awards and honors In 2008 Gravel received the Columbia University School of General Studies' first annual Isaac Asimov Lifetime Achievement Award. Electoral history Writings Gravel, Mike. Jobs and More Jobs. Mt. McKinley Publishers, 1968. Gravel, Mike. Citizen Power: A People's Platform. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972. . revised and reissued as Citizen Power: A Mandate for Change, AuthorHouse, 2008. . Gravel, Mike and Lauria, Joe. A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and One Man's Fight to Stop It. Seven Stories Press, 2008. . Gravel, Mike and Eisenbach, David. The Kingmakers: How the Media Threatens Our Security and Our Democracy. Phoenix Books, 2008. . Gravel, Mike. Voice of a Maverick: The Speeches and Writings of Senator Mike Gravel. Brandywine House, 2008. Gravel, Mike. Foreword to Poisoned Power: The Case Against Nuclear Power Plants. John W. Goffman & Arthur R. Tamplin, Rodale Press, Inc., Emmaus, PA, June 1971. Gravel, Mike. The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People. AuthorHouse, 2020. Explanatory notes References Citations General references The Pentagon Papers Senator Gravel Edition. Vol. Five: Critical Essays. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972. 341p. plus 72p. of Index to Vol. I–IV of the Papers; Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, editors. External links Mike Gravel official website The Gravel Institute |- |- 1930 births 2021 deaths 1972 United States vice-presidential candidates 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American politicians 20th-century Roman Catholics 20th-century Unitarians 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American politicians 21st-century Unitarians 9/11 conspiracy theorists Alaska Democrats American International College alumni American Unitarian Universalists American anti–Iraq War activists American conspiracy theorists American democracy activists American male non-fiction writers American people of French-Canadian descent American political writers American real estate businesspeople American stockbrokers Anti-corporate activists Assumption University (Worcester) alumni Burials at Arlington National Cemetery Businesspeople from Anchorage, Alaska Businesspeople from Springfield, Massachusetts California Democrats Candidates in the 2008 United States presidential election Candidates in the 2020 United States presidential election Columbia University School of General Studies alumni Deaths from cancer in California Deaths from multiple myeloma Democratic Party United States senators Direct democracy activists Drug policy reform activists Former Roman Catholics Virginia Libertarians Members of the Alaska House of Representatives Military personnel from Massachusetts Non-interventionism People from Arlington County, Virginia People from Kenai Peninsula Borough, Alaska People with dyslexia Politicians from Anchorage, Alaska Politicians from Springfield, Massachusetts Speakers of the Alaska House of Representatives United States Army officers United States senators from Alaska Writers about direct democracy Writers from Anchorage, Alaska

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What was he nominated for?

What was Mike Gravel nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp for?

Mike Gravel

Gravel "decided to become a pioneer in a faraway place," and moved to pre-statehood Alaska in August 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place where someone without social or political connections could be a viable candidate for public office. Alaska's voting age of 19, less than most other states' 21, played a role in his decision, as did its newness and cooler climate. Broke when he arrived, he immediately found work in real estate sales until winter arrived. Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-Fairbanks run. Subsequently, he opened a small real estate brokerage in Anchorage (the Territory of Alaska not requiring a license) and saved enough so as not to have to work the railroad again. Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and continued a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life. Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin, who had been Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958, on April 29, 1959. They had two children, Martin Anthony Gravel and Lynne Denise Gravel, born c. 1960 and 1962 respectively. Meanwhile, he went to Washington, D.C. in 1957 to campaign for Alaskan statehood via the "Tennessee Plan": dressed as Paul Revere, he rode with a petition to the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Seeing Alaska as a wide-open place with no political establishment or entrenched interests, and using the slogan "Gravel, the Roadbed to Prosperity", he ran for the territorial legislature in 1958 but lost. He went on a national speaking tour concerning tax reform in 1959, sponsored by the Jaycees. He ran without avail for the City Council in Anchorage in 1960. During this time, he had become a successful real estate agent; after the 1960 election, he became a property developer in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Anchorage. A partner ran into financial difficulty, however, and the project went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and Gravel was forced out in 1962. In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one megaton calibration exercise for the second, and larger five megaton, Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests in Congress. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences, and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety to be created; he then made a personal appeal to President Nixon to stop the test. After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the larger Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971, Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage, in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign). Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for the commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971, Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975, he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974, Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power. Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.) in July 1971, Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with China, including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. Gravel reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971. Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in running for the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates. Towards this end he began soliciting delegates for their support in advance of the convention. He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose. At the convention's final day on July 14, 1972, presidential nominee McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice. Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations. Thus, there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska. He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination. In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting that included several other candidates as well. For his efforts, Gravel attracted some attention: famed writer Norman Mailer would say he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films", while Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances ..." Yet, the whole process had been doubly disastrous for the Democrats. The time consumed with the nominating and seconding and other speeches of all the vice-presidential candidates had lost the attention of the delegates on the floor and pushed McGovern's speech until 3:30 a.m. The haste with which Eagleton had been selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver. CANNOTANSWER

presidential nominee

Maurice Robert Gravel ( ; May 13, 1930 – June 26, 2021) was an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981 as a member of the Democratic Party, and who, in later life, twice ran for the presidential nomination of that party. Born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, by French-Canadian immigrant parents, Gravel moved to Alaska in the late 1950s, becoming a real estate developer and entering politics. He served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963 to 1967, and also became Speaker of the Alaska House. Gravel was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1968. As a senator, Gravel became nationally known for his forceful, but unsuccessful, attempts to end the draft during the War in Vietnam, and for putting the Pentagon Papers into the public record in 1971. He conducted a campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1972 for Vice President of the United States, and then played a crucial role in obtaining Congressional approval for the Trans-Alaska pipeline in 1973. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1974, but was defeated in his bid for a third term in the primary election in 1980. An advocate of direct democracy and the National Initiative, Gravel staged a run for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President of the United States. His campaign failed to gain support, and in March 2008, he left the Democratic Party and joined the Libertarian Party to compete unsuccessfully for its presidential nomination and the inclusion of the National Initiative into the Libertarian Platform. He ran for president as a Democrat again in the 2020 election, in a campaign that ended four months after it began. Two years before his death, Gravel and his campaign staff founded the progressive think tank The Gravel Institute. Early life, military service, education Gravel was born on May 13, 1930, in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of five children of French-Canadian immigrant parents, Alphonse and Marie (née Bourassa) Gravel. His parents were part of the Quebec diaspora, and he was raised in a working-class neighborhood during the Great Depression, speaking only French until he was seven years old. Calling him "Mike" from an early age, his father valued work above all else, while his mother stressed the importance of education. Gravel was educated in parochial schools as a Roman Catholic. There he struggled, due to what he later said was undiagnosed dyslexia, and was left back in third grade. He completed elementary school in 1945 and his class voted him "most charming personality". A summer job as a soda jerk led to Gravel handing out campaign fliers for local candidates on his boss's behalf; Gravel was immediately impressed with "the awesomeness of political office". Gravel then boarded at Assumption Preparatory School in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his performance was initially mediocre. By Gravel's telling, in the summer of 1948 he intended to volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces during the 1947–1949 Palestine war, but Alexandra Tolstaya told him to return to school. There an English teacher, the Assumptionist Edgar Bourque, gave him personal attention, improving Gravel's language skills and instructing him in public speaking. Gravel's grades improved measurably in his final year and he graduated in 1949. His sister, Marguerite, became a Holy Cross nun, but Gravel himself struggled with the Catholic faith. He studied for one year at Assumption College, a Catholic school in Worcester, then transferred for his sophomore year to American International College in Springfield. Journalist I. F. Stone and philosopher Bertrand Russell strongly influenced Gravel in their willingness to challenge assumptions and oppose social convention and political authority. Around May 1951, Gravel saw that he was about to be drafted and instead enlisted in the U.S. Army for a three-year term so that he could get into the Counterintelligence Corps. After basic training and counterintelligence school at Fort Holabird in Maryland and in South Carolina, he went to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. While he expected to be sent off to the Korean War when he graduated as a second lieutenant in early 1952, he was instead assigned to Stuttgart, West Germany, as a Special Adjutant in the Army's Communications Intelligence Service. In Germany, Gravel conducted surveillance operations on civilians and paid off spies. After about a year, he transferred to Orléans, France, where his French language abilities (if not his French-Canadian accent) allowed him to infiltrate French communist rallies. He worked as a Special Agent in the Counterintelligence Corps until 1954, eventually becoming a first lieutenant. Following his discharge, Gravel entered the Columbia University School of General Studies in New York City, where he studied economics and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1956. He moved to New York "flat broke" and supported himself by working as a bar boy in a hotel, driving a taxicab, and working in the investment bond department at Bankers Trust. During this time he left the Roman Catholic faith. Move to Alaska Gravel "decided to become a pioneer in a faraway place," and moved to pre-statehood Alaska in August 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place where someone without social or political connections could be a viable candidate for public office. Alaska's voting age of 19, less than most other states' 21, played a role in his decision, as did its newness and cooler climate. Broke when he arrived, he immediately found work in real estate sales until winter arrived. Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-to-Fairbanks run. Subsequently, he opened a small real estate brokerage in Anchorage (the Territory of Alaska not requiring a license) and saved enough so as not to have to work the railroad again. The firm was named the M. R. Gravel Real Estate Company. Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and continued a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life. Seeing Alaska as a wide-open place with no political establishment or entrenched interests, Gravel quickly became part of the civic scene there. By October 1957 he was a Division Chairman for Anchorage for the Democratic Central Committee in the territory, and by June 1958 he was president of the Alaska Young Democrats organization. He also became active in the United States Junior Chamber (Jaycees), and by early 1958 his duties included handing out awards for farmer of the year. By early 1958, Gravel was running as Democratic Party primary candidate for a Third Division seat in House of Representative of the territorial legislature. (This was one of the four judicial divisions into which Alaska was sectioned at the time.) Using the slogan "Gravel, the Roadbed to Prosperity", he ran but lost. At the same time, he was also an advocate for Alaskan statehood. Gravel went on a 44-state national speaking tour concerning tax reform in 1959, sponsored by the Jaycees, often dressing for events as Paul Revere. Gravel was selected from some two thousand applications for this position. The tour received a good amount of local newspaper coverage at its various stops, with Gravel's first name sometimes given as Mike and other times as Maurice. The tour's general message was an urging of "lower taxes, more efficiency in government and a system of taxation moderate at all levels of income". At several stops Gravel stated that the "tide of socialism" had to be stopped. He elaborated at another stop, "It is part of our Jaycee creed that economic justice can best be won by free men through free enterprise. We really want to see that free enterprise become our inheritance." The tour was scheduled to conclude in Washington D.C., on Tax Day, April 15, with petition signatures accumulated for reform to be presented to U.S. lawmakers: dressed as Revere, Gravel rode with the petition to the steps of the U.S. Capitol. The tour over, Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin at the First Methodist Church of Anchorage on April 29, 1959. She was a native of Montana who had attended Billings Business College before moving to Alaska two years prior and becoming a secretary in the office of the Anchorage city manager. She had also been named Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958. They had two children, Martin Anthony Gravel and Lynne Denise Gravel, born c. 1960 and 1962 respectively. Gravel ran without avail for the City Council in Anchorage in 1960. During this time, he had become a successful real estate agent; after the 1960 election, he became a property developer in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Anchorage. After a partner ran into financial difficulty, however, the project went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Gravel was forced out in 1962. State legislator With the support of Alaska wholesale grocer Barney Gottstein and supermarket builder Larry Carr, Gravel ran for the Alaska House of Representatives representing Anchorage in 1962, initially assigned the 10th and then 8th districts. Alaska had very crowded primaries that year: Gravel was one of 33 Democrats, along with 21 Republicans, who were running for the chance to compete for the 14 House seats allocated to the 8th district. Gravel made it through the primary, and in November eight Republicans and six Democrats were elected to the House from the district, with Gravel finishing eighth overall and third among with Democrats, with 8,174 votes. Gottstein became Gravel's main financial backer during most of his subsequent campaigns. Gravel served in the Alaska House of Representatives from January 28, 1963 to January 22, 1967, winning reelection in 1964. In his first term, he served as a minority member on two House committees: Commerce, and Labor and Management. He co-authored and sponsored the act that created the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights. Gravel was the chief architect of the law that created a regional high school system for rural Alaska; this allowed Alaska Natives to attend schools near where they lived instead of having to go to schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the lower 48 states. During the half-years that the legislature was not in session, Gravel resumed his real estate work. With Gottstein and Carr's backing, he became quite successful as a property developer on the Kenai Peninsula. During 1965 and 1966, he served as the Speaker of the House, surprising observers by winning that post. Gravel convinced former Speaker Warren A. Taylor to not try for the position against him by promising Taylor chairmanship of the Rules Committee, then reneged on the promise. Gravel denied later press charges that he had promised but not delivered on other committee chairmanships. As Speaker he antagonized fellow lawmakers by imposing his will on the legislature's committees and feuded with Alaska State Senate president Robert J. McNealy. Gravel did not run for reelection in 1966, instead choosing to run for Alaska's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, losing the primary to four-term incumbent Democrat Ralph Rivers by 1,300 votes and splitting the Democratic Party in the process. Rivers lost the general election that year to Republican state Senator Howard Pollock. Following this defeat, Gravel returned to the real estate business in Anchorage. U.S. Senator Election to Senate in 1968 In 1968, Gravel ran against 81-year-old incumbent Democratic United States Senator Ernest Gruening, a popular former governor of the Alaska Territory who was considered one of the fathers of Alaska's statehood, for his party's nomination to the U.S. Senate. Gravel's campaign was primarily based on his youth and telegenic appearance rather than issue differences. He hired Joseph Napolitan, the first self-described political consultant, in late 1966. They spent over a year and a half planning a short, nine-day primary election campaign that featured the slogans "Alaska first" and "Let's do something about the state we're in", the distribution of a collection of essays titled Jobs and More Jobs, and the creation of a half-hour, well-produced, glamorized biographical film of Gravel, Man for Alaska. The film was shown twice a day on every television station in Alaska, and carried by plane and shown on home projectors in hundreds of Alaska Native villages. The heavy showings quickly reversed a 2–to–1 Gruening lead in polls into a Gravel lead. Gravel visited many remote villages by seaplane and showed a thorough understanding of the needs of the bush country and the fishing and oil industries. Gravel also benefited from maintaining a deliberately ambiguous posture about Vietnam policy. Gruening had been one of only two Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and his opposition to President Lyndon B. Johnson's war policies was harming him among the Democratic electorate; according to Gravel, "all I had to do was stand up and not deal with the subject, and people would assume that I was to the right of Ernest Gruening, when in point of fact I was to the left of him". In Man for Alaska, Gravel argued that "the liberals" would come to West Germany's defense if it was attacked, and that the same standard should apply to the United States' allies in Asia. During the campaign he also claimed that he was "more in the mainstream of American thought on Vietnam" than Gruening, despite the fact that he had written to Gruening to praise his antiwar stance four years earlier. Decades later, Gravel conceded that "I said what I said [about Vietnam] to advance my career." Gravel beat Gruening in the primary by about 2,000 votes. Gruening found "the unexpected defeat hard to take" and thought that some aspects of his opponent's biographical film had misled viewers. In the general election, Gravel faced Republican Elmer E. Rasmuson, a banker and former mayor of Anchorage. College students in the state implored Gruening to run a write-in campaign as an Independent, but legal battles prevented him from getting approval for it until only two weeks were left. A late appearance by anti-war presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy did not offset Gruening's lack of funds and endorsements; meanwhile, Gravel and Rasmuson both saturated local media with their filmed biographies. On November 5, 1968, Gravel won the general election with 45 percent of the vote to Rasmuson's 37 percent and Gruening's 18 percent. Senate assignments and style When Gravel joined the U.S.Senate in January 1969, he requested and received a seat on the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, which had direct relevance to Alaskan issues. He also got a spot on the Public Works Committee, which he held throughout his time in the Senate. Finally, he was a member of the Select Committee on Small Business. In 1971 he became chair of the Public Works Committee's Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds, and by 1973 he was chair of its Subcommittee on Water Resources, then later its Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution. Gravel was also initially named to the Joint Committee on Congressional Operations. By 1973 Gravel was off the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee and the Select Small Business Committee and instead a member of the Finance Committee, and by 1977 was chair of that body's Subcommittee on Energy and Foundations. By 1973 he had also been on the ad hoc Special Committee to Study Secret and Confidential Government Documents. By his own admission, Gravel was too new and "too abrasive" to be effective in the Senate by the usual means of seniority-based committee assignments or negotiating deals with other senators, and was sometimes seen as arrogant or a nuisance by the more senior and tradition-oriented members. Gravel relied on attention-getting gestures to achieve what he wanted, hoping national exposure would force other senators to listen to him. But even senators who agreed with him on issues considered his methods to be showboating. As part of this approach, Gravel voted with Southern Democrats to keep the Senate filibuster rule in place, and accordingly supported Russell Long and Robert Byrd but opposed Ted Kennedy in Senate leadership battles. In retrospective assessment, University of Alaska Anchorage history professor Stephen Haycox said, "Loose cannon is a good description of Gravel's Senate career. He was an off-the-wall guy, and you weren't really ever sure what he would do." Nuclear issues and the Cold War In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one-megaton calibration exercise for the second and larger five-megaton Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety; he then made a personal appeal to President Richard Nixon to stop the test. After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971 Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign). In 1971 Gravel voted against the Nixon administration's proposed anti-ballistic missile system, the Safeguard Program, having previously vacillated over the issue, suggesting that he might be willing to support it in exchange for federal lands in Alaska being opened up for private oil drilling. His vote alienated Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who had raised funds for Gravel's primary campaign. Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971 Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975 he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974 Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power. Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's July 1971 secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.), Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with the P.R.C., including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. He reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971. Vietnam War, the draft, and the Pentagon Papers Although he did not campaign against the Vietnam War during his first Senate campaign, by the end of 1970 Gravel was speaking out against United States policy in southeast Asia: in December of that year he persuaded William Fulbright to join him in a spontaneous two-day filibuster against a $155 million military aid package to Cambodia's Khmer Republic government in the Cambodian Civil War. President Richard Nixon had campaigned in 1968 on a promise to end the U.S. military draft, a decision endorsed by the February 1970 report of the Gates Commission. The existing draft law was scheduled to conclude at the end of June 1971, and the Senate faced a contentious debate about whether to extend it as the Vietnam War continued. The Nixon administration announced in February 1971 that it wanted a two-year extension to June 1973, after which the draft would end; Army planners had already been operating under the assumption of a two-year extension, after which an all-volunteer force would be in place. Skeptics such as Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Stennis thought this unrealistic and wanted a four-year extension, but the two-year proposal is what went forward in Congress. By early May 1971, Gravel had indicated his intention to filibuster the draft renewal legislation, halting conscription and thereby bringing U.S. involvement in the war to a rapid end. During this period he also supported efforts to mobilize and influence public opinion against the war, endorsing the "Vietnam War Out Now" rallies in Washington D.C. and San Francisco on April 24, 1971, and financing a broadcast campaign by the antiwar group War No More with a personal loan. In June 1972 he escorted a group of over 100 antiwar protesters, including psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, actress Candice Bergen, theater producer and director Joseph Papp, and peditrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, into the United States Capitol Building; the group was arrested after blocking a hallway outside the Senate chamber. By June 1971, some Democratic senators opposed to the war wanted to limit the renewal to a one-year extension, while others wanted to end it immediately; Gravel reiterated that he was one of the latter, saying, "It's a senseless war, and one way to do away with it is to do away with the draft." A Senate vote on June 4 indicated majority support for the two-year extension. On June 18 Gravel announced again his intention to counteract that by filibustering the renewal legislation, defending the practice against those who associated it only with blocking civil rights legislation. The first filibuster attempt failed on June 23 when, by three votes, the Senate voted cloture for only the fifth time since 1927. Protracted negotiations took place over House conference negotiations on the bill, revolving in large part around Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's eventually unsuccessful amendment to tie renewal to a troop withdrawal timetable from Vietnam; during this time the draft law expired and no more were conscripted. On August 5, the Nixon administration pleaded for a renewal before the Senate went on recess, but Gravel blocked Stennis's attempt to limit debate, and no vote was held. Finally on September 21, 1971, the Senate invoked cloture over Gravel's second filibuster attempt by one vote, and then passed the two-year draft extension. Gravel's attempts to stop the draft had failed (notwithstanding Gravel's later claims that he had stopped or shortened the draft, taken at face value in some media reports, during his 2008 presidential campaign). Meanwhile, on June 13, 1971, The New York Times began printing large portions of the Pentagon Papers. The papers were a large collection of secret government documents and studies pertaining to the Vietnam War, of which former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg had made unauthorized copies and was determined to make public. Ellsberg had for a year and a half approached members of Congress – such as William Fulbright, George McGovern, Charles Mathias, and Pete McCloskey – about publishing the documents, on the grounds that the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution would give congressional members immunity from prosecution, but all had refused. Instead, Ellsberg gave the documents to the Times. The U.S. Justice Department immediately tried to halt publication, on the grounds that the information revealed within the papers harmed the national interest. Within the next two weeks, a federal court injunction halted publication in the Times; The Washington Post and several other newspapers began publishing parts of the documents, with some of them also being halted by injunctions; and the whole matter went to the U.S. Supreme Court for arguments. Looking for an alternate publication mechanism, Ellsberg returned to his idea of having a member of Congress read them, and chose Gravel based on the latter's efforts against the draft; Gravel agreed where previously others had not. Ellsberg arranged for the papers to be given to Gravel on June 26 via an intermediary, Post editor Ben Bagdikian. Gravel used his counter-intelligence experience to choose a midnight transfer in front of the Mayflower Hotel in the center of Washington, D.C. On the night of June 29, 1971, Gravel attempted to read the papers on the floor of the Senate as part of his filibuster against the draft, but was thwarted when no quorum could be formed. Gravel instead convened a session of the Buildings and Grounds subcommittee that he chaired. He got New York Congressman John G. Dow to testify that the war had soaked up funding for public buildings, thus making discussion of the war relevant to the committee. He began reading from the papers with the press in attendance, omitting supporting documents that he felt might compromise national security, and declaring, "It is my constitutional obligation to protect the security of the people by fostering the free flow of information absolutely essential to their democratic decision-making." He read until 1 a.m., culminating by saying "Arms are being severed. Metal is clashing through human bodies because of the public policy this government and all its branches continue to support." Then with tears and sobs he said that he could no longer physically continue, the previous three nights of sleeplessness and fear about the future having taken their toll. Gravel ended the session by, with no other senators present, establishing unanimous consent to insert 4,100 pages of the Papers into the Congressional Record of his subcommittee. The following day, the Supreme Court's New York Times Co. v. United States decision ruled in favor of the newspapers and publication in the Times and others resumed. In July 1971 Bantam Books published an inexpensive paperback edition of the papers containing the material the Times had published. Gravel, too, wanted to privately publish the portion of the papers he had read into the record, believing that "immediate disclosure of the contents of these papers will change the policy that supports the war". After being turned down by many commercial publishers, on August 4 he reached agreement with Beacon Press, the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which Gravel was a member. Announced on August 17 and published on October 22, 1971, this four-volume, relatively expensive set became the "Senator Gravel Edition", which studies from Cornell University and the Annenberg Center for Communication have labeled as the most complete edition of the Pentagon Papers to be published. The "Gravel Edition" was edited and annotated by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, and included an additional volume of analytical articles on the origins and progress of the war, also edited by Chomsky and Zinn. Beacon Press then was subjected to a FBI investigation; an outgrowth of this was the Gravel v. United States court case, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled upon in June 1972; it held that the Speech or Debate Clause did grant immunity to Gravel for his reading the papers in his subcommittee, did grant some immunity to Gravel's congressional aide, but granted no immunity to Beacon Press in relation to their publishing the same papers. The U.S. Senate Democratic Caucus backed Gravel in the case, but due to Republican opposition it did not pay Gravel's legal fees, leaving him owing $25,000 (the equivalent of $150,000 in 2019, adjusted for inflation). The events of 1971 changed Gravel in the following months from an obscure freshman senator to a nationally visible political figure. He became a sought-after speaker on the college circuit as well as at political fundraisers, opportunities he welcomed as lectures were "the one honest way a Senator has to supplement his income". But his speaking tours caused him to accrue one of the worst absentee records in the Senate. The Democratic candidates for the 1972 presidential election sought his endorsement. In January 1972 Gravel endorsed Maine Senator Ed Muskie, hoping that his support would help Muskie with the party's left wing and in ethnic French-Canadian areas during the first primary contest in New Hampshire (Muskie won, but not overwhelmingly, and his campaign faltered soon after). In April 1972 Gravel appeared on all three networks' nightly newscasts to decry the Nixon administration's reliance on Vietnamization by making reference to the secret National Security Study Memorandum 1 document, which stated it would take 8–13 years for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam to defend South Vietnam. Gravel made excerpts from the study public, but senators Robert P. Griffin and William B. Saxbe blocked his attempt to read NSSM 1 into the Congressional Record. Domestic policy In 1970 Gravel co-sponsored legislation to establish a guaranteed minimum income, entitling poor families to up to $6,300 a year (the equivalent of $42,000 in 2019 after adjustment for inflation). He subsequently voted for a "work bonus" program, which would have entitled low-income working families with dependent children if they were paying Social Security or Railroad Retirement taxes to a non-taxable bonus of up to 10 percent of their wages. Gravel also supported extending Social Security to all federal employees and introduced a campaign finance reform bill in 1971 that would have enacted full disclosure of campaign financing, placed limits on large donations, media spending and individual candidate spending. In 1969, Gravel was the only Democratic Senator outside of the South to vote for Nixon's Supreme Court nominee Clement Haynsworth. The following year Gravel opposed Nixon's next pick, G. Harrold Carswell. Run for vice president in 1972 Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates. Toward this end he began soliciting delegates for their support. He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose. On the convention's final day, July 14, 1972, McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice. Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations. Thus there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska. He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination. In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting that included several other candidates. Gravel attracted some attention for his efforts: writer Norman Mailer said he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films", while Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances". Yet the process was doubly disastrous for the Democrats. In the time consumed by nominating and seconding and all the vice-presidential candidates' speeches, the attention of the delegates on the floor was lost and McGovern's speech was pushed to 3:30 a.m. The haste with which Eagleton was selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver. Reelection to Senate in 1974 Several years earlier, Alaska politicians had speculated that Gravel would have a hard time getting both renominated and elected when his first term expired, given that he was originally elected without a base party organization and tended to focus on national rather than local issues. Nonetheless, after receiving support from national and local labor leaders, securing key earmarks, and producing another half-hour TV advertorial, in 1974 Gravel was reelected to the Senate, with 58 percent of the vote to 42 percent for Republican State Senator C. R. Lewis, who was a national officer of the John Birch Society. Second term Gravel's reelection campaign left him $65,000–$75,000 in debt. In 1975 The Washington Post reported on a memo by his executive assistant laying out a fundraising strategy to tackle this, including raising funds from oil companies, meeting with previous donors and "inquir[ing] into the governmental priorities of these people and their groups in the coming session", as well as obtaining further speaking fees to reduce his personal debt. This was followed by a number of stories about links between Gravel, lobbyists and fundraisers, including one that was widely publicized in Alaska about his holding a share in a Colorado resort with two Washington lobbyists he was working with on land and energy legislation. Gravel had been open about the investment and had opposing views to one of the lobbyists on nuclear power. In 1980 the Wall Street Journal published details about his fundraising activities, including writing to individuals and PACs in the oil industry, pledging to kill off proposals for a windfall profits tax on the sector, and traveling in the Middle East with the business partner of one of his donors to sell Alaskan land to businessmen. Gravel suggested that critics of his fundraising were "naive". In 1975 Gravel introduced an amendment to cut the number of troops overseas by 200,000, but it was defeated on a voice vote. In September 1975 Gravel was named as one of several Congressional Advisers to the Seventh Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly, which met to discuss problems related to economic development and international economic cooperation. In June 1976 Gravel was the focus of a federal investigation into allegations that he was involved in a sex-for-vote arrangement. Congressional staff clerk Elizabeth Ray (who had already been involved in a sex scandal that led to the downfall of Representative Wayne Hays) said that in August 1972 she had sex with Gravel aboard a houseboat on the Potomac River, under the instruction of Representative Kenneth J. Gray, her boss at the time. Gray allegedly wanted to secure Gravel's support for further funding for construction of the National Visitor Center in Washington, a troubled project that was under the jurisdiction of subcommittees that both members chaired. Another Congressional staffer said she witnessed the boat encounter, but Gravel said at the time that he had never met either of the women. Gravel and Gray strongly denied that they had made any arrangement regarding legislation, and neither was ever charged with any wrongdoing. Decades later Gravel wrote that he had indeed had sex with Ray, but had not changed any votes because of it. Gravel and his main financial backer, Gottstein, had a falling out in 1978, during the Congressional debate over whether to allow a controversial sale of U.S. F-15 fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia. An ardent backer of Israel, Gottstein opposed the sale and asked Gravel to vote against it. But Gravel not only voted for it but made an emotional speech attacking the anti-sale campaign. Gravel wrote in 2008 that it was the only time Gottstein had ever asked him for a favor, and the rupture resulted in their never speaking to each other again. Alaskan issues By 1971 Gravel was urging construction of the much-argued Trans-Alaska pipeline, addressing environmental concerns by saying that the pipeline's builders and operators should have "total and absolute" responsibility for any consequent environmental damage. Two years later the debate over the pipeline came to a crux, with The New York Times describing it as "environmentalists [in] a holy war with the major oil companies". In February 1973 the U.S. Court of Appeals blocked the issuance of permits for construction; Gravel and fellow Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens reacted by urging Congress to pass legislation overturning the court's decision. Environmentalists opposed to the pipeline, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club then sought to use the recently passed National Environmental Policy Act to their advantage; Gravel designed an amendment to the pipeline bill that would immunize the pipeline from any further court challenges under that law, and thus speed its construction. Passage of the amendment became the key battle regarding the pipeline. On July 17, 1973, in a dramatic roll-call vote, the Gravel amendment was approved as a 49–49 tie was broken in favor by Vice President Spiro Agnew. The actual bill enabling the pipeline then passed easily; Gravel had triumphed in what became perhaps his most lasting accomplishment as a senator. In opposition to the Alaskan fishing industry, Gravel advocated American participation in the formation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. For two years he opposed legislation that established a Exclusive Economic Zone for marine resources. He was one of only 19 senators to vote against Senate approval for the expanded zone in 1976, saying it would undermine the U.S. position in Law of the Sea negotiations and that nations arbitrarily extending their fishing rights limits would "produce anarchy of the seas". The legislation was passed, and the United States has signed but never ratified the Law of the Sea treaty. Gravel accumulated a complicated record on Indian affairs during his time in the Senate. During his first year in the Senate Gravel urged abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, criticizing the agency for the pace of development of schools in Alaska, its paternalistic attitudes and the culturally inappropriate nature of its education, and advocating greater shared decision-making between the federal government and native communities in Alaska. Later, his views changed; in the early 1970s Gravel supported a demonstration project that established links between Alaskan villages and the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, for medical diagnostic communications. In 1971, he fended off accusations from Alaskan natives that he was not spending enough time working on their land claims. Gravel helped secure a private grant to facilitate the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference in 1977, attended by Inuit representatives from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. These conferences now also include representatives from Russia. In 1977, Gravel helped lead an effort to have the U.S. Interior Department rename Mount McKinley to Denali; this eventually led to Denali National Park being so named. Subsequently, Gravel proposed a never-built "Denali City" development above the Tokositna River near the mountain, to consist of a giant Teflon dome enclosing hotels, golf courses, condominiums, and commercial buildings. A related idea of his to build a high-speed rail line to Denali also failed to gain traction. A key, emotional issue in the state at the time was "locking up Alaska", making reference to allocation of its vast, mostly uninhabited land. President Jimmy Carter desired to put large portions of this land under federal protection against development, a move that some Alaskans vociferously opposed. In 1978 Gravel blocked passage, via procedural delays such as walking out of House–Senate conference committee meetings, of a complex bill which represented a compromise on land use policy. The bill would have put some of Alaska's vast federal land holdings under state control while preserving other portions for federal parks and refuges; the blocking action earned Gravel the enmity of fellow Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who had supported the compromise. In 1980, a new lands bill came up for consideration, that was less favorable to Alaskan interests and more liked by environmentalists; it set aside of Alaska's for national parks, conservation areas, and other restricted federal uses. Gravel blocked it, as not ensuring enough future development in the state. A new compromise version of the 1980 bill came forward, which reduced the land set aside to . Representing Alaskan interests, Gravel tried to stop the bill, including by filibuster. But the Senate voted for cloture and passed the bill. Frustrated, Gravel said, "the legislation denies Alaska its rights as a state, and denies the U.S. crucial strategic resources," and opined that the Senate was "a little bit like a tank of barracudas". Nonetheless, the bill, known as the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, was signed by President Carter shortly before leaving the White House, and led to millions of acres being set aside in the state for national parks, wildlife refuges, and other kinds of areas under protection. In 1978 Gravel authored and secured the passage into federal law of the General Stock Ownership Corporation, that became Subchapter U of the Tax Code under the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. This gave states the ability to create corporations that would invest in for-profit enterprises, with all citizens within the state owning shares in the corporation. Gravel's attempt to convince the Alaska state legislature to create such a corporation failed, as did a 1980 state ballot initiative towards the same end, but nevertheless the creation of the General Stock Ownership Corporation in federal law turned out to be significant in the development of binary economics. Loss of Senate seat in 1980 In 1980 Gravel was challenged for the Democratic Party's nomination by State Representative Clark Gruening, the grandson of the man Gravel had defeated in a primary 12 years earlier. One of Gruening's supporters was Gravel's former backer Gottstein. Several factors made Gravel vulnerable. As an insurgent candidate in 1968 Gravel had never established a firm party base. Not liking to hunt or fish, he was also always culturally suspect in the state. The primary campaign was bitterly fought. A group of Democrats, including future governor Steve Cowper, led the campaign against Gravel, with Gravel's actions in respect to the 1978 and 1980 Alaskan lands bills a major issue. This was especially so given that the 1980 bill's dénouement happened but a week before the primary. The sources of Gravel's campaign funds, some of which Gravel readily acknowledged came from political action committees outside the state, also became an issue in the contest. Gruening had pledged that he would not take special interest group money, but Gravel said that Gruening was "dishonest" in accepting individual contributors from Jewish donors living outside the state because to him such contributors comprised "a special interest group ... that seeks to influence the foreign policy of the U.S." Gruening won the primary with about 55 percent of the vote to Gravel's 44 percent. Gravel later conceded that by the time of his defeat, he had alienated "almost every constituency in Alaska". Another factor may have been Alaska's blanket primary system of the time, which allowed unlimited voting across party lines and from its many independents; Republicans believed Gruening would be an easier candidate to defeat in the general election. Gruening lost the general election to Republican Frank Murkowski. Gravel was the last Democrat to represent Alaska in Congress for 28 years, until Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich defeated Ted Stevens, by then an aged, iconic figure who had just been convicted of seven felonies for taking unreported gifts, in a very close and protracted election result in 2008. Stevens's conviction was subsequently vacated due to prosecutorial misconduct. Career after leaving the Senate Of his 1980 defeat, Gravel later recalled: "I had lost my career. I lost my marriage. I was in the doldrums for ten years after my defeat," and "Nobody wanted to hire me for anything important. I felt like I was worthless. I didn't know what I could do." By his own later description, Gravel was a womanizer, and had an affair while in the Senate, and in December 1980 he and his wife Rita separated. They filed for divorce in September 1981; she later received all of his Senate pension income. During the 1980s Gravel was a real estate developer in Anchorage and Kenai, Alaska, a consultant, and a stockbroker. One of his real estate ventures, a condominium business, was forced to declare bankruptcy and a lawsuit ensued. In 1986 Gravel worked in partnership with Merrill Lynch Capital Markets to buy losses that financially troubled Alaska Native Corporations could not take as tax deductions and sell them to large national companies looking for tax writeoffs. Gravel also learned computer programming at some point but never practiced it. In 1984 Gravel married his second wife, Whitney Stewart Gravel, a former administrative assistant for Senator Jacob Javits. Return to politics In 1989 Gravel reentered politics. He founded and led The Democracy Foundation, which promotes direct democracy. He established the Philadelphia II corporation, which seeks to replicate the original 1787 Constitutional Convention and have a Second Constitutional Convention to bring about direct democracy Gravel led an effort to get a United States Constitutional amendment to allow voter-initiated federal legislation similar to state ballot initiatives. He argued that Americans are able to legislate responsibly, and that the Act and Amendment in the National Initiative would allow American citizens to become "law makers". However such efforts met with little success. In 2001, Gravel became director of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, where he admired institute co-founder Gregory Fossedal's work on direct democracy in Switzerland. By 2004, Gravel had become chair of the institute, and Fossedal (who in turn was a director of the Democracy Foundation) gave the introduction at Gravel's presidential announcement. In 2003 Gravel gave a speech on direct democracy at a conference hosted by the American Free Press. The event was cosponsored by the Barnes Review, a journal that endorses Holocaust denial. After some controversy over his appearance, Gravel apologized, saying he did not realize the group's ties. Gravel said repeatedly that he did not share the group's views on the Holocaust, stating, "You better believe I know that six million Jews were killed. [The Barnes Review publishers] are nutty as loons if they don't think it happened". The group invited Gravel to speak again, but he declined. Mike and Whitney Gravel lived in Arlington County, Virginia, until 2010 and then resided in Burlingame, California. They have the two grown children from his first marriage, Martin Gravel and Lynne Gravel Mosier, and four grandchildren. Whitney Gravel's income sustained the couple from 1998 on. In the 2000s, Gravel suffered poor health, requiring three surgeries in 2003 for back pain and neuropathy. Due to unreimbursed medical expenses and debts from his political causes, he declared personal bankruptcy in 2004. He began taking a salary from the non-profit organizations for which he was working; much of that income was lent to his presidential campaign. In 2007, he declared that he had "zero net worth". 2008 presidential campaign Democratic Party primaries At the start of 2006 Gravel decided the best way he could promote direct democracy and the National Initiative was to run for president. On April 17, 2006, Gravel became the first candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election, announcing his run in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Short on campaign cash, he took public transportation to get to his announcement. (Gravel called for public financing of elections.) Other principal Gravel positions were the FairTax, as well as withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days and a single payer national health care system. Gravel had opposed the Iraq War, and President George W. Bush's rationale for it, from the beginning, and in 2006 said that U.S. troops in Iraq, as in Vietnam, had "died in vain". He also favored a regional peace initiative, as well as reparation payments for Iraqis. Gravel also called for a "U.S. corporate withdrawal from Iraq", with reconstruction contracts held by U.S. companies to be turned over to Iraqi firms. Gravel campaigned almost full-time in New Hampshire, the first primary state, following his announcement. Opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination showed Gravel with 1 percent or less support. By the end of March 2007, Gravel's campaign had less than $500 in cash on hand against debts of nearly $90,000. Because of his time in the Senate, Gravel was invited to many of the early Democratic presidential debates. During the initial one at South Carolina State University on April 26, 2007, he suggested a bill requiring the president to withdraw from Iraq on pain of criminal penalties. He also advocated positions such as opposing preemptive nuclear war. He stated that the Iraq War had the effect of creating more terrorists and that the "war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis". Regarding his fellow candidates, he said, "I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me – they frighten me." In one such exchange, Gravel said, "Tell me, Barack, who do you want to nuke?" to which Obama responded, "I'm not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike, I promise." Media stories said that Gravel was responsible for much of whatever "heat" and "flashpoints" had taken place during the Democratic debates. Gravel gained considerable publicity by shaking up the normally staid multiple-candidate format; The New York Times' media critic said that what Gravel had done was "steal a debate with outrageous, curmudgeonly statements". The Internet was a benefit: a YouTube video of his responses in the debate was viewed more than 225,892 times, ranking seventeenth in most views for week and first among news and politics clips; his name became the fifteenth most searched-for in the blogosphere; and his website garnered more traffic than those of frontrunners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards. Gravel appeared on the popular Colbert Report on television on May 2, and his campaign and career were profiled in national publications such as Salon. Two wordless, Warholesque campaign videos, "Rock" and "Fire", were released on YouTube in late May and became hits, and eventually gained over 760,000 and 185,000 views respectively. "Rock", in turn, was given airtime during an episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Some thirty-five years after he first achieved the national spotlight, he had found it again. All this did not improve his performance in the polls; a May 2007 CNN poll showed him with less than 0.5 percent support among Democrats. Gravel was in the next several debates, in one case after CNN reversed a decision to exclude him. Like some of the other second-tier candidates, Gravel did not get as much time as the leaders; during the June 2, 2007, New Hampshire debate, which lasted two hours, he was asked 10 questions and allowed to speak for five minutes and 37 seconds. During the July 23, 2007, CNN-YouTube presidential debate, Gravel responded to audience applause when he had complained of a lack of airtime and said: "Thank you. Has it been fair thus far?" Detractors began to liken him to "the cranky uncle who lives in the attic," or "the angry old guy that just seemed to want to become angrier". Berkeley political scientist David Terr found that moderator George Stephanopoulos directed roughly five percent of his questions to Gravel; in a poll asking who did the best in the debate, Gravel placed seventh among the eight candidates. National opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination continued to show Gravel with one percent or zero percent numbers. By the end of the third-quarter 2007, Gravel had about $17,500 in cash on hand, had collected a total of about $380,000 during the 2008 election cycle, and was continuing to run a threadbare campaign with minimal staff. Beginning with the October 30, 2007, Philadelphia event, Gravel was excluded from most of the debates, with the debate sponsors or the Democratic National Committee saying Gravel's campaign had not met fund-raising, polling, or local campaign organizational thresholds. For the Philadelphia exclusion, Gravel blamed corporate censorship on the part of sponsor owner and alleged military-industrial complex member General Electric for his exclusion and mounted a counter-gathering and debate against a video screen a short distance away, but he had lost his easiest publicity. In reaction, supporters organized "mass donation days" to try to help the campaign gain momentum and funds, such as on December 5, 2007, the anniversary of the Repeal of Prohibition. Gravel did not compete in the initial 2008 vote, the Iowa caucuses, but was still subjected to a false report from MSNBC that he had pulled out of the race afterward. Gravel did focus his attention on the second 2008 vote, the New Hampshire primary. In early January, Mother Jones' investigative reporter James Ridgeway was filmed interviewing and following Gravel in New Hampshire, in which Gravel is interviewed on the phone by Neal Conan for NPR's, Talk of the Nation. He received about 400 votes out of some 280,000 cast in New Hampshire, or 0.14 percent, before taking time off to improve his health. He resumed campaigning, but fared no better in subsequent states. By the end of January 2008, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Gravel were the only remaining Democrats from the initial debates still running; Gravel vowed to stay in the presidential campaign until November. On March 11, 2008, Gravel continued to remain in the Democratic race but additionally endorsed a Green Party candidate for president, Jesse Johnson, saying he wanted to help Johnson prevail against Green Party rivals Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader. By late March, Gravel had almost no fundraising and was only on the ballot in one of the next ten Democratic primaries. Switch to Libertarian Party On March 25, 2008, Gravel announced that he would leave the Democrats and join the Libertarian Party, saying: "My libertarian views, as well as my strong stance against war, the military industrial complex and American imperialism, seem not to be tolerated by Democratic Party elites who are out of touch with the average American; elites that reject the empowerment of American citizens I offered to the Democratic Party at the beginning of this presidential campaign with the National Initiative for Democracy." The following day Gravel entered the race for the 2008 Libertarian presidential nomination, saying that he would have run as a third-party candidate all along except that he needed the public exposure that came from being in the earlier Democratic debates. Gravel's initial notion of running as a fusion candidate with other parties was met with skepticism. As a Libertarian candidate, Gravel faced resistance to his past support of big government initiatives and his unorthodox positions around direct democracy. Nevertheless, he garnered more support than he had as a Democrat, placing second and third in two April 2008 straw polls. In the May 25 balloting at the 2008 Libertarian National Convention in Denver, Gravel finished fourth out of eight candidates on the initial ballot, with 71 votes out of a total 618; he trailed former Congressman and eventual winner Bob Barr, author Mary Ruwart, and businessman Wayne Allyn Root. Gravel's position did not subsequently improve and he was eliminated on the fourth ballot. Afterwards he stated that "I just ended my political career," but he vowed to continue promoting his positions as a writer and lecturer. 2008–early 2019 In June 2008 Gravel endorsed the NYC 9/11 Ballot Initiative, saying the measure would create a "citizens commission rather than a government commission" with subpoena power against top U.S. officials to "make a true investigation as to what happened" regarding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He later said, "Individuals in and out of government may certainly have participated with the obviously known perpetrators of this dastardly act. Suspicions abound over the analysis presented by government. Obviously an act that has triggered three wars, Afghan, Iraqi and the continuing War on Terror, should be extensively investigated which was not done and which the government avoids addressing." In August 2008 Gravel was speaking to a crowd of supporters of Sami Al-Arian (who two years earlier had pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison for a charge of conspiracy in helping Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a "specially designated terrorist" organization) when he was caught on tape saying of Al-Arian's prosecutor, "Find out where he lives, find out where his kids go to school, find out where his office is: picket him all the time. Call him a racist in signs if you see him. Call him an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but in his face all the time." Gravel was criticized for potentially involving the children of the prosecutor, and Al-Arian's family disavowed the sentiments. Gravel defended Alaska Governor Sarah Palin after she was chosen as Republican presidential nominee John McCain's running mate in September 2008. He praised Palin's record in standing up to corruption among Alaskan Republicans, thought her national inexperience was an asset not a detriment, and predicted that the "Troopergate" investigation into whether she improperly fired a state official would "come out in her favor". Gravel made clear he would not support or vote for either McCain–Palin or Obama–Biden in the general election. The following year Gravel said that Palin's politics were "terrible, but that doesn't detract from the fact that she's a very talented person". He predicted that Palin would run for president in 2012 and that "she's going to surprise a lot of people". Palin did not run, but Gravel's prediction about "TrooperGate" was accurate as Palin was found not to have violated ethics laws. In 2013, by the invitation of Hamed Ghashghavi, the secretary for international affairs of the 3rd International Conference on Hollywoodism in Tehran, Iran, Gravel attended that event as an Iranian government-organized anti-Hollywood conference. Gravel noted that the conference was attended by "various elements of extremes" but said it was necessary to discuss how the U.S. film industry portrayed Iran in order to prevent "an insane war" between the two nations. In May 2013 Gravel was one of several former members of Congress to accept $20,000 from the Paradigm Research Group, an advocacy group for UFO disclosure, as part of holding what they termed a Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, modeled after congressional hearings, regarding supposed U.S. government suppression of evidence concerning UFOs. Gravel said, "Something is monitoring the planet, and they are monitoring it very cautiously, because we are a very warlike planet," and, "What we're faced with here is, in areas of the media, and the government too, an effort to marginalize and ridicule people who have specific knowledge." In December 2014 Gravel was announced as the new CEO of KUSH, a company which makes marijuana-infused products for medicinal and recreational use, and a subsidiary of Cannabis Sativa, Inc. He also became an Independent Director of Cannabis Sativa. During the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, Gravel praised Bernie Sanders and his campaign, saying "Bernie is one of the most gifted politicians I have ever observed. He's a person of great integrity and very clever." Gravel predicted that Sanders would be elected president but would be unable to get his key reforms through Congress, and thus that Sanders and his supporters should back some of the proposals of the National Initiative. In 2016, Gravel said in relation to the September 11 attacks: "We killed 58,000 American servicemen in the Vietnam War and all they did was die in vain. What's so unusual about killing 3,000 more in order to develop the grist for the mill to empower into infinity the military industrial complex?" and "There's no question in my mind that 9/11 was an inside job". The remarks were later disavowed by even Gravel supporters. By 2019 Gravel was living in Seaside, California. He was working on a book, at the time titled Human Governance, about his principal idea for direct democracy, a U.S. Constitutional Amendment to create a "Legislature of the People" that would circumvent the existing Congress. The book was self-published at the end of the year by AuthorHouse under the title The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People. 2020 presidential campaign On March 19, 2019, Gravel announced that he was considering running in the 2020 Democratic primaries. He said, "The goal will not be to win, but to bring a critique of American imperialism to the Democratic debate stage." An exploratory committee was formed, with filing a statement of organization with the Federal Election Commission on that same day. The filing was the idea of a group of teenagers, led by David Oks and Henry Williams, inspired by the podcast Chapo Trap House, and done with Gravel's consent (after a week spent convincing him of the idea's merits), but without his involvement. Intrigued by the group's commitment to amplifying his long-held policy goals, Gravel (who would be old on Inauguration Day in 2021) said he planned to meet with them in April, and to discuss a 2020 White House run with his wife. On April 2, 2019, Gravel filed to officially run for office. The campaign called itself the "#Gravelanche". Gravel's initial stated goal was merely to qualify for debates by getting the required 65,000 small donors. He discouraged people from voting for him and said his preferences were Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, both of whom favor a non-interventionist foreign policy. But on April 29, Gravel's campaign said he was running to win, not just to participate in debates. In a subsequent interview, though, Gravel emphasized the virtue of Sanders and Gabbard in some order as a presidential ticket. Statements like these caused Vox to call Gravel "2020's oddest Democratic presidential candidate". The New York Times Magazine included Gravel as an example in the rise of democratic socialism in the United States also exemplified by Sanders's 2016 race and the 2018 election of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "[Gravel's] campaign represents the most absurd form of a legitimate movement on the left that feels little obligation to the Democratic Party." In June 2019, Gravel touted the endorsement of Muntadher al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who, in December 2008, made headlines after he threw his shoes at President George W. Bush in protest of the U.S. war in Iraq. Al-Zaidi endorsed Gravel based on his promise to improve White House policies regarding Iraq and the Middle East. On June 13, 2019, the Democratic Party announced the 20 major candidates who qualified for the first debate later that month. Gravel was one of the four who missed out (the others were Montana Governor Steve Bullock, U.S. Representative Seth Moulton, and Miramar, Florida, Mayor Wayne Messam). Gravel had been unable to get the requisite number of donations, or to score one percent or better in enough polls (many polls did not even include him). Nevertheless, Gravel said he would not drop out and would try to qualify for the July debate. In early July, however, Gravel's campaign said it was still 10,000 contributions short of the 65,000-donor threshold and that it was "nearing its conclusion". It solicited suggestions for where to donate $100–150,000 of leftover campaign funds. Gravel added that he had always planned on ending the campaign before the teenagers in charge of it needed to return to school. A few days later the campaign became the first to run an attack ad against Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, using the text "Is this the best our party has to offer?" Gravel's campaign crossed the threshold of 65,000 donors on July 12, 2019, meeting the qualification mark for that month's debate. But because 20 other candidates, the maximum allowed to participate, had already met at least the polling criterion, which takes priority over the donor criterion, Gravel was not invited. The campaign officially came to a close on August 6, 2019, with Gravel endorsing both Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard for president. Gravel's campaign later stated on Twitter that they never wanted to win but saw the campaign as an "intimately democratic" project and expressed honor at working with Gravel. Gravel said he would divide remaining campaign funds between charity and a new think tank which would espouse his ideas. The Gravel Institute Gravel used some of the funds remaining from his 2020 presidential campaign to found an eponymous progressive think tank called The Gravel Institute in 2019. As noted by Vice magazine, the institute aims to do battle with PragerU from a left-wing perspective. Launched in September 2020, the new entity said it would "carry on the life's work of former U.S Senator Mike Gravel in fighting for global peace and democracy. Its mission is to promote bold and forward-looking ideas about a more peaceful and egalitarian world, and to build a robust movement of young people to win it". Contributors announced include Cornel West and Slavoj Žižek, as well as Lower Brule Indian Reservation activist Nick Estes. Other presenters have included and will include H. Jon Benjamin, Briahna Joy Gray, Bernie Sanders, Chelsea Manning, Richard Wolff, Stephanie Kelton, Zephyr Teachout, David Cross, Jabari Brisport, Zohran Mamdani, and Gravel himself (though it is unknown if his appearance will be cancelled due to his death in June 2021, or if the video has already been recorded). Death Gravel died of multiple myeloma at his home in Seaside, California, on June 26, 2021, at age 91. The obituary for him in The New York Times stated that Gravel was "a two-term Democratic senator from Alaska ... who was perhaps better known as an unabashed attention-getter" who later become known for "mounting long-shot presidential runs". The obituary in The Washington Post was similar, saying that Gravel was "an Alaska Democrat with a flair for the theatrical who rose from obscurity to brief renown" and later "ran quixotic campaigns for the presidency". The Anchorage Daily News quoted Gravel as saying of himself in 1989, "I'm an independent kind of guy. A rough and ready kind of guy. My glands work in a certain way that make me stand up, foolishly sometimes, and fight." Political positions Alan Abramowitz and Jeffrey Allan Segal described Gravel as "a maverick, if not an eccentric, in the Senate." His Americans for Democratic Action "Liberal Quotient" scores ranged from 81 out of 100 (1971) to 39 out of 100 (1980), with an average of around 61. His American Conservative Union scores ranged from 0 out of 100 (several years, including 1971 and 1972) to 38 out of 100 (1979), with an average of 14. Abramowitz and Segal note that Gravel's lowest ADA ratings coincided with his two Senate re-election bids, and for the most part his highest ACU ratings followed the same pattern. In 1972, as a young senator, Gravel published Citizen Power: A People's Platform, a manifesto outlining what Kirkus Reviews termed a "populist reform [that] would provide 'balanced political power' between the people and government and business interests." Civil rights issues On drug policy, Gravel said in 2007 that he favored decriminalization and treating addiction as a public health matter. During his 2008 presidential candidacy he condemned the War on Drugs as a failure, saying that it did "nothing but savage our inner cities and put our children at risk". Gravel called for abolition of capital punishment in his book Citizen Power, and adhered to this position during his 2008 run for president. He supported abortion rights. During the 2008 campaign Gravel was a strong supporter of LGBT rights. He supported same-sex marriage and opposed the Defense of Marriage Act and the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. He wrote in 2008 that "depriving gays and lesbians of equal rights is immoral". Foreign policy and defense issues Gravel was a critic of American imperialism. Gravel firmly opposed U.S. military action against Iran and Syria. He voiced opposition to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the use of torture, indefinite detention, and what he called "flagrant ignorance" of the Geneva Convention. In 2014 Gravel called for the release of the full, unredacted Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture. Gravel opposed the use of international sanctions as a policy tool and blamed the ones against Iraq under Saddam Hussein for the deaths of a half-million children in that country. In 2013 Gravel said that sanctions against Iran were "illegal". During his 2008 candidacy, Gravel called for a cut in military spending, variously reported to be 15 percent or 50 percent. He called for the savings to boost public education spending. To spur international nuclear nonproliferation efforts, Gravel called for unilateral reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. In 2008 Gravel criticized the decision of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to not pursue the efforts to impeach George W. Bush and the attempted impeachment of Dick Cheney, saying also that Bush and Cheney had committed crimes and deserved "to be prosecuted" at The Hague. In 2013 he expressed disdain for President Obama, calling him "a total fraud" and saying that both Bush and Obama should be tried "for the crimes and murders they've committed" in the International Court of Justice. Gravel specifically condemned Obama for the drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere. Economy, immigration, and environment During his 2008 candidacy Gravel favored a FairTax scheme, which would abolish the Internal Revenue Service, eliminate the federal income tax (which Gravel called "corrupt"), and impose a national sales tax. While Gravel described FairTax as "progressive", others have criticized it as "regressive", disproportionately benefiting the wealthiest Americans. To offset the new sales taxes on essential goods, Gravel's plan called for monthly government rebate payments to individuals and families. During his 2020 campaign Gravel also voiced support for a third legislative body that would give the people direct control of the budget as well as the implementation of a land value tax. Gravel opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during his 2008 candidacy, calling it unfair and economically harmful and needing renegotiation. Gravel believed that NAFTA was the "root cause" of illegal migration to the U.S. He favored a guest worker program and "setting up naturalization procedures that would fairly bring immigrants into legal status". In a 2007 interview, Gravel identified himself as "very much of a globalist" who believed in open markets and open borders and condemned the scapegoating of undocumented immigrants. Gravel also said that he favored eliminating the cap on H1B visas. As a senator from Alaska, Gravel favored drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but opposed it during his 2008 campaign. In 2008, Gravel supported a carbon tax to combat climate change. Gravel spoke in favor of net neutrality during his presidential campaign. Education and health care Gravel called for the cost of college tuition to be borne by the federal government, rather than students. In his 2008 campaign, he called the No Child Left Behind Act "a failure" and called for it to be "reformed and fully funded". He expressed support for universal pre-kindergarten and the expansion of the Head Start program; and expressed an openness to charter schools and school vouchers. He also suggested extending the school day and the school year, and supported merit pay for teachers. Gravel also called for publicly funded universal health care to replace the current employer-sponsored health insurance system. He supported "full funding" of the VA system. When asked in 2007 about naturopathy, homeopathy, and acupuncture, Gravel said that he was "very very much in favor" of holistic health care. Awards and honors In 2008 Gravel received the Columbia University School of General Studies' first annual Isaac Asimov Lifetime Achievement Award. Electoral history Writings Gravel, Mike. Jobs and More Jobs. Mt. McKinley Publishers, 1968. Gravel, Mike. Citizen Power: A People's Platform. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972. . revised and reissued as Citizen Power: A Mandate for Change, AuthorHouse, 2008. . Gravel, Mike and Lauria, Joe. A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and One Man's Fight to Stop It. Seven Stories Press, 2008. . Gravel, Mike and Eisenbach, David. The Kingmakers: How the Media Threatens Our Security and Our Democracy. Phoenix Books, 2008. . Gravel, Mike. Voice of a Maverick: The Speeches and Writings of Senator Mike Gravel. Brandywine House, 2008. Gravel, Mike. Foreword to Poisoned Power: The Case Against Nuclear Power Plants. John W. Goffman & Arthur R. Tamplin, Rodale Press, Inc., Emmaus, PA, June 1971. Gravel, Mike. The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People. AuthorHouse, 2020. Explanatory notes References Citations General references The Pentagon Papers Senator Gravel Edition. Vol. Five: Critical Essays. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972. 341p. plus 72p. of Index to Vol. I–IV of the Papers; Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, editors. External links Mike Gravel official website The Gravel Institute |- |- 1930 births 2021 deaths 1972 United States vice-presidential candidates 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American politicians 20th-century Roman Catholics 20th-century Unitarians 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American politicians 21st-century Unitarians 9/11 conspiracy theorists Alaska Democrats American International College alumni American Unitarian Universalists American anti–Iraq War activists American conspiracy theorists American democracy activists American male non-fiction writers American people of French-Canadian descent American political writers American real estate businesspeople American stockbrokers Anti-corporate activists Assumption University (Worcester) alumni Burials at Arlington National Cemetery Businesspeople from Anchorage, Alaska Businesspeople from Springfield, Massachusetts California Democrats Candidates in the 2008 United States presidential election Candidates in the 2020 United States presidential election Columbia University School of General Studies alumni Deaths from cancer in California Deaths from multiple myeloma Democratic Party United States senators Direct democracy activists Drug policy reform activists Former Roman Catholics Virginia Libertarians Members of the Alaska House of Representatives Military personnel from Massachusetts Non-interventionism People from Arlington County, Virginia People from Kenai Peninsula Borough, Alaska People with dyslexia Politicians from Anchorage, Alaska Politicians from Springfield, Massachusetts Speakers of the Alaska House of Representatives United States Army officers United States senators from Alaska Writers about direct democracy Writers from Anchorage, Alaska

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Did he have any enemies?

Did Mike Gravel have any enemies?

Mike Gravel

Gravel "decided to become a pioneer in a faraway place," and moved to pre-statehood Alaska in August 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place where someone without social or political connections could be a viable candidate for public office. Alaska's voting age of 19, less than most other states' 21, played a role in his decision, as did its newness and cooler climate. Broke when he arrived, he immediately found work in real estate sales until winter arrived. Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-Fairbanks run. Subsequently, he opened a small real estate brokerage in Anchorage (the Territory of Alaska not requiring a license) and saved enough so as not to have to work the railroad again. Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and continued a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life. Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin, who had been Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958, on April 29, 1959. They had two children, Martin Anthony Gravel and Lynne Denise Gravel, born c. 1960 and 1962 respectively. Meanwhile, he went to Washington, D.C. in 1957 to campaign for Alaskan statehood via the "Tennessee Plan": dressed as Paul Revere, he rode with a petition to the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Seeing Alaska as a wide-open place with no political establishment or entrenched interests, and using the slogan "Gravel, the Roadbed to Prosperity", he ran for the territorial legislature in 1958 but lost. He went on a national speaking tour concerning tax reform in 1959, sponsored by the Jaycees. He ran without avail for the City Council in Anchorage in 1960. During this time, he had become a successful real estate agent; after the 1960 election, he became a property developer in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Anchorage. A partner ran into financial difficulty, however, and the project went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and Gravel was forced out in 1962. In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one megaton calibration exercise for the second, and larger five megaton, Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests in Congress. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences, and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety to be created; he then made a personal appeal to President Nixon to stop the test. After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the larger Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971, Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage, in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign). Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for the commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971, Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975, he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974, Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power. Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.) in July 1971, Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with China, including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. Gravel reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971. Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in running for the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates. Towards this end he began soliciting delegates for their support in advance of the convention. He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose. At the convention's final day on July 14, 1972, presidential nominee McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice. Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations. Thus, there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska. He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination. In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting that included several other candidates as well. For his efforts, Gravel attracted some attention: famed writer Norman Mailer would say he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films", while Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances ..." Yet, the whole process had been doubly disastrous for the Democrats. The time consumed with the nominating and seconding and other speeches of all the vice-presidential candidates had lost the attention of the delegates on the floor and pushed McGovern's speech until 3:30 a.m. The haste with which Eagleton had been selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver. CANNOTANSWER

Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances

Maurice Robert Gravel ( ; May 13, 1930 – June 26, 2021) was an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981 as a member of the Democratic Party, and who, in later life, twice ran for the presidential nomination of that party. Born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, by French-Canadian immigrant parents, Gravel moved to Alaska in the late 1950s, becoming a real estate developer and entering politics. He served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963 to 1967, and also became Speaker of the Alaska House. Gravel was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1968. As a senator, Gravel became nationally known for his forceful, but unsuccessful, attempts to end the draft during the War in Vietnam, and for putting the Pentagon Papers into the public record in 1971. He conducted a campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1972 for Vice President of the United States, and then played a crucial role in obtaining Congressional approval for the Trans-Alaska pipeline in 1973. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1974, but was defeated in his bid for a third term in the primary election in 1980. An advocate of direct democracy and the National Initiative, Gravel staged a run for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President of the United States. His campaign failed to gain support, and in March 2008, he left the Democratic Party and joined the Libertarian Party to compete unsuccessfully for its presidential nomination and the inclusion of the National Initiative into the Libertarian Platform. He ran for president as a Democrat again in the 2020 election, in a campaign that ended four months after it began. Two years before his death, Gravel and his campaign staff founded the progressive think tank The Gravel Institute. Early life, military service, education Gravel was born on May 13, 1930, in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of five children of French-Canadian immigrant parents, Alphonse and Marie (née Bourassa) Gravel. His parents were part of the Quebec diaspora, and he was raised in a working-class neighborhood during the Great Depression, speaking only French until he was seven years old. Calling him "Mike" from an early age, his father valued work above all else, while his mother stressed the importance of education. Gravel was educated in parochial schools as a Roman Catholic. There he struggled, due to what he later said was undiagnosed dyslexia, and was left back in third grade. He completed elementary school in 1945 and his class voted him "most charming personality". A summer job as a soda jerk led to Gravel handing out campaign fliers for local candidates on his boss's behalf; Gravel was immediately impressed with "the awesomeness of political office". Gravel then boarded at Assumption Preparatory School in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his performance was initially mediocre. By Gravel's telling, in the summer of 1948 he intended to volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces during the 1947–1949 Palestine war, but Alexandra Tolstaya told him to return to school. There an English teacher, the Assumptionist Edgar Bourque, gave him personal attention, improving Gravel's language skills and instructing him in public speaking. Gravel's grades improved measurably in his final year and he graduated in 1949. His sister, Marguerite, became a Holy Cross nun, but Gravel himself struggled with the Catholic faith. He studied for one year at Assumption College, a Catholic school in Worcester, then transferred for his sophomore year to American International College in Springfield. Journalist I. F. Stone and philosopher Bertrand Russell strongly influenced Gravel in their willingness to challenge assumptions and oppose social convention and political authority. Around May 1951, Gravel saw that he was about to be drafted and instead enlisted in the U.S. Army for a three-year term so that he could get into the Counterintelligence Corps. After basic training and counterintelligence school at Fort Holabird in Maryland and in South Carolina, he went to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. While he expected to be sent off to the Korean War when he graduated as a second lieutenant in early 1952, he was instead assigned to Stuttgart, West Germany, as a Special Adjutant in the Army's Communications Intelligence Service. In Germany, Gravel conducted surveillance operations on civilians and paid off spies. After about a year, he transferred to Orléans, France, where his French language abilities (if not his French-Canadian accent) allowed him to infiltrate French communist rallies. He worked as a Special Agent in the Counterintelligence Corps until 1954, eventually becoming a first lieutenant. Following his discharge, Gravel entered the Columbia University School of General Studies in New York City, where he studied economics and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1956. He moved to New York "flat broke" and supported himself by working as a bar boy in a hotel, driving a taxicab, and working in the investment bond department at Bankers Trust. During this time he left the Roman Catholic faith. Move to Alaska Gravel "decided to become a pioneer in a faraway place," and moved to pre-statehood Alaska in August 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place where someone without social or political connections could be a viable candidate for public office. Alaska's voting age of 19, less than most other states' 21, played a role in his decision, as did its newness and cooler climate. Broke when he arrived, he immediately found work in real estate sales until winter arrived. Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-to-Fairbanks run. Subsequently, he opened a small real estate brokerage in Anchorage (the Territory of Alaska not requiring a license) and saved enough so as not to have to work the railroad again. The firm was named the M. R. Gravel Real Estate Company. Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and continued a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life. Seeing Alaska as a wide-open place with no political establishment or entrenched interests, Gravel quickly became part of the civic scene there. By October 1957 he was a Division Chairman for Anchorage for the Democratic Central Committee in the territory, and by June 1958 he was president of the Alaska Young Democrats organization. He also became active in the United States Junior Chamber (Jaycees), and by early 1958 his duties included handing out awards for farmer of the year. By early 1958, Gravel was running as Democratic Party primary candidate for a Third Division seat in House of Representative of the territorial legislature. (This was one of the four judicial divisions into which Alaska was sectioned at the time.) Using the slogan "Gravel, the Roadbed to Prosperity", he ran but lost. At the same time, he was also an advocate for Alaskan statehood. Gravel went on a 44-state national speaking tour concerning tax reform in 1959, sponsored by the Jaycees, often dressing for events as Paul Revere. Gravel was selected from some two thousand applications for this position. The tour received a good amount of local newspaper coverage at its various stops, with Gravel's first name sometimes given as Mike and other times as Maurice. The tour's general message was an urging of "lower taxes, more efficiency in government and a system of taxation moderate at all levels of income". At several stops Gravel stated that the "tide of socialism" had to be stopped. He elaborated at another stop, "It is part of our Jaycee creed that economic justice can best be won by free men through free enterprise. We really want to see that free enterprise become our inheritance." The tour was scheduled to conclude in Washington D.C., on Tax Day, April 15, with petition signatures accumulated for reform to be presented to U.S. lawmakers: dressed as Revere, Gravel rode with the petition to the steps of the U.S. Capitol. The tour over, Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin at the First Methodist Church of Anchorage on April 29, 1959. She was a native of Montana who had attended Billings Business College before moving to Alaska two years prior and becoming a secretary in the office of the Anchorage city manager. She had also been named Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958. They had two children, Martin Anthony Gravel and Lynne Denise Gravel, born c. 1960 and 1962 respectively. Gravel ran without avail for the City Council in Anchorage in 1960. During this time, he had become a successful real estate agent; after the 1960 election, he became a property developer in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Anchorage. After a partner ran into financial difficulty, however, the project went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Gravel was forced out in 1962. State legislator With the support of Alaska wholesale grocer Barney Gottstein and supermarket builder Larry Carr, Gravel ran for the Alaska House of Representatives representing Anchorage in 1962, initially assigned the 10th and then 8th districts. Alaska had very crowded primaries that year: Gravel was one of 33 Democrats, along with 21 Republicans, who were running for the chance to compete for the 14 House seats allocated to the 8th district. Gravel made it through the primary, and in November eight Republicans and six Democrats were elected to the House from the district, with Gravel finishing eighth overall and third among with Democrats, with 8,174 votes. Gottstein became Gravel's main financial backer during most of his subsequent campaigns. Gravel served in the Alaska House of Representatives from January 28, 1963 to January 22, 1967, winning reelection in 1964. In his first term, he served as a minority member on two House committees: Commerce, and Labor and Management. He co-authored and sponsored the act that created the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights. Gravel was the chief architect of the law that created a regional high school system for rural Alaska; this allowed Alaska Natives to attend schools near where they lived instead of having to go to schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the lower 48 states. During the half-years that the legislature was not in session, Gravel resumed his real estate work. With Gottstein and Carr's backing, he became quite successful as a property developer on the Kenai Peninsula. During 1965 and 1966, he served as the Speaker of the House, surprising observers by winning that post. Gravel convinced former Speaker Warren A. Taylor to not try for the position against him by promising Taylor chairmanship of the Rules Committee, then reneged on the promise. Gravel denied later press charges that he had promised but not delivered on other committee chairmanships. As Speaker he antagonized fellow lawmakers by imposing his will on the legislature's committees and feuded with Alaska State Senate president Robert J. McNealy. Gravel did not run for reelection in 1966, instead choosing to run for Alaska's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, losing the primary to four-term incumbent Democrat Ralph Rivers by 1,300 votes and splitting the Democratic Party in the process. Rivers lost the general election that year to Republican state Senator Howard Pollock. Following this defeat, Gravel returned to the real estate business in Anchorage. U.S. Senator Election to Senate in 1968 In 1968, Gravel ran against 81-year-old incumbent Democratic United States Senator Ernest Gruening, a popular former governor of the Alaska Territory who was considered one of the fathers of Alaska's statehood, for his party's nomination to the U.S. Senate. Gravel's campaign was primarily based on his youth and telegenic appearance rather than issue differences. He hired Joseph Napolitan, the first self-described political consultant, in late 1966. They spent over a year and a half planning a short, nine-day primary election campaign that featured the slogans "Alaska first" and "Let's do something about the state we're in", the distribution of a collection of essays titled Jobs and More Jobs, and the creation of a half-hour, well-produced, glamorized biographical film of Gravel, Man for Alaska. The film was shown twice a day on every television station in Alaska, and carried by plane and shown on home projectors in hundreds of Alaska Native villages. The heavy showings quickly reversed a 2–to–1 Gruening lead in polls into a Gravel lead. Gravel visited many remote villages by seaplane and showed a thorough understanding of the needs of the bush country and the fishing and oil industries. Gravel also benefited from maintaining a deliberately ambiguous posture about Vietnam policy. Gruening had been one of only two Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and his opposition to President Lyndon B. Johnson's war policies was harming him among the Democratic electorate; according to Gravel, "all I had to do was stand up and not deal with the subject, and people would assume that I was to the right of Ernest Gruening, when in point of fact I was to the left of him". In Man for Alaska, Gravel argued that "the liberals" would come to West Germany's defense if it was attacked, and that the same standard should apply to the United States' allies in Asia. During the campaign he also claimed that he was "more in the mainstream of American thought on Vietnam" than Gruening, despite the fact that he had written to Gruening to praise his antiwar stance four years earlier. Decades later, Gravel conceded that "I said what I said [about Vietnam] to advance my career." Gravel beat Gruening in the primary by about 2,000 votes. Gruening found "the unexpected defeat hard to take" and thought that some aspects of his opponent's biographical film had misled viewers. In the general election, Gravel faced Republican Elmer E. Rasmuson, a banker and former mayor of Anchorage. College students in the state implored Gruening to run a write-in campaign as an Independent, but legal battles prevented him from getting approval for it until only two weeks were left. A late appearance by anti-war presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy did not offset Gruening's lack of funds and endorsements; meanwhile, Gravel and Rasmuson both saturated local media with their filmed biographies. On November 5, 1968, Gravel won the general election with 45 percent of the vote to Rasmuson's 37 percent and Gruening's 18 percent. Senate assignments and style When Gravel joined the U.S.Senate in January 1969, he requested and received a seat on the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, which had direct relevance to Alaskan issues. He also got a spot on the Public Works Committee, which he held throughout his time in the Senate. Finally, he was a member of the Select Committee on Small Business. In 1971 he became chair of the Public Works Committee's Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds, and by 1973 he was chair of its Subcommittee on Water Resources, then later its Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution. Gravel was also initially named to the Joint Committee on Congressional Operations. By 1973 Gravel was off the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee and the Select Small Business Committee and instead a member of the Finance Committee, and by 1977 was chair of that body's Subcommittee on Energy and Foundations. By 1973 he had also been on the ad hoc Special Committee to Study Secret and Confidential Government Documents. By his own admission, Gravel was too new and "too abrasive" to be effective in the Senate by the usual means of seniority-based committee assignments or negotiating deals with other senators, and was sometimes seen as arrogant or a nuisance by the more senior and tradition-oriented members. Gravel relied on attention-getting gestures to achieve what he wanted, hoping national exposure would force other senators to listen to him. But even senators who agreed with him on issues considered his methods to be showboating. As part of this approach, Gravel voted with Southern Democrats to keep the Senate filibuster rule in place, and accordingly supported Russell Long and Robert Byrd but opposed Ted Kennedy in Senate leadership battles. In retrospective assessment, University of Alaska Anchorage history professor Stephen Haycox said, "Loose cannon is a good description of Gravel's Senate career. He was an off-the-wall guy, and you weren't really ever sure what he would do." Nuclear issues and the Cold War In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one-megaton calibration exercise for the second and larger five-megaton Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety; he then made a personal appeal to President Richard Nixon to stop the test. After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971 Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign). In 1971 Gravel voted against the Nixon administration's proposed anti-ballistic missile system, the Safeguard Program, having previously vacillated over the issue, suggesting that he might be willing to support it in exchange for federal lands in Alaska being opened up for private oil drilling. His vote alienated Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who had raised funds for Gravel's primary campaign. Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971 Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975 he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974 Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power. Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's July 1971 secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.), Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with the P.R.C., including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. He reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971. Vietnam War, the draft, and the Pentagon Papers Although he did not campaign against the Vietnam War during his first Senate campaign, by the end of 1970 Gravel was speaking out against United States policy in southeast Asia: in December of that year he persuaded William Fulbright to join him in a spontaneous two-day filibuster against a $155 million military aid package to Cambodia's Khmer Republic government in the Cambodian Civil War. President Richard Nixon had campaigned in 1968 on a promise to end the U.S. military draft, a decision endorsed by the February 1970 report of the Gates Commission. The existing draft law was scheduled to conclude at the end of June 1971, and the Senate faced a contentious debate about whether to extend it as the Vietnam War continued. The Nixon administration announced in February 1971 that it wanted a two-year extension to June 1973, after which the draft would end; Army planners had already been operating under the assumption of a two-year extension, after which an all-volunteer force would be in place. Skeptics such as Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Stennis thought this unrealistic and wanted a four-year extension, but the two-year proposal is what went forward in Congress. By early May 1971, Gravel had indicated his intention to filibuster the draft renewal legislation, halting conscription and thereby bringing U.S. involvement in the war to a rapid end. During this period he also supported efforts to mobilize and influence public opinion against the war, endorsing the "Vietnam War Out Now" rallies in Washington D.C. and San Francisco on April 24, 1971, and financing a broadcast campaign by the antiwar group War No More with a personal loan. In June 1972 he escorted a group of over 100 antiwar protesters, including psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, actress Candice Bergen, theater producer and director Joseph Papp, and peditrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, into the United States Capitol Building; the group was arrested after blocking a hallway outside the Senate chamber. By June 1971, some Democratic senators opposed to the war wanted to limit the renewal to a one-year extension, while others wanted to end it immediately; Gravel reiterated that he was one of the latter, saying, "It's a senseless war, and one way to do away with it is to do away with the draft." A Senate vote on June 4 indicated majority support for the two-year extension. On June 18 Gravel announced again his intention to counteract that by filibustering the renewal legislation, defending the practice against those who associated it only with blocking civil rights legislation. The first filibuster attempt failed on June 23 when, by three votes, the Senate voted cloture for only the fifth time since 1927. Protracted negotiations took place over House conference negotiations on the bill, revolving in large part around Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's eventually unsuccessful amendment to tie renewal to a troop withdrawal timetable from Vietnam; during this time the draft law expired and no more were conscripted. On August 5, the Nixon administration pleaded for a renewal before the Senate went on recess, but Gravel blocked Stennis's attempt to limit debate, and no vote was held. Finally on September 21, 1971, the Senate invoked cloture over Gravel's second filibuster attempt by one vote, and then passed the two-year draft extension. Gravel's attempts to stop the draft had failed (notwithstanding Gravel's later claims that he had stopped or shortened the draft, taken at face value in some media reports, during his 2008 presidential campaign). Meanwhile, on June 13, 1971, The New York Times began printing large portions of the Pentagon Papers. The papers were a large collection of secret government documents and studies pertaining to the Vietnam War, of which former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg had made unauthorized copies and was determined to make public. Ellsberg had for a year and a half approached members of Congress – such as William Fulbright, George McGovern, Charles Mathias, and Pete McCloskey – about publishing the documents, on the grounds that the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution would give congressional members immunity from prosecution, but all had refused. Instead, Ellsberg gave the documents to the Times. The U.S. Justice Department immediately tried to halt publication, on the grounds that the information revealed within the papers harmed the national interest. Within the next two weeks, a federal court injunction halted publication in the Times; The Washington Post and several other newspapers began publishing parts of the documents, with some of them also being halted by injunctions; and the whole matter went to the U.S. Supreme Court for arguments. Looking for an alternate publication mechanism, Ellsberg returned to his idea of having a member of Congress read them, and chose Gravel based on the latter's efforts against the draft; Gravel agreed where previously others had not. Ellsberg arranged for the papers to be given to Gravel on June 26 via an intermediary, Post editor Ben Bagdikian. Gravel used his counter-intelligence experience to choose a midnight transfer in front of the Mayflower Hotel in the center of Washington, D.C. On the night of June 29, 1971, Gravel attempted to read the papers on the floor of the Senate as part of his filibuster against the draft, but was thwarted when no quorum could be formed. Gravel instead convened a session of the Buildings and Grounds subcommittee that he chaired. He got New York Congressman John G. Dow to testify that the war had soaked up funding for public buildings, thus making discussion of the war relevant to the committee. He began reading from the papers with the press in attendance, omitting supporting documents that he felt might compromise national security, and declaring, "It is my constitutional obligation to protect the security of the people by fostering the free flow of information absolutely essential to their democratic decision-making." He read until 1 a.m., culminating by saying "Arms are being severed. Metal is clashing through human bodies because of the public policy this government and all its branches continue to support." Then with tears and sobs he said that he could no longer physically continue, the previous three nights of sleeplessness and fear about the future having taken their toll. Gravel ended the session by, with no other senators present, establishing unanimous consent to insert 4,100 pages of the Papers into the Congressional Record of his subcommittee. The following day, the Supreme Court's New York Times Co. v. United States decision ruled in favor of the newspapers and publication in the Times and others resumed. In July 1971 Bantam Books published an inexpensive paperback edition of the papers containing the material the Times had published. Gravel, too, wanted to privately publish the portion of the papers he had read into the record, believing that "immediate disclosure of the contents of these papers will change the policy that supports the war". After being turned down by many commercial publishers, on August 4 he reached agreement with Beacon Press, the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which Gravel was a member. Announced on August 17 and published on October 22, 1971, this four-volume, relatively expensive set became the "Senator Gravel Edition", which studies from Cornell University and the Annenberg Center for Communication have labeled as the most complete edition of the Pentagon Papers to be published. The "Gravel Edition" was edited and annotated by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, and included an additional volume of analytical articles on the origins and progress of the war, also edited by Chomsky and Zinn. Beacon Press then was subjected to a FBI investigation; an outgrowth of this was the Gravel v. United States court case, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled upon in June 1972; it held that the Speech or Debate Clause did grant immunity to Gravel for his reading the papers in his subcommittee, did grant some immunity to Gravel's congressional aide, but granted no immunity to Beacon Press in relation to their publishing the same papers. The U.S. Senate Democratic Caucus backed Gravel in the case, but due to Republican opposition it did not pay Gravel's legal fees, leaving him owing $25,000 (the equivalent of $150,000 in 2019, adjusted for inflation). The events of 1971 changed Gravel in the following months from an obscure freshman senator to a nationally visible political figure. He became a sought-after speaker on the college circuit as well as at political fundraisers, opportunities he welcomed as lectures were "the one honest way a Senator has to supplement his income". But his speaking tours caused him to accrue one of the worst absentee records in the Senate. The Democratic candidates for the 1972 presidential election sought his endorsement. In January 1972 Gravel endorsed Maine Senator Ed Muskie, hoping that his support would help Muskie with the party's left wing and in ethnic French-Canadian areas during the first primary contest in New Hampshire (Muskie won, but not overwhelmingly, and his campaign faltered soon after). In April 1972 Gravel appeared on all three networks' nightly newscasts to decry the Nixon administration's reliance on Vietnamization by making reference to the secret National Security Study Memorandum 1 document, which stated it would take 8–13 years for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam to defend South Vietnam. Gravel made excerpts from the study public, but senators Robert P. Griffin and William B. Saxbe blocked his attempt to read NSSM 1 into the Congressional Record. Domestic policy In 1970 Gravel co-sponsored legislation to establish a guaranteed minimum income, entitling poor families to up to $6,300 a year (the equivalent of $42,000 in 2019 after adjustment for inflation). He subsequently voted for a "work bonus" program, which would have entitled low-income working families with dependent children if they were paying Social Security or Railroad Retirement taxes to a non-taxable bonus of up to 10 percent of their wages. Gravel also supported extending Social Security to all federal employees and introduced a campaign finance reform bill in 1971 that would have enacted full disclosure of campaign financing, placed limits on large donations, media spending and individual candidate spending. In 1969, Gravel was the only Democratic Senator outside of the South to vote for Nixon's Supreme Court nominee Clement Haynsworth. The following year Gravel opposed Nixon's next pick, G. Harrold Carswell. Run for vice president in 1972 Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates. Toward this end he began soliciting delegates for their support. He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose. On the convention's final day, July 14, 1972, McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice. Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations. Thus there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska. He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination. In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting that included several other candidates. Gravel attracted some attention for his efforts: writer Norman Mailer said he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films", while Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances". Yet the process was doubly disastrous for the Democrats. In the time consumed by nominating and seconding and all the vice-presidential candidates' speeches, the attention of the delegates on the floor was lost and McGovern's speech was pushed to 3:30 a.m. The haste with which Eagleton was selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver. Reelection to Senate in 1974 Several years earlier, Alaska politicians had speculated that Gravel would have a hard time getting both renominated and elected when his first term expired, given that he was originally elected without a base party organization and tended to focus on national rather than local issues. Nonetheless, after receiving support from national and local labor leaders, securing key earmarks, and producing another half-hour TV advertorial, in 1974 Gravel was reelected to the Senate, with 58 percent of the vote to 42 percent for Republican State Senator C. R. Lewis, who was a national officer of the John Birch Society. Second term Gravel's reelection campaign left him $65,000–$75,000 in debt. In 1975 The Washington Post reported on a memo by his executive assistant laying out a fundraising strategy to tackle this, including raising funds from oil companies, meeting with previous donors and "inquir[ing] into the governmental priorities of these people and their groups in the coming session", as well as obtaining further speaking fees to reduce his personal debt. This was followed by a number of stories about links between Gravel, lobbyists and fundraisers, including one that was widely publicized in Alaska about his holding a share in a Colorado resort with two Washington lobbyists he was working with on land and energy legislation. Gravel had been open about the investment and had opposing views to one of the lobbyists on nuclear power. In 1980 the Wall Street Journal published details about his fundraising activities, including writing to individuals and PACs in the oil industry, pledging to kill off proposals for a windfall profits tax on the sector, and traveling in the Middle East with the business partner of one of his donors to sell Alaskan land to businessmen. Gravel suggested that critics of his fundraising were "naive". In 1975 Gravel introduced an amendment to cut the number of troops overseas by 200,000, but it was defeated on a voice vote. In September 1975 Gravel was named as one of several Congressional Advisers to the Seventh Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly, which met to discuss problems related to economic development and international economic cooperation. In June 1976 Gravel was the focus of a federal investigation into allegations that he was involved in a sex-for-vote arrangement. Congressional staff clerk Elizabeth Ray (who had already been involved in a sex scandal that led to the downfall of Representative Wayne Hays) said that in August 1972 she had sex with Gravel aboard a houseboat on the Potomac River, under the instruction of Representative Kenneth J. Gray, her boss at the time. Gray allegedly wanted to secure Gravel's support for further funding for construction of the National Visitor Center in Washington, a troubled project that was under the jurisdiction of subcommittees that both members chaired. Another Congressional staffer said she witnessed the boat encounter, but Gravel said at the time that he had never met either of the women. Gravel and Gray strongly denied that they had made any arrangement regarding legislation, and neither was ever charged with any wrongdoing. Decades later Gravel wrote that he had indeed had sex with Ray, but had not changed any votes because of it. Gravel and his main financial backer, Gottstein, had a falling out in 1978, during the Congressional debate over whether to allow a controversial sale of U.S. F-15 fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia. An ardent backer of Israel, Gottstein opposed the sale and asked Gravel to vote against it. But Gravel not only voted for it but made an emotional speech attacking the anti-sale campaign. Gravel wrote in 2008 that it was the only time Gottstein had ever asked him for a favor, and the rupture resulted in their never speaking to each other again. Alaskan issues By 1971 Gravel was urging construction of the much-argued Trans-Alaska pipeline, addressing environmental concerns by saying that the pipeline's builders and operators should have "total and absolute" responsibility for any consequent environmental damage. Two years later the debate over the pipeline came to a crux, with The New York Times describing it as "environmentalists [in] a holy war with the major oil companies". In February 1973 the U.S. Court of Appeals blocked the issuance of permits for construction; Gravel and fellow Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens reacted by urging Congress to pass legislation overturning the court's decision. Environmentalists opposed to the pipeline, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club then sought to use the recently passed National Environmental Policy Act to their advantage; Gravel designed an amendment to the pipeline bill that would immunize the pipeline from any further court challenges under that law, and thus speed its construction. Passage of the amendment became the key battle regarding the pipeline. On July 17, 1973, in a dramatic roll-call vote, the Gravel amendment was approved as a 49–49 tie was broken in favor by Vice President Spiro Agnew. The actual bill enabling the pipeline then passed easily; Gravel had triumphed in what became perhaps his most lasting accomplishment as a senator. In opposition to the Alaskan fishing industry, Gravel advocated American participation in the formation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. For two years he opposed legislation that established a Exclusive Economic Zone for marine resources. He was one of only 19 senators to vote against Senate approval for the expanded zone in 1976, saying it would undermine the U.S. position in Law of the Sea negotiations and that nations arbitrarily extending their fishing rights limits would "produce anarchy of the seas". The legislation was passed, and the United States has signed but never ratified the Law of the Sea treaty. Gravel accumulated a complicated record on Indian affairs during his time in the Senate. During his first year in the Senate Gravel urged abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, criticizing the agency for the pace of development of schools in Alaska, its paternalistic attitudes and the culturally inappropriate nature of its education, and advocating greater shared decision-making between the federal government and native communities in Alaska. Later, his views changed; in the early 1970s Gravel supported a demonstration project that established links between Alaskan villages and the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, for medical diagnostic communications. In 1971, he fended off accusations from Alaskan natives that he was not spending enough time working on their land claims. Gravel helped secure a private grant to facilitate the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference in 1977, attended by Inuit representatives from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. These conferences now also include representatives from Russia. In 1977, Gravel helped lead an effort to have the U.S. Interior Department rename Mount McKinley to Denali; this eventually led to Denali National Park being so named. Subsequently, Gravel proposed a never-built "Denali City" development above the Tokositna River near the mountain, to consist of a giant Teflon dome enclosing hotels, golf courses, condominiums, and commercial buildings. A related idea of his to build a high-speed rail line to Denali also failed to gain traction. A key, emotional issue in the state at the time was "locking up Alaska", making reference to allocation of its vast, mostly uninhabited land. President Jimmy Carter desired to put large portions of this land under federal protection against development, a move that some Alaskans vociferously opposed. In 1978 Gravel blocked passage, via procedural delays such as walking out of House–Senate conference committee meetings, of a complex bill which represented a compromise on land use policy. The bill would have put some of Alaska's vast federal land holdings under state control while preserving other portions for federal parks and refuges; the blocking action earned Gravel the enmity of fellow Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who had supported the compromise. In 1980, a new lands bill came up for consideration, that was less favorable to Alaskan interests and more liked by environmentalists; it set aside of Alaska's for national parks, conservation areas, and other restricted federal uses. Gravel blocked it, as not ensuring enough future development in the state. A new compromise version of the 1980 bill came forward, which reduced the land set aside to . Representing Alaskan interests, Gravel tried to stop the bill, including by filibuster. But the Senate voted for cloture and passed the bill. Frustrated, Gravel said, "the legislation denies Alaska its rights as a state, and denies the U.S. crucial strategic resources," and opined that the Senate was "a little bit like a tank of barracudas". Nonetheless, the bill, known as the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, was signed by President Carter shortly before leaving the White House, and led to millions of acres being set aside in the state for national parks, wildlife refuges, and other kinds of areas under protection. In 1978 Gravel authored and secured the passage into federal law of the General Stock Ownership Corporation, that became Subchapter U of the Tax Code under the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. This gave states the ability to create corporations that would invest in for-profit enterprises, with all citizens within the state owning shares in the corporation. Gravel's attempt to convince the Alaska state legislature to create such a corporation failed, as did a 1980 state ballot initiative towards the same end, but nevertheless the creation of the General Stock Ownership Corporation in federal law turned out to be significant in the development of binary economics. Loss of Senate seat in 1980 In 1980 Gravel was challenged for the Democratic Party's nomination by State Representative Clark Gruening, the grandson of the man Gravel had defeated in a primary 12 years earlier. One of Gruening's supporters was Gravel's former backer Gottstein. Several factors made Gravel vulnerable. As an insurgent candidate in 1968 Gravel had never established a firm party base. Not liking to hunt or fish, he was also always culturally suspect in the state. The primary campaign was bitterly fought. A group of Democrats, including future governor Steve Cowper, led the campaign against Gravel, with Gravel's actions in respect to the 1978 and 1980 Alaskan lands bills a major issue. This was especially so given that the 1980 bill's dénouement happened but a week before the primary. The sources of Gravel's campaign funds, some of which Gravel readily acknowledged came from political action committees outside the state, also became an issue in the contest. Gruening had pledged that he would not take special interest group money, but Gravel said that Gruening was "dishonest" in accepting individual contributors from Jewish donors living outside the state because to him such contributors comprised "a special interest group ... that seeks to influence the foreign policy of the U.S." Gruening won the primary with about 55 percent of the vote to Gravel's 44 percent. Gravel later conceded that by the time of his defeat, he had alienated "almost every constituency in Alaska". Another factor may have been Alaska's blanket primary system of the time, which allowed unlimited voting across party lines and from its many independents; Republicans believed Gruening would be an easier candidate to defeat in the general election. Gruening lost the general election to Republican Frank Murkowski. Gravel was the last Democrat to represent Alaska in Congress for 28 years, until Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich defeated Ted Stevens, by then an aged, iconic figure who had just been convicted of seven felonies for taking unreported gifts, in a very close and protracted election result in 2008. Stevens's conviction was subsequently vacated due to prosecutorial misconduct. Career after leaving the Senate Of his 1980 defeat, Gravel later recalled: "I had lost my career. I lost my marriage. I was in the doldrums for ten years after my defeat," and "Nobody wanted to hire me for anything important. I felt like I was worthless. I didn't know what I could do." By his own later description, Gravel was a womanizer, and had an affair while in the Senate, and in December 1980 he and his wife Rita separated. They filed for divorce in September 1981; she later received all of his Senate pension income. During the 1980s Gravel was a real estate developer in Anchorage and Kenai, Alaska, a consultant, and a stockbroker. One of his real estate ventures, a condominium business, was forced to declare bankruptcy and a lawsuit ensued. In 1986 Gravel worked in partnership with Merrill Lynch Capital Markets to buy losses that financially troubled Alaska Native Corporations could not take as tax deductions and sell them to large national companies looking for tax writeoffs. Gravel also learned computer programming at some point but never practiced it. In 1984 Gravel married his second wife, Whitney Stewart Gravel, a former administrative assistant for Senator Jacob Javits. Return to politics In 1989 Gravel reentered politics. He founded and led The Democracy Foundation, which promotes direct democracy. He established the Philadelphia II corporation, which seeks to replicate the original 1787 Constitutional Convention and have a Second Constitutional Convention to bring about direct democracy Gravel led an effort to get a United States Constitutional amendment to allow voter-initiated federal legislation similar to state ballot initiatives. He argued that Americans are able to legislate responsibly, and that the Act and Amendment in the National Initiative would allow American citizens to become "law makers". However such efforts met with little success. In 2001, Gravel became director of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, where he admired institute co-founder Gregory Fossedal's work on direct democracy in Switzerland. By 2004, Gravel had become chair of the institute, and Fossedal (who in turn was a director of the Democracy Foundation) gave the introduction at Gravel's presidential announcement. In 2003 Gravel gave a speech on direct democracy at a conference hosted by the American Free Press. The event was cosponsored by the Barnes Review, a journal that endorses Holocaust denial. After some controversy over his appearance, Gravel apologized, saying he did not realize the group's ties. Gravel said repeatedly that he did not share the group's views on the Holocaust, stating, "You better believe I know that six million Jews were killed. [The Barnes Review publishers] are nutty as loons if they don't think it happened". The group invited Gravel to speak again, but he declined. Mike and Whitney Gravel lived in Arlington County, Virginia, until 2010 and then resided in Burlingame, California. They have the two grown children from his first marriage, Martin Gravel and Lynne Gravel Mosier, and four grandchildren. Whitney Gravel's income sustained the couple from 1998 on. In the 2000s, Gravel suffered poor health, requiring three surgeries in 2003 for back pain and neuropathy. Due to unreimbursed medical expenses and debts from his political causes, he declared personal bankruptcy in 2004. He began taking a salary from the non-profit organizations for which he was working; much of that income was lent to his presidential campaign. In 2007, he declared that he had "zero net worth". 2008 presidential campaign Democratic Party primaries At the start of 2006 Gravel decided the best way he could promote direct democracy and the National Initiative was to run for president. On April 17, 2006, Gravel became the first candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election, announcing his run in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Short on campaign cash, he took public transportation to get to his announcement. (Gravel called for public financing of elections.) Other principal Gravel positions were the FairTax, as well as withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days and a single payer national health care system. Gravel had opposed the Iraq War, and President George W. Bush's rationale for it, from the beginning, and in 2006 said that U.S. troops in Iraq, as in Vietnam, had "died in vain". He also favored a regional peace initiative, as well as reparation payments for Iraqis. Gravel also called for a "U.S. corporate withdrawal from Iraq", with reconstruction contracts held by U.S. companies to be turned over to Iraqi firms. Gravel campaigned almost full-time in New Hampshire, the first primary state, following his announcement. Opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination showed Gravel with 1 percent or less support. By the end of March 2007, Gravel's campaign had less than $500 in cash on hand against debts of nearly $90,000. Because of his time in the Senate, Gravel was invited to many of the early Democratic presidential debates. During the initial one at South Carolina State University on April 26, 2007, he suggested a bill requiring the president to withdraw from Iraq on pain of criminal penalties. He also advocated positions such as opposing preemptive nuclear war. He stated that the Iraq War had the effect of creating more terrorists and that the "war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis". Regarding his fellow candidates, he said, "I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me – they frighten me." In one such exchange, Gravel said, "Tell me, Barack, who do you want to nuke?" to which Obama responded, "I'm not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike, I promise." Media stories said that Gravel was responsible for much of whatever "heat" and "flashpoints" had taken place during the Democratic debates. Gravel gained considerable publicity by shaking up the normally staid multiple-candidate format; The New York Times' media critic said that what Gravel had done was "steal a debate with outrageous, curmudgeonly statements". The Internet was a benefit: a YouTube video of his responses in the debate was viewed more than 225,892 times, ranking seventeenth in most views for week and first among news and politics clips; his name became the fifteenth most searched-for in the blogosphere; and his website garnered more traffic than those of frontrunners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards. Gravel appeared on the popular Colbert Report on television on May 2, and his campaign and career were profiled in national publications such as Salon. Two wordless, Warholesque campaign videos, "Rock" and "Fire", were released on YouTube in late May and became hits, and eventually gained over 760,000 and 185,000 views respectively. "Rock", in turn, was given airtime during an episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Some thirty-five years after he first achieved the national spotlight, he had found it again. All this did not improve his performance in the polls; a May 2007 CNN poll showed him with less than 0.5 percent support among Democrats. Gravel was in the next several debates, in one case after CNN reversed a decision to exclude him. Like some of the other second-tier candidates, Gravel did not get as much time as the leaders; during the June 2, 2007, New Hampshire debate, which lasted two hours, he was asked 10 questions and allowed to speak for five minutes and 37 seconds. During the July 23, 2007, CNN-YouTube presidential debate, Gravel responded to audience applause when he had complained of a lack of airtime and said: "Thank you. Has it been fair thus far?" Detractors began to liken him to "the cranky uncle who lives in the attic," or "the angry old guy that just seemed to want to become angrier". Berkeley political scientist David Terr found that moderator George Stephanopoulos directed roughly five percent of his questions to Gravel; in a poll asking who did the best in the debate, Gravel placed seventh among the eight candidates. National opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination continued to show Gravel with one percent or zero percent numbers. By the end of the third-quarter 2007, Gravel had about $17,500 in cash on hand, had collected a total of about $380,000 during the 2008 election cycle, and was continuing to run a threadbare campaign with minimal staff. Beginning with the October 30, 2007, Philadelphia event, Gravel was excluded from most of the debates, with the debate sponsors or the Democratic National Committee saying Gravel's campaign had not met fund-raising, polling, or local campaign organizational thresholds. For the Philadelphia exclusion, Gravel blamed corporate censorship on the part of sponsor owner and alleged military-industrial complex member General Electric for his exclusion and mounted a counter-gathering and debate against a video screen a short distance away, but he had lost his easiest publicity. In reaction, supporters organized "mass donation days" to try to help the campaign gain momentum and funds, such as on December 5, 2007, the anniversary of the Repeal of Prohibition. Gravel did not compete in the initial 2008 vote, the Iowa caucuses, but was still subjected to a false report from MSNBC that he had pulled out of the race afterward. Gravel did focus his attention on the second 2008 vote, the New Hampshire primary. In early January, Mother Jones' investigative reporter James Ridgeway was filmed interviewing and following Gravel in New Hampshire, in which Gravel is interviewed on the phone by Neal Conan for NPR's, Talk of the Nation. He received about 400 votes out of some 280,000 cast in New Hampshire, or 0.14 percent, before taking time off to improve his health. He resumed campaigning, but fared no better in subsequent states. By the end of January 2008, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Gravel were the only remaining Democrats from the initial debates still running; Gravel vowed to stay in the presidential campaign until November. On March 11, 2008, Gravel continued to remain in the Democratic race but additionally endorsed a Green Party candidate for president, Jesse Johnson, saying he wanted to help Johnson prevail against Green Party rivals Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader. By late March, Gravel had almost no fundraising and was only on the ballot in one of the next ten Democratic primaries. Switch to Libertarian Party On March 25, 2008, Gravel announced that he would leave the Democrats and join the Libertarian Party, saying: "My libertarian views, as well as my strong stance against war, the military industrial complex and American imperialism, seem not to be tolerated by Democratic Party elites who are out of touch with the average American; elites that reject the empowerment of American citizens I offered to the Democratic Party at the beginning of this presidential campaign with the National Initiative for Democracy." The following day Gravel entered the race for the 2008 Libertarian presidential nomination, saying that he would have run as a third-party candidate all along except that he needed the public exposure that came from being in the earlier Democratic debates. Gravel's initial notion of running as a fusion candidate with other parties was met with skepticism. As a Libertarian candidate, Gravel faced resistance to his past support of big government initiatives and his unorthodox positions around direct democracy. Nevertheless, he garnered more support than he had as a Democrat, placing second and third in two April 2008 straw polls. In the May 25 balloting at the 2008 Libertarian National Convention in Denver, Gravel finished fourth out of eight candidates on the initial ballot, with 71 votes out of a total 618; he trailed former Congressman and eventual winner Bob Barr, author Mary Ruwart, and businessman Wayne Allyn Root. Gravel's position did not subsequently improve and he was eliminated on the fourth ballot. Afterwards he stated that "I just ended my political career," but he vowed to continue promoting his positions as a writer and lecturer. 2008–early 2019 In June 2008 Gravel endorsed the NYC 9/11 Ballot Initiative, saying the measure would create a "citizens commission rather than a government commission" with subpoena power against top U.S. officials to "make a true investigation as to what happened" regarding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He later said, "Individuals in and out of government may certainly have participated with the obviously known perpetrators of this dastardly act. Suspicions abound over the analysis presented by government. Obviously an act that has triggered three wars, Afghan, Iraqi and the continuing War on Terror, should be extensively investigated which was not done and which the government avoids addressing." In August 2008 Gravel was speaking to a crowd of supporters of Sami Al-Arian (who two years earlier had pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison for a charge of conspiracy in helping Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a "specially designated terrorist" organization) when he was caught on tape saying of Al-Arian's prosecutor, "Find out where he lives, find out where his kids go to school, find out where his office is: picket him all the time. Call him a racist in signs if you see him. Call him an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but in his face all the time." Gravel was criticized for potentially involving the children of the prosecutor, and Al-Arian's family disavowed the sentiments. Gravel defended Alaska Governor Sarah Palin after she was chosen as Republican presidential nominee John McCain's running mate in September 2008. He praised Palin's record in standing up to corruption among Alaskan Republicans, thought her national inexperience was an asset not a detriment, and predicted that the "Troopergate" investigation into whether she improperly fired a state official would "come out in her favor". Gravel made clear he would not support or vote for either McCain–Palin or Obama–Biden in the general election. The following year Gravel said that Palin's politics were "terrible, but that doesn't detract from the fact that she's a very talented person". He predicted that Palin would run for president in 2012 and that "she's going to surprise a lot of people". Palin did not run, but Gravel's prediction about "TrooperGate" was accurate as Palin was found not to have violated ethics laws. In 2013, by the invitation of Hamed Ghashghavi, the secretary for international affairs of the 3rd International Conference on Hollywoodism in Tehran, Iran, Gravel attended that event as an Iranian government-organized anti-Hollywood conference. Gravel noted that the conference was attended by "various elements of extremes" but said it was necessary to discuss how the U.S. film industry portrayed Iran in order to prevent "an insane war" between the two nations. In May 2013 Gravel was one of several former members of Congress to accept $20,000 from the Paradigm Research Group, an advocacy group for UFO disclosure, as part of holding what they termed a Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, modeled after congressional hearings, regarding supposed U.S. government suppression of evidence concerning UFOs. Gravel said, "Something is monitoring the planet, and they are monitoring it very cautiously, because we are a very warlike planet," and, "What we're faced with here is, in areas of the media, and the government too, an effort to marginalize and ridicule people who have specific knowledge." In December 2014 Gravel was announced as the new CEO of KUSH, a company which makes marijuana-infused products for medicinal and recreational use, and a subsidiary of Cannabis Sativa, Inc. He also became an Independent Director of Cannabis Sativa. During the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, Gravel praised Bernie Sanders and his campaign, saying "Bernie is one of the most gifted politicians I have ever observed. He's a person of great integrity and very clever." Gravel predicted that Sanders would be elected president but would be unable to get his key reforms through Congress, and thus that Sanders and his supporters should back some of the proposals of the National Initiative. In 2016, Gravel said in relation to the September 11 attacks: "We killed 58,000 American servicemen in the Vietnam War and all they did was die in vain. What's so unusual about killing 3,000 more in order to develop the grist for the mill to empower into infinity the military industrial complex?" and "There's no question in my mind that 9/11 was an inside job". The remarks were later disavowed by even Gravel supporters. By 2019 Gravel was living in Seaside, California. He was working on a book, at the time titled Human Governance, about his principal idea for direct democracy, a U.S. Constitutional Amendment to create a "Legislature of the People" that would circumvent the existing Congress. The book was self-published at the end of the year by AuthorHouse under the title The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People. 2020 presidential campaign On March 19, 2019, Gravel announced that he was considering running in the 2020 Democratic primaries. He said, "The goal will not be to win, but to bring a critique of American imperialism to the Democratic debate stage." An exploratory committee was formed, with filing a statement of organization with the Federal Election Commission on that same day. The filing was the idea of a group of teenagers, led by David Oks and Henry Williams, inspired by the podcast Chapo Trap House, and done with Gravel's consent (after a week spent convincing him of the idea's merits), but without his involvement. Intrigued by the group's commitment to amplifying his long-held policy goals, Gravel (who would be old on Inauguration Day in 2021) said he planned to meet with them in April, and to discuss a 2020 White House run with his wife. On April 2, 2019, Gravel filed to officially run for office. The campaign called itself the "#Gravelanche". Gravel's initial stated goal was merely to qualify for debates by getting the required 65,000 small donors. He discouraged people from voting for him and said his preferences were Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, both of whom favor a non-interventionist foreign policy. But on April 29, Gravel's campaign said he was running to win, not just to participate in debates. In a subsequent interview, though, Gravel emphasized the virtue of Sanders and Gabbard in some order as a presidential ticket. Statements like these caused Vox to call Gravel "2020's oddest Democratic presidential candidate". The New York Times Magazine included Gravel as an example in the rise of democratic socialism in the United States also exemplified by Sanders's 2016 race and the 2018 election of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "[Gravel's] campaign represents the most absurd form of a legitimate movement on the left that feels little obligation to the Democratic Party." In June 2019, Gravel touted the endorsement of Muntadher al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who, in December 2008, made headlines after he threw his shoes at President George W. Bush in protest of the U.S. war in Iraq. Al-Zaidi endorsed Gravel based on his promise to improve White House policies regarding Iraq and the Middle East. On June 13, 2019, the Democratic Party announced the 20 major candidates who qualified for the first debate later that month. Gravel was one of the four who missed out (the others were Montana Governor Steve Bullock, U.S. Representative Seth Moulton, and Miramar, Florida, Mayor Wayne Messam). Gravel had been unable to get the requisite number of donations, or to score one percent or better in enough polls (many polls did not even include him). Nevertheless, Gravel said he would not drop out and would try to qualify for the July debate. In early July, however, Gravel's campaign said it was still 10,000 contributions short of the 65,000-donor threshold and that it was "nearing its conclusion". It solicited suggestions for where to donate $100–150,000 of leftover campaign funds. Gravel added that he had always planned on ending the campaign before the teenagers in charge of it needed to return to school. A few days later the campaign became the first to run an attack ad against Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, using the text "Is this the best our party has to offer?" Gravel's campaign crossed the threshold of 65,000 donors on July 12, 2019, meeting the qualification mark for that month's debate. But because 20 other candidates, the maximum allowed to participate, had already met at least the polling criterion, which takes priority over the donor criterion, Gravel was not invited. The campaign officially came to a close on August 6, 2019, with Gravel endorsing both Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard for president. Gravel's campaign later stated on Twitter that they never wanted to win but saw the campaign as an "intimately democratic" project and expressed honor at working with Gravel. Gravel said he would divide remaining campaign funds between charity and a new think tank which would espouse his ideas. The Gravel Institute Gravel used some of the funds remaining from his 2020 presidential campaign to found an eponymous progressive think tank called The Gravel Institute in 2019. As noted by Vice magazine, the institute aims to do battle with PragerU from a left-wing perspective. Launched in September 2020, the new entity said it would "carry on the life's work of former U.S Senator Mike Gravel in fighting for global peace and democracy. Its mission is to promote bold and forward-looking ideas about a more peaceful and egalitarian world, and to build a robust movement of young people to win it". Contributors announced include Cornel West and Slavoj Žižek, as well as Lower Brule Indian Reservation activist Nick Estes. Other presenters have included and will include H. Jon Benjamin, Briahna Joy Gray, Bernie Sanders, Chelsea Manning, Richard Wolff, Stephanie Kelton, Zephyr Teachout, David Cross, Jabari Brisport, Zohran Mamdani, and Gravel himself (though it is unknown if his appearance will be cancelled due to his death in June 2021, or if the video has already been recorded). Death Gravel died of multiple myeloma at his home in Seaside, California, on June 26, 2021, at age 91. The obituary for him in The New York Times stated that Gravel was "a two-term Democratic senator from Alaska ... who was perhaps better known as an unabashed attention-getter" who later become known for "mounting long-shot presidential runs". The obituary in The Washington Post was similar, saying that Gravel was "an Alaska Democrat with a flair for the theatrical who rose from obscurity to brief renown" and later "ran quixotic campaigns for the presidency". The Anchorage Daily News quoted Gravel as saying of himself in 1989, "I'm an independent kind of guy. A rough and ready kind of guy. My glands work in a certain way that make me stand up, foolishly sometimes, and fight." Political positions Alan Abramowitz and Jeffrey Allan Segal described Gravel as "a maverick, if not an eccentric, in the Senate." His Americans for Democratic Action "Liberal Quotient" scores ranged from 81 out of 100 (1971) to 39 out of 100 (1980), with an average of around 61. His American Conservative Union scores ranged from 0 out of 100 (several years, including 1971 and 1972) to 38 out of 100 (1979), with an average of 14. Abramowitz and Segal note that Gravel's lowest ADA ratings coincided with his two Senate re-election bids, and for the most part his highest ACU ratings followed the same pattern. In 1972, as a young senator, Gravel published Citizen Power: A People's Platform, a manifesto outlining what Kirkus Reviews termed a "populist reform [that] would provide 'balanced political power' between the people and government and business interests." Civil rights issues On drug policy, Gravel said in 2007 that he favored decriminalization and treating addiction as a public health matter. During his 2008 presidential candidacy he condemned the War on Drugs as a failure, saying that it did "nothing but savage our inner cities and put our children at risk". Gravel called for abolition of capital punishment in his book Citizen Power, and adhered to this position during his 2008 run for president. He supported abortion rights. During the 2008 campaign Gravel was a strong supporter of LGBT rights. He supported same-sex marriage and opposed the Defense of Marriage Act and the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. He wrote in 2008 that "depriving gays and lesbians of equal rights is immoral". Foreign policy and defense issues Gravel was a critic of American imperialism. Gravel firmly opposed U.S. military action against Iran and Syria. He voiced opposition to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the use of torture, indefinite detention, and what he called "flagrant ignorance" of the Geneva Convention. In 2014 Gravel called for the release of the full, unredacted Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture. Gravel opposed the use of international sanctions as a policy tool and blamed the ones against Iraq under Saddam Hussein for the deaths of a half-million children in that country. In 2013 Gravel said that sanctions against Iran were "illegal". During his 2008 candidacy, Gravel called for a cut in military spending, variously reported to be 15 percent or 50 percent. He called for the savings to boost public education spending. To spur international nuclear nonproliferation efforts, Gravel called for unilateral reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. In 2008 Gravel criticized the decision of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to not pursue the efforts to impeach George W. Bush and the attempted impeachment of Dick Cheney, saying also that Bush and Cheney had committed crimes and deserved "to be prosecuted" at The Hague. In 2013 he expressed disdain for President Obama, calling him "a total fraud" and saying that both Bush and Obama should be tried "for the crimes and murders they've committed" in the International Court of Justice. Gravel specifically condemned Obama for the drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere. Economy, immigration, and environment During his 2008 candidacy Gravel favored a FairTax scheme, which would abolish the Internal Revenue Service, eliminate the federal income tax (which Gravel called "corrupt"), and impose a national sales tax. While Gravel described FairTax as "progressive", others have criticized it as "regressive", disproportionately benefiting the wealthiest Americans. To offset the new sales taxes on essential goods, Gravel's plan called for monthly government rebate payments to individuals and families. During his 2020 campaign Gravel also voiced support for a third legislative body that would give the people direct control of the budget as well as the implementation of a land value tax. Gravel opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during his 2008 candidacy, calling it unfair and economically harmful and needing renegotiation. Gravel believed that NAFTA was the "root cause" of illegal migration to the U.S. He favored a guest worker program and "setting up naturalization procedures that would fairly bring immigrants into legal status". In a 2007 interview, Gravel identified himself as "very much of a globalist" who believed in open markets and open borders and condemned the scapegoating of undocumented immigrants. Gravel also said that he favored eliminating the cap on H1B visas. As a senator from Alaska, Gravel favored drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but opposed it during his 2008 campaign. In 2008, Gravel supported a carbon tax to combat climate change. Gravel spoke in favor of net neutrality during his presidential campaign. Education and health care Gravel called for the cost of college tuition to be borne by the federal government, rather than students. In his 2008 campaign, he called the No Child Left Behind Act "a failure" and called for it to be "reformed and fully funded". He expressed support for universal pre-kindergarten and the expansion of the Head Start program; and expressed an openness to charter schools and school vouchers. He also suggested extending the school day and the school year, and supported merit pay for teachers. Gravel also called for publicly funded universal health care to replace the current employer-sponsored health insurance system. He supported "full funding" of the VA system. When asked in 2007 about naturopathy, homeopathy, and acupuncture, Gravel said that he was "very very much in favor" of holistic health care. Awards and honors In 2008 Gravel received the Columbia University School of General Studies' first annual Isaac Asimov Lifetime Achievement Award. Electoral history Writings Gravel, Mike. Jobs and More Jobs. Mt. McKinley Publishers, 1968. Gravel, Mike. Citizen Power: A People's Platform. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972. . revised and reissued as Citizen Power: A Mandate for Change, AuthorHouse, 2008. . Gravel, Mike and Lauria, Joe. A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and One Man's Fight to Stop It. Seven Stories Press, 2008. . Gravel, Mike and Eisenbach, David. The Kingmakers: How the Media Threatens Our Security and Our Democracy. Phoenix Books, 2008. . Gravel, Mike. Voice of a Maverick: The Speeches and Writings of Senator Mike Gravel. Brandywine House, 2008. Gravel, Mike. Foreword to Poisoned Power: The Case Against Nuclear Power Plants. John W. Goffman & Arthur R. Tamplin, Rodale Press, Inc., Emmaus, PA, June 1971. Gravel, Mike. The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People. AuthorHouse, 2020. Explanatory notes References Citations General references The Pentagon Papers Senator Gravel Edition. Vol. Five: Critical Essays. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972. 341p. plus 72p. of Index to Vol. I–IV of the Papers; Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, editors. External links Mike Gravel official website The Gravel Institute |- |- 1930 births 2021 deaths 1972 United States vice-presidential candidates 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American politicians 20th-century Roman Catholics 20th-century Unitarians 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American politicians 21st-century Unitarians 9/11 conspiracy theorists Alaska Democrats American International College alumni American Unitarian Universalists American anti–Iraq War activists American conspiracy theorists American democracy activists American male non-fiction writers American people of French-Canadian descent American political writers American real estate businesspeople American stockbrokers Anti-corporate activists Assumption University (Worcester) alumni Burials at Arlington National Cemetery Businesspeople from Anchorage, Alaska Businesspeople from Springfield, Massachusetts California Democrats Candidates in the 2008 United States presidential election Candidates in the 2020 United States presidential election Columbia University School of General Studies alumni Deaths from cancer in California Deaths from multiple myeloma Democratic Party United States senators Direct democracy activists Drug policy reform activists Former Roman Catholics Virginia Libertarians Members of the Alaska House of Representatives Military personnel from Massachusetts Non-interventionism People from Arlington County, Virginia People from Kenai Peninsula Borough, Alaska People with dyslexia Politicians from Anchorage, Alaska Politicians from Springfield, Massachusetts Speakers of the Alaska House of Representatives United States Army officers United States senators from Alaska Writers about direct democracy Writers from Anchorage, Alaska

C_99b905b192ab4470bbae0787f5f31d5c_1

What comments was Rolling Stone referring to?

What comments by Mike Gravel was Rolling Stone referring to?

Mike Gravel

Gravel "decided to become a pioneer in a faraway place," and moved to pre-statehood Alaska in August 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place where someone without social or political connections could be a viable candidate for public office. Alaska's voting age of 19, less than most other states' 21, played a role in his decision, as did its newness and cooler climate. Broke when he arrived, he immediately found work in real estate sales until winter arrived. Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-Fairbanks run. Subsequently, he opened a small real estate brokerage in Anchorage (the Territory of Alaska not requiring a license) and saved enough so as not to have to work the railroad again. Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and continued a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life. Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin, who had been Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958, on April 29, 1959. They had two children, Martin Anthony Gravel and Lynne Denise Gravel, born c. 1960 and 1962 respectively. Meanwhile, he went to Washington, D.C. in 1957 to campaign for Alaskan statehood via the "Tennessee Plan": dressed as Paul Revere, he rode with a petition to the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Seeing Alaska as a wide-open place with no political establishment or entrenched interests, and using the slogan "Gravel, the Roadbed to Prosperity", he ran for the territorial legislature in 1958 but lost. He went on a national speaking tour concerning tax reform in 1959, sponsored by the Jaycees. He ran without avail for the City Council in Anchorage in 1960. During this time, he had become a successful real estate agent; after the 1960 election, he became a property developer in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Anchorage. A partner ran into financial difficulty, however, and the project went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and Gravel was forced out in 1962. In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one megaton calibration exercise for the second, and larger five megaton, Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests in Congress. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences, and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety to be created; he then made a personal appeal to President Nixon to stop the test. After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the larger Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971, Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage, in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign). Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for the commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971, Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975, he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974, Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power. Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.) in July 1971, Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with China, including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. Gravel reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971. Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in running for the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates. Towards this end he began soliciting delegates for their support in advance of the convention. He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose. At the convention's final day on July 14, 1972, presidential nominee McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice. Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations. Thus, there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska. He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination. In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting that included several other candidates as well. For his efforts, Gravel attracted some attention: famed writer Norman Mailer would say he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films", while Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances ..." Yet, the whole process had been doubly disastrous for the Democrats. The time consumed with the nominating and seconding and other speeches of all the vice-presidential candidates had lost the attention of the delegates on the floor and pushed McGovern's speech until 3:30 a.m. The haste with which Eagleton had been selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver. CANNOTANSWER

CANNOTANSWER

Maurice Robert Gravel ( ; May 13, 1930 – June 26, 2021) was an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981 as a member of the Democratic Party, and who, in later life, twice ran for the presidential nomination of that party. Born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, by French-Canadian immigrant parents, Gravel moved to Alaska in the late 1950s, becoming a real estate developer and entering politics. He served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963 to 1967, and also became Speaker of the Alaska House. Gravel was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1968. As a senator, Gravel became nationally known for his forceful, but unsuccessful, attempts to end the draft during the War in Vietnam, and for putting the Pentagon Papers into the public record in 1971. He conducted a campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1972 for Vice President of the United States, and then played a crucial role in obtaining Congressional approval for the Trans-Alaska pipeline in 1973. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1974, but was defeated in his bid for a third term in the primary election in 1980. An advocate of direct democracy and the National Initiative, Gravel staged a run for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President of the United States. His campaign failed to gain support, and in March 2008, he left the Democratic Party and joined the Libertarian Party to compete unsuccessfully for its presidential nomination and the inclusion of the National Initiative into the Libertarian Platform. He ran for president as a Democrat again in the 2020 election, in a campaign that ended four months after it began. Two years before his death, Gravel and his campaign staff founded the progressive think tank The Gravel Institute. Early life, military service, education Gravel was born on May 13, 1930, in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of five children of French-Canadian immigrant parents, Alphonse and Marie (née Bourassa) Gravel. His parents were part of the Quebec diaspora, and he was raised in a working-class neighborhood during the Great Depression, speaking only French until he was seven years old. Calling him "Mike" from an early age, his father valued work above all else, while his mother stressed the importance of education. Gravel was educated in parochial schools as a Roman Catholic. There he struggled, due to what he later said was undiagnosed dyslexia, and was left back in third grade. He completed elementary school in 1945 and his class voted him "most charming personality". A summer job as a soda jerk led to Gravel handing out campaign fliers for local candidates on his boss's behalf; Gravel was immediately impressed with "the awesomeness of political office". Gravel then boarded at Assumption Preparatory School in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his performance was initially mediocre. By Gravel's telling, in the summer of 1948 he intended to volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces during the 1947–1949 Palestine war, but Alexandra Tolstaya told him to return to school. There an English teacher, the Assumptionist Edgar Bourque, gave him personal attention, improving Gravel's language skills and instructing him in public speaking. Gravel's grades improved measurably in his final year and he graduated in 1949. His sister, Marguerite, became a Holy Cross nun, but Gravel himself struggled with the Catholic faith. He studied for one year at Assumption College, a Catholic school in Worcester, then transferred for his sophomore year to American International College in Springfield. Journalist I. F. Stone and philosopher Bertrand Russell strongly influenced Gravel in their willingness to challenge assumptions and oppose social convention and political authority. Around May 1951, Gravel saw that he was about to be drafted and instead enlisted in the U.S. Army for a three-year term so that he could get into the Counterintelligence Corps. After basic training and counterintelligence school at Fort Holabird in Maryland and in South Carolina, he went to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. While he expected to be sent off to the Korean War when he graduated as a second lieutenant in early 1952, he was instead assigned to Stuttgart, West Germany, as a Special Adjutant in the Army's Communications Intelligence Service. In Germany, Gravel conducted surveillance operations on civilians and paid off spies. After about a year, he transferred to Orléans, France, where his French language abilities (if not his French-Canadian accent) allowed him to infiltrate French communist rallies. He worked as a Special Agent in the Counterintelligence Corps until 1954, eventually becoming a first lieutenant. Following his discharge, Gravel entered the Columbia University School of General Studies in New York City, where he studied economics and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1956. He moved to New York "flat broke" and supported himself by working as a bar boy in a hotel, driving a taxicab, and working in the investment bond department at Bankers Trust. During this time he left the Roman Catholic faith. Move to Alaska Gravel "decided to become a pioneer in a faraway place," and moved to pre-statehood Alaska in August 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place where someone without social or political connections could be a viable candidate for public office. Alaska's voting age of 19, less than most other states' 21, played a role in his decision, as did its newness and cooler climate. Broke when he arrived, he immediately found work in real estate sales until winter arrived. Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-to-Fairbanks run. Subsequently, he opened a small real estate brokerage in Anchorage (the Territory of Alaska not requiring a license) and saved enough so as not to have to work the railroad again. The firm was named the M. R. Gravel Real Estate Company. Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and continued a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life. Seeing Alaska as a wide-open place with no political establishment or entrenched interests, Gravel quickly became part of the civic scene there. By October 1957 he was a Division Chairman for Anchorage for the Democratic Central Committee in the territory, and by June 1958 he was president of the Alaska Young Democrats organization. He also became active in the United States Junior Chamber (Jaycees), and by early 1958 his duties included handing out awards for farmer of the year. By early 1958, Gravel was running as Democratic Party primary candidate for a Third Division seat in House of Representative of the territorial legislature. (This was one of the four judicial divisions into which Alaska was sectioned at the time.) Using the slogan "Gravel, the Roadbed to Prosperity", he ran but lost. At the same time, he was also an advocate for Alaskan statehood. Gravel went on a 44-state national speaking tour concerning tax reform in 1959, sponsored by the Jaycees, often dressing for events as Paul Revere. Gravel was selected from some two thousand applications for this position. The tour received a good amount of local newspaper coverage at its various stops, with Gravel's first name sometimes given as Mike and other times as Maurice. The tour's general message was an urging of "lower taxes, more efficiency in government and a system of taxation moderate at all levels of income". At several stops Gravel stated that the "tide of socialism" had to be stopped. He elaborated at another stop, "It is part of our Jaycee creed that economic justice can best be won by free men through free enterprise. We really want to see that free enterprise become our inheritance." The tour was scheduled to conclude in Washington D.C., on Tax Day, April 15, with petition signatures accumulated for reform to be presented to U.S. lawmakers: dressed as Revere, Gravel rode with the petition to the steps of the U.S. Capitol. The tour over, Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin at the First Methodist Church of Anchorage on April 29, 1959. She was a native of Montana who had attended Billings Business College before moving to Alaska two years prior and becoming a secretary in the office of the Anchorage city manager. She had also been named Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958. They had two children, Martin Anthony Gravel and Lynne Denise Gravel, born c. 1960 and 1962 respectively. Gravel ran without avail for the City Council in Anchorage in 1960. During this time, he had become a successful real estate agent; after the 1960 election, he became a property developer in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Anchorage. After a partner ran into financial difficulty, however, the project went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Gravel was forced out in 1962. State legislator With the support of Alaska wholesale grocer Barney Gottstein and supermarket builder Larry Carr, Gravel ran for the Alaska House of Representatives representing Anchorage in 1962, initially assigned the 10th and then 8th districts. Alaska had very crowded primaries that year: Gravel was one of 33 Democrats, along with 21 Republicans, who were running for the chance to compete for the 14 House seats allocated to the 8th district. Gravel made it through the primary, and in November eight Republicans and six Democrats were elected to the House from the district, with Gravel finishing eighth overall and third among with Democrats, with 8,174 votes. Gottstein became Gravel's main financial backer during most of his subsequent campaigns. Gravel served in the Alaska House of Representatives from January 28, 1963 to January 22, 1967, winning reelection in 1964. In his first term, he served as a minority member on two House committees: Commerce, and Labor and Management. He co-authored and sponsored the act that created the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights. Gravel was the chief architect of the law that created a regional high school system for rural Alaska; this allowed Alaska Natives to attend schools near where they lived instead of having to go to schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the lower 48 states. During the half-years that the legislature was not in session, Gravel resumed his real estate work. With Gottstein and Carr's backing, he became quite successful as a property developer on the Kenai Peninsula. During 1965 and 1966, he served as the Speaker of the House, surprising observers by winning that post. Gravel convinced former Speaker Warren A. Taylor to not try for the position against him by promising Taylor chairmanship of the Rules Committee, then reneged on the promise. Gravel denied later press charges that he had promised but not delivered on other committee chairmanships. As Speaker he antagonized fellow lawmakers by imposing his will on the legislature's committees and feuded with Alaska State Senate president Robert J. McNealy. Gravel did not run for reelection in 1966, instead choosing to run for Alaska's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, losing the primary to four-term incumbent Democrat Ralph Rivers by 1,300 votes and splitting the Democratic Party in the process. Rivers lost the general election that year to Republican state Senator Howard Pollock. Following this defeat, Gravel returned to the real estate business in Anchorage. U.S. Senator Election to Senate in 1968 In 1968, Gravel ran against 81-year-old incumbent Democratic United States Senator Ernest Gruening, a popular former governor of the Alaska Territory who was considered one of the fathers of Alaska's statehood, for his party's nomination to the U.S. Senate. Gravel's campaign was primarily based on his youth and telegenic appearance rather than issue differences. He hired Joseph Napolitan, the first self-described political consultant, in late 1966. They spent over a year and a half planning a short, nine-day primary election campaign that featured the slogans "Alaska first" and "Let's do something about the state we're in", the distribution of a collection of essays titled Jobs and More Jobs, and the creation of a half-hour, well-produced, glamorized biographical film of Gravel, Man for Alaska. The film was shown twice a day on every television station in Alaska, and carried by plane and shown on home projectors in hundreds of Alaska Native villages. The heavy showings quickly reversed a 2–to–1 Gruening lead in polls into a Gravel lead. Gravel visited many remote villages by seaplane and showed a thorough understanding of the needs of the bush country and the fishing and oil industries. Gravel also benefited from maintaining a deliberately ambiguous posture about Vietnam policy. Gruening had been one of only two Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and his opposition to President Lyndon B. Johnson's war policies was harming him among the Democratic electorate; according to Gravel, "all I had to do was stand up and not deal with the subject, and people would assume that I was to the right of Ernest Gruening, when in point of fact I was to the left of him". In Man for Alaska, Gravel argued that "the liberals" would come to West Germany's defense if it was attacked, and that the same standard should apply to the United States' allies in Asia. During the campaign he also claimed that he was "more in the mainstream of American thought on Vietnam" than Gruening, despite the fact that he had written to Gruening to praise his antiwar stance four years earlier. Decades later, Gravel conceded that "I said what I said [about Vietnam] to advance my career." Gravel beat Gruening in the primary by about 2,000 votes. Gruening found "the unexpected defeat hard to take" and thought that some aspects of his opponent's biographical film had misled viewers. In the general election, Gravel faced Republican Elmer E. Rasmuson, a banker and former mayor of Anchorage. College students in the state implored Gruening to run a write-in campaign as an Independent, but legal battles prevented him from getting approval for it until only two weeks were left. A late appearance by anti-war presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy did not offset Gruening's lack of funds and endorsements; meanwhile, Gravel and Rasmuson both saturated local media with their filmed biographies. On November 5, 1968, Gravel won the general election with 45 percent of the vote to Rasmuson's 37 percent and Gruening's 18 percent. Senate assignments and style When Gravel joined the U.S.Senate in January 1969, he requested and received a seat on the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, which had direct relevance to Alaskan issues. He also got a spot on the Public Works Committee, which he held throughout his time in the Senate. Finally, he was a member of the Select Committee on Small Business. In 1971 he became chair of the Public Works Committee's Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds, and by 1973 he was chair of its Subcommittee on Water Resources, then later its Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution. Gravel was also initially named to the Joint Committee on Congressional Operations. By 1973 Gravel was off the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee and the Select Small Business Committee and instead a member of the Finance Committee, and by 1977 was chair of that body's Subcommittee on Energy and Foundations. By 1973 he had also been on the ad hoc Special Committee to Study Secret and Confidential Government Documents. By his own admission, Gravel was too new and "too abrasive" to be effective in the Senate by the usual means of seniority-based committee assignments or negotiating deals with other senators, and was sometimes seen as arrogant or a nuisance by the more senior and tradition-oriented members. Gravel relied on attention-getting gestures to achieve what he wanted, hoping national exposure would force other senators to listen to him. But even senators who agreed with him on issues considered his methods to be showboating. As part of this approach, Gravel voted with Southern Democrats to keep the Senate filibuster rule in place, and accordingly supported Russell Long and Robert Byrd but opposed Ted Kennedy in Senate leadership battles. In retrospective assessment, University of Alaska Anchorage history professor Stephen Haycox said, "Loose cannon is a good description of Gravel's Senate career. He was an off-the-wall guy, and you weren't really ever sure what he would do." Nuclear issues and the Cold War In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one-megaton calibration exercise for the second and larger five-megaton Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety; he then made a personal appeal to President Richard Nixon to stop the test. After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971 Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign). In 1971 Gravel voted against the Nixon administration's proposed anti-ballistic missile system, the Safeguard Program, having previously vacillated over the issue, suggesting that he might be willing to support it in exchange for federal lands in Alaska being opened up for private oil drilling. His vote alienated Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who had raised funds for Gravel's primary campaign. Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971 Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975 he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974 Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power. Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's July 1971 secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.), Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with the P.R.C., including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. He reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971. Vietnam War, the draft, and the Pentagon Papers Although he did not campaign against the Vietnam War during his first Senate campaign, by the end of 1970 Gravel was speaking out against United States policy in southeast Asia: in December of that year he persuaded William Fulbright to join him in a spontaneous two-day filibuster against a $155 million military aid package to Cambodia's Khmer Republic government in the Cambodian Civil War. President Richard Nixon had campaigned in 1968 on a promise to end the U.S. military draft, a decision endorsed by the February 1970 report of the Gates Commission. The existing draft law was scheduled to conclude at the end of June 1971, and the Senate faced a contentious debate about whether to extend it as the Vietnam War continued. The Nixon administration announced in February 1971 that it wanted a two-year extension to June 1973, after which the draft would end; Army planners had already been operating under the assumption of a two-year extension, after which an all-volunteer force would be in place. Skeptics such as Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Stennis thought this unrealistic and wanted a four-year extension, but the two-year proposal is what went forward in Congress. By early May 1971, Gravel had indicated his intention to filibuster the draft renewal legislation, halting conscription and thereby bringing U.S. involvement in the war to a rapid end. During this period he also supported efforts to mobilize and influence public opinion against the war, endorsing the "Vietnam War Out Now" rallies in Washington D.C. and San Francisco on April 24, 1971, and financing a broadcast campaign by the antiwar group War No More with a personal loan. In June 1972 he escorted a group of over 100 antiwar protesters, including psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, actress Candice Bergen, theater producer and director Joseph Papp, and peditrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, into the United States Capitol Building; the group was arrested after blocking a hallway outside the Senate chamber. By June 1971, some Democratic senators opposed to the war wanted to limit the renewal to a one-year extension, while others wanted to end it immediately; Gravel reiterated that he was one of the latter, saying, "It's a senseless war, and one way to do away with it is to do away with the draft." A Senate vote on June 4 indicated majority support for the two-year extension. On June 18 Gravel announced again his intention to counteract that by filibustering the renewal legislation, defending the practice against those who associated it only with blocking civil rights legislation. The first filibuster attempt failed on June 23 when, by three votes, the Senate voted cloture for only the fifth time since 1927. Protracted negotiations took place over House conference negotiations on the bill, revolving in large part around Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's eventually unsuccessful amendment to tie renewal to a troop withdrawal timetable from Vietnam; during this time the draft law expired and no more were conscripted. On August 5, the Nixon administration pleaded for a renewal before the Senate went on recess, but Gravel blocked Stennis's attempt to limit debate, and no vote was held. Finally on September 21, 1971, the Senate invoked cloture over Gravel's second filibuster attempt by one vote, and then passed the two-year draft extension. Gravel's attempts to stop the draft had failed (notwithstanding Gravel's later claims that he had stopped or shortened the draft, taken at face value in some media reports, during his 2008 presidential campaign). Meanwhile, on June 13, 1971, The New York Times began printing large portions of the Pentagon Papers. The papers were a large collection of secret government documents and studies pertaining to the Vietnam War, of which former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg had made unauthorized copies and was determined to make public. Ellsberg had for a year and a half approached members of Congress – such as William Fulbright, George McGovern, Charles Mathias, and Pete McCloskey – about publishing the documents, on the grounds that the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution would give congressional members immunity from prosecution, but all had refused. Instead, Ellsberg gave the documents to the Times. The U.S. Justice Department immediately tried to halt publication, on the grounds that the information revealed within the papers harmed the national interest. Within the next two weeks, a federal court injunction halted publication in the Times; The Washington Post and several other newspapers began publishing parts of the documents, with some of them also being halted by injunctions; and the whole matter went to the U.S. Supreme Court for arguments. Looking for an alternate publication mechanism, Ellsberg returned to his idea of having a member of Congress read them, and chose Gravel based on the latter's efforts against the draft; Gravel agreed where previously others had not. Ellsberg arranged for the papers to be given to Gravel on June 26 via an intermediary, Post editor Ben Bagdikian. Gravel used his counter-intelligence experience to choose a midnight transfer in front of the Mayflower Hotel in the center of Washington, D.C. On the night of June 29, 1971, Gravel attempted to read the papers on the floor of the Senate as part of his filibuster against the draft, but was thwarted when no quorum could be formed. Gravel instead convened a session of the Buildings and Grounds subcommittee that he chaired. He got New York Congressman John G. Dow to testify that the war had soaked up funding for public buildings, thus making discussion of the war relevant to the committee. He began reading from the papers with the press in attendance, omitting supporting documents that he felt might compromise national security, and declaring, "It is my constitutional obligation to protect the security of the people by fostering the free flow of information absolutely essential to their democratic decision-making." He read until 1 a.m., culminating by saying "Arms are being severed. Metal is clashing through human bodies because of the public policy this government and all its branches continue to support." Then with tears and sobs he said that he could no longer physically continue, the previous three nights of sleeplessness and fear about the future having taken their toll. Gravel ended the session by, with no other senators present, establishing unanimous consent to insert 4,100 pages of the Papers into the Congressional Record of his subcommittee. The following day, the Supreme Court's New York Times Co. v. United States decision ruled in favor of the newspapers and publication in the Times and others resumed. In July 1971 Bantam Books published an inexpensive paperback edition of the papers containing the material the Times had published. Gravel, too, wanted to privately publish the portion of the papers he had read into the record, believing that "immediate disclosure of the contents of these papers will change the policy that supports the war". After being turned down by many commercial publishers, on August 4 he reached agreement with Beacon Press, the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which Gravel was a member. Announced on August 17 and published on October 22, 1971, this four-volume, relatively expensive set became the "Senator Gravel Edition", which studies from Cornell University and the Annenberg Center for Communication have labeled as the most complete edition of the Pentagon Papers to be published. The "Gravel Edition" was edited and annotated by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, and included an additional volume of analytical articles on the origins and progress of the war, also edited by Chomsky and Zinn. Beacon Press then was subjected to a FBI investigation; an outgrowth of this was the Gravel v. United States court case, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled upon in June 1972; it held that the Speech or Debate Clause did grant immunity to Gravel for his reading the papers in his subcommittee, did grant some immunity to Gravel's congressional aide, but granted no immunity to Beacon Press in relation to their publishing the same papers. The U.S. Senate Democratic Caucus backed Gravel in the case, but due to Republican opposition it did not pay Gravel's legal fees, leaving him owing $25,000 (the equivalent of $150,000 in 2019, adjusted for inflation). The events of 1971 changed Gravel in the following months from an obscure freshman senator to a nationally visible political figure. He became a sought-after speaker on the college circuit as well as at political fundraisers, opportunities he welcomed as lectures were "the one honest way a Senator has to supplement his income". But his speaking tours caused him to accrue one of the worst absentee records in the Senate. The Democratic candidates for the 1972 presidential election sought his endorsement. In January 1972 Gravel endorsed Maine Senator Ed Muskie, hoping that his support would help Muskie with the party's left wing and in ethnic French-Canadian areas during the first primary contest in New Hampshire (Muskie won, but not overwhelmingly, and his campaign faltered soon after). In April 1972 Gravel appeared on all three networks' nightly newscasts to decry the Nixon administration's reliance on Vietnamization by making reference to the secret National Security Study Memorandum 1 document, which stated it would take 8–13 years for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam to defend South Vietnam. Gravel made excerpts from the study public, but senators Robert P. Griffin and William B. Saxbe blocked his attempt to read NSSM 1 into the Congressional Record. Domestic policy In 1970 Gravel co-sponsored legislation to establish a guaranteed minimum income, entitling poor families to up to $6,300 a year (the equivalent of $42,000 in 2019 after adjustment for inflation). He subsequently voted for a "work bonus" program, which would have entitled low-income working families with dependent children if they were paying Social Security or Railroad Retirement taxes to a non-taxable bonus of up to 10 percent of their wages. Gravel also supported extending Social Security to all federal employees and introduced a campaign finance reform bill in 1971 that would have enacted full disclosure of campaign financing, placed limits on large donations, media spending and individual candidate spending. In 1969, Gravel was the only Democratic Senator outside of the South to vote for Nixon's Supreme Court nominee Clement Haynsworth. The following year Gravel opposed Nixon's next pick, G. Harrold Carswell. Run for vice president in 1972 Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates. Toward this end he began soliciting delegates for their support. He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose. On the convention's final day, July 14, 1972, McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice. Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations. Thus there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska. He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination. In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting that included several other candidates. Gravel attracted some attention for his efforts: writer Norman Mailer said he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films", while Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances". Yet the process was doubly disastrous for the Democrats. In the time consumed by nominating and seconding and all the vice-presidential candidates' speeches, the attention of the delegates on the floor was lost and McGovern's speech was pushed to 3:30 a.m. The haste with which Eagleton was selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver. Reelection to Senate in 1974 Several years earlier, Alaska politicians had speculated that Gravel would have a hard time getting both renominated and elected when his first term expired, given that he was originally elected without a base party organization and tended to focus on national rather than local issues. Nonetheless, after receiving support from national and local labor leaders, securing key earmarks, and producing another half-hour TV advertorial, in 1974 Gravel was reelected to the Senate, with 58 percent of the vote to 42 percent for Republican State Senator C. R. Lewis, who was a national officer of the John Birch Society. Second term Gravel's reelection campaign left him $65,000–$75,000 in debt. In 1975 The Washington Post reported on a memo by his executive assistant laying out a fundraising strategy to tackle this, including raising funds from oil companies, meeting with previous donors and "inquir[ing] into the governmental priorities of these people and their groups in the coming session", as well as obtaining further speaking fees to reduce his personal debt. This was followed by a number of stories about links between Gravel, lobbyists and fundraisers, including one that was widely publicized in Alaska about his holding a share in a Colorado resort with two Washington lobbyists he was working with on land and energy legislation. Gravel had been open about the investment and had opposing views to one of the lobbyists on nuclear power. In 1980 the Wall Street Journal published details about his fundraising activities, including writing to individuals and PACs in the oil industry, pledging to kill off proposals for a windfall profits tax on the sector, and traveling in the Middle East with the business partner of one of his donors to sell Alaskan land to businessmen. Gravel suggested that critics of his fundraising were "naive". In 1975 Gravel introduced an amendment to cut the number of troops overseas by 200,000, but it was defeated on a voice vote. In September 1975 Gravel was named as one of several Congressional Advisers to the Seventh Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly, which met to discuss problems related to economic development and international economic cooperation. In June 1976 Gravel was the focus of a federal investigation into allegations that he was involved in a sex-for-vote arrangement. Congressional staff clerk Elizabeth Ray (who had already been involved in a sex scandal that led to the downfall of Representative Wayne Hays) said that in August 1972 she had sex with Gravel aboard a houseboat on the Potomac River, under the instruction of Representative Kenneth J. Gray, her boss at the time. Gray allegedly wanted to secure Gravel's support for further funding for construction of the National Visitor Center in Washington, a troubled project that was under the jurisdiction of subcommittees that both members chaired. Another Congressional staffer said she witnessed the boat encounter, but Gravel said at the time that he had never met either of the women. Gravel and Gray strongly denied that they had made any arrangement regarding legislation, and neither was ever charged with any wrongdoing. Decades later Gravel wrote that he had indeed had sex with Ray, but had not changed any votes because of it. Gravel and his main financial backer, Gottstein, had a falling out in 1978, during the Congressional debate over whether to allow a controversial sale of U.S. F-15 fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia. An ardent backer of Israel, Gottstein opposed the sale and asked Gravel to vote against it. But Gravel not only voted for it but made an emotional speech attacking the anti-sale campaign. Gravel wrote in 2008 that it was the only time Gottstein had ever asked him for a favor, and the rupture resulted in their never speaking to each other again. Alaskan issues By 1971 Gravel was urging construction of the much-argued Trans-Alaska pipeline, addressing environmental concerns by saying that the pipeline's builders and operators should have "total and absolute" responsibility for any consequent environmental damage. Two years later the debate over the pipeline came to a crux, with The New York Times describing it as "environmentalists [in] a holy war with the major oil companies". In February 1973 the U.S. Court of Appeals blocked the issuance of permits for construction; Gravel and fellow Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens reacted by urging Congress to pass legislation overturning the court's decision. Environmentalists opposed to the pipeline, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club then sought to use the recently passed National Environmental Policy Act to their advantage; Gravel designed an amendment to the pipeline bill that would immunize the pipeline from any further court challenges under that law, and thus speed its construction. Passage of the amendment became the key battle regarding the pipeline. On July 17, 1973, in a dramatic roll-call vote, the Gravel amendment was approved as a 49–49 tie was broken in favor by Vice President Spiro Agnew. The actual bill enabling the pipeline then passed easily; Gravel had triumphed in what became perhaps his most lasting accomplishment as a senator. In opposition to the Alaskan fishing industry, Gravel advocated American participation in the formation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. For two years he opposed legislation that established a Exclusive Economic Zone for marine resources. He was one of only 19 senators to vote against Senate approval for the expanded zone in 1976, saying it would undermine the U.S. position in Law of the Sea negotiations and that nations arbitrarily extending their fishing rights limits would "produce anarchy of the seas". The legislation was passed, and the United States has signed but never ratified the Law of the Sea treaty. Gravel accumulated a complicated record on Indian affairs during his time in the Senate. During his first year in the Senate Gravel urged abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, criticizing the agency for the pace of development of schools in Alaska, its paternalistic attitudes and the culturally inappropriate nature of its education, and advocating greater shared decision-making between the federal government and native communities in Alaska. Later, his views changed; in the early 1970s Gravel supported a demonstration project that established links between Alaskan villages and the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, for medical diagnostic communications. In 1971, he fended off accusations from Alaskan natives that he was not spending enough time working on their land claims. Gravel helped secure a private grant to facilitate the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference in 1977, attended by Inuit representatives from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. These conferences now also include representatives from Russia. In 1977, Gravel helped lead an effort to have the U.S. Interior Department rename Mount McKinley to Denali; this eventually led to Denali National Park being so named. Subsequently, Gravel proposed a never-built "Denali City" development above the Tokositna River near the mountain, to consist of a giant Teflon dome enclosing hotels, golf courses, condominiums, and commercial buildings. A related idea of his to build a high-speed rail line to Denali also failed to gain traction. A key, emotional issue in the state at the time was "locking up Alaska", making reference to allocation of its vast, mostly uninhabited land. President Jimmy Carter desired to put large portions of this land under federal protection against development, a move that some Alaskans vociferously opposed. In 1978 Gravel blocked passage, via procedural delays such as walking out of House–Senate conference committee meetings, of a complex bill which represented a compromise on land use policy. The bill would have put some of Alaska's vast federal land holdings under state control while preserving other portions for federal parks and refuges; the blocking action earned Gravel the enmity of fellow Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who had supported the compromise. In 1980, a new lands bill came up for consideration, that was less favorable to Alaskan interests and more liked by environmentalists; it set aside of Alaska's for national parks, conservation areas, and other restricted federal uses. Gravel blocked it, as not ensuring enough future development in the state. A new compromise version of the 1980 bill came forward, which reduced the land set aside to . Representing Alaskan interests, Gravel tried to stop the bill, including by filibuster. But the Senate voted for cloture and passed the bill. Frustrated, Gravel said, "the legislation denies Alaska its rights as a state, and denies the U.S. crucial strategic resources," and opined that the Senate was "a little bit like a tank of barracudas". Nonetheless, the bill, known as the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, was signed by President Carter shortly before leaving the White House, and led to millions of acres being set aside in the state for national parks, wildlife refuges, and other kinds of areas under protection. In 1978 Gravel authored and secured the passage into federal law of the General Stock Ownership Corporation, that became Subchapter U of the Tax Code under the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. This gave states the ability to create corporations that would invest in for-profit enterprises, with all citizens within the state owning shares in the corporation. Gravel's attempt to convince the Alaska state legislature to create such a corporation failed, as did a 1980 state ballot initiative towards the same end, but nevertheless the creation of the General Stock Ownership Corporation in federal law turned out to be significant in the development of binary economics. Loss of Senate seat in 1980 In 1980 Gravel was challenged for the Democratic Party's nomination by State Representative Clark Gruening, the grandson of the man Gravel had defeated in a primary 12 years earlier. One of Gruening's supporters was Gravel's former backer Gottstein. Several factors made Gravel vulnerable. As an insurgent candidate in 1968 Gravel had never established a firm party base. Not liking to hunt or fish, he was also always culturally suspect in the state. The primary campaign was bitterly fought. A group of Democrats, including future governor Steve Cowper, led the campaign against Gravel, with Gravel's actions in respect to the 1978 and 1980 Alaskan lands bills a major issue. This was especially so given that the 1980 bill's dénouement happened but a week before the primary. The sources of Gravel's campaign funds, some of which Gravel readily acknowledged came from political action committees outside the state, also became an issue in the contest. Gruening had pledged that he would not take special interest group money, but Gravel said that Gruening was "dishonest" in accepting individual contributors from Jewish donors living outside the state because to him such contributors comprised "a special interest group ... that seeks to influence the foreign policy of the U.S." Gruening won the primary with about 55 percent of the vote to Gravel's 44 percent. Gravel later conceded that by the time of his defeat, he had alienated "almost every constituency in Alaska". Another factor may have been Alaska's blanket primary system of the time, which allowed unlimited voting across party lines and from its many independents; Republicans believed Gruening would be an easier candidate to defeat in the general election. Gruening lost the general election to Republican Frank Murkowski. Gravel was the last Democrat to represent Alaska in Congress for 28 years, until Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich defeated Ted Stevens, by then an aged, iconic figure who had just been convicted of seven felonies for taking unreported gifts, in a very close and protracted election result in 2008. Stevens's conviction was subsequently vacated due to prosecutorial misconduct. Career after leaving the Senate Of his 1980 defeat, Gravel later recalled: "I had lost my career. I lost my marriage. I was in the doldrums for ten years after my defeat," and "Nobody wanted to hire me for anything important. I felt like I was worthless. I didn't know what I could do." By his own later description, Gravel was a womanizer, and had an affair while in the Senate, and in December 1980 he and his wife Rita separated. They filed for divorce in September 1981; she later received all of his Senate pension income. During the 1980s Gravel was a real estate developer in Anchorage and Kenai, Alaska, a consultant, and a stockbroker. One of his real estate ventures, a condominium business, was forced to declare bankruptcy and a lawsuit ensued. In 1986 Gravel worked in partnership with Merrill Lynch Capital Markets to buy losses that financially troubled Alaska Native Corporations could not take as tax deductions and sell them to large national companies looking for tax writeoffs. Gravel also learned computer programming at some point but never practiced it. In 1984 Gravel married his second wife, Whitney Stewart Gravel, a former administrative assistant for Senator Jacob Javits. Return to politics In 1989 Gravel reentered politics. He founded and led The Democracy Foundation, which promotes direct democracy. He established the Philadelphia II corporation, which seeks to replicate the original 1787 Constitutional Convention and have a Second Constitutional Convention to bring about direct democracy Gravel led an effort to get a United States Constitutional amendment to allow voter-initiated federal legislation similar to state ballot initiatives. He argued that Americans are able to legislate responsibly, and that the Act and Amendment in the National Initiative would allow American citizens to become "law makers". However such efforts met with little success. In 2001, Gravel became director of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, where he admired institute co-founder Gregory Fossedal's work on direct democracy in Switzerland. By 2004, Gravel had become chair of the institute, and Fossedal (who in turn was a director of the Democracy Foundation) gave the introduction at Gravel's presidential announcement. In 2003 Gravel gave a speech on direct democracy at a conference hosted by the American Free Press. The event was cosponsored by the Barnes Review, a journal that endorses Holocaust denial. After some controversy over his appearance, Gravel apologized, saying he did not realize the group's ties. Gravel said repeatedly that he did not share the group's views on the Holocaust, stating, "You better believe I know that six million Jews were killed. [The Barnes Review publishers] are nutty as loons if they don't think it happened". The group invited Gravel to speak again, but he declined. Mike and Whitney Gravel lived in Arlington County, Virginia, until 2010 and then resided in Burlingame, California. They have the two grown children from his first marriage, Martin Gravel and Lynne Gravel Mosier, and four grandchildren. Whitney Gravel's income sustained the couple from 1998 on. In the 2000s, Gravel suffered poor health, requiring three surgeries in 2003 for back pain and neuropathy. Due to unreimbursed medical expenses and debts from his political causes, he declared personal bankruptcy in 2004. He began taking a salary from the non-profit organizations for which he was working; much of that income was lent to his presidential campaign. In 2007, he declared that he had "zero net worth". 2008 presidential campaign Democratic Party primaries At the start of 2006 Gravel decided the best way he could promote direct democracy and the National Initiative was to run for president. On April 17, 2006, Gravel became the first candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election, announcing his run in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Short on campaign cash, he took public transportation to get to his announcement. (Gravel called for public financing of elections.) Other principal Gravel positions were the FairTax, as well as withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days and a single payer national health care system. Gravel had opposed the Iraq War, and President George W. Bush's rationale for it, from the beginning, and in 2006 said that U.S. troops in Iraq, as in Vietnam, had "died in vain". He also favored a regional peace initiative, as well as reparation payments for Iraqis. Gravel also called for a "U.S. corporate withdrawal from Iraq", with reconstruction contracts held by U.S. companies to be turned over to Iraqi firms. Gravel campaigned almost full-time in New Hampshire, the first primary state, following his announcement. Opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination showed Gravel with 1 percent or less support. By the end of March 2007, Gravel's campaign had less than $500 in cash on hand against debts of nearly $90,000. Because of his time in the Senate, Gravel was invited to many of the early Democratic presidential debates. During the initial one at South Carolina State University on April 26, 2007, he suggested a bill requiring the president to withdraw from Iraq on pain of criminal penalties. He also advocated positions such as opposing preemptive nuclear war. He stated that the Iraq War had the effect of creating more terrorists and that the "war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis". Regarding his fellow candidates, he said, "I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me – they frighten me." In one such exchange, Gravel said, "Tell me, Barack, who do you want to nuke?" to which Obama responded, "I'm not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike, I promise." Media stories said that Gravel was responsible for much of whatever "heat" and "flashpoints" had taken place during the Democratic debates. Gravel gained considerable publicity by shaking up the normally staid multiple-candidate format; The New York Times' media critic said that what Gravel had done was "steal a debate with outrageous, curmudgeonly statements". The Internet was a benefit: a YouTube video of his responses in the debate was viewed more than 225,892 times, ranking seventeenth in most views for week and first among news and politics clips; his name became the fifteenth most searched-for in the blogosphere; and his website garnered more traffic than those of frontrunners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards. Gravel appeared on the popular Colbert Report on television on May 2, and his campaign and career were profiled in national publications such as Salon. Two wordless, Warholesque campaign videos, "Rock" and "Fire", were released on YouTube in late May and became hits, and eventually gained over 760,000 and 185,000 views respectively. "Rock", in turn, was given airtime during an episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Some thirty-five years after he first achieved the national spotlight, he had found it again. All this did not improve his performance in the polls; a May 2007 CNN poll showed him with less than 0.5 percent support among Democrats. Gravel was in the next several debates, in one case after CNN reversed a decision to exclude him. Like some of the other second-tier candidates, Gravel did not get as much time as the leaders; during the June 2, 2007, New Hampshire debate, which lasted two hours, he was asked 10 questions and allowed to speak for five minutes and 37 seconds. During the July 23, 2007, CNN-YouTube presidential debate, Gravel responded to audience applause when he had complained of a lack of airtime and said: "Thank you. Has it been fair thus far?" Detractors began to liken him to "the cranky uncle who lives in the attic," or "the angry old guy that just seemed to want to become angrier". Berkeley political scientist David Terr found that moderator George Stephanopoulos directed roughly five percent of his questions to Gravel; in a poll asking who did the best in the debate, Gravel placed seventh among the eight candidates. National opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination continued to show Gravel with one percent or zero percent numbers. By the end of the third-quarter 2007, Gravel had about $17,500 in cash on hand, had collected a total of about $380,000 during the 2008 election cycle, and was continuing to run a threadbare campaign with minimal staff. Beginning with the October 30, 2007, Philadelphia event, Gravel was excluded from most of the debates, with the debate sponsors or the Democratic National Committee saying Gravel's campaign had not met fund-raising, polling, or local campaign organizational thresholds. For the Philadelphia exclusion, Gravel blamed corporate censorship on the part of sponsor owner and alleged military-industrial complex member General Electric for his exclusion and mounted a counter-gathering and debate against a video screen a short distance away, but he had lost his easiest publicity. In reaction, supporters organized "mass donation days" to try to help the campaign gain momentum and funds, such as on December 5, 2007, the anniversary of the Repeal of Prohibition. Gravel did not compete in the initial 2008 vote, the Iowa caucuses, but was still subjected to a false report from MSNBC that he had pulled out of the race afterward. Gravel did focus his attention on the second 2008 vote, the New Hampshire primary. In early January, Mother Jones' investigative reporter James Ridgeway was filmed interviewing and following Gravel in New Hampshire, in which Gravel is interviewed on the phone by Neal Conan for NPR's, Talk of the Nation. He received about 400 votes out of some 280,000 cast in New Hampshire, or 0.14 percent, before taking time off to improve his health. He resumed campaigning, but fared no better in subsequent states. By the end of January 2008, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Gravel were the only remaining Democrats from the initial debates still running; Gravel vowed to stay in the presidential campaign until November. On March 11, 2008, Gravel continued to remain in the Democratic race but additionally endorsed a Green Party candidate for president, Jesse Johnson, saying he wanted to help Johnson prevail against Green Party rivals Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader. By late March, Gravel had almost no fundraising and was only on the ballot in one of the next ten Democratic primaries. Switch to Libertarian Party On March 25, 2008, Gravel announced that he would leave the Democrats and join the Libertarian Party, saying: "My libertarian views, as well as my strong stance against war, the military industrial complex and American imperialism, seem not to be tolerated by Democratic Party elites who are out of touch with the average American; elites that reject the empowerment of American citizens I offered to the Democratic Party at the beginning of this presidential campaign with the National Initiative for Democracy." The following day Gravel entered the race for the 2008 Libertarian presidential nomination, saying that he would have run as a third-party candidate all along except that he needed the public exposure that came from being in the earlier Democratic debates. Gravel's initial notion of running as a fusion candidate with other parties was met with skepticism. As a Libertarian candidate, Gravel faced resistance to his past support of big government initiatives and his unorthodox positions around direct democracy. Nevertheless, he garnered more support than he had as a Democrat, placing second and third in two April 2008 straw polls. In the May 25 balloting at the 2008 Libertarian National Convention in Denver, Gravel finished fourth out of eight candidates on the initial ballot, with 71 votes out of a total 618; he trailed former Congressman and eventual winner Bob Barr, author Mary Ruwart, and businessman Wayne Allyn Root. Gravel's position did not subsequently improve and he was eliminated on the fourth ballot. Afterwards he stated that "I just ended my political career," but he vowed to continue promoting his positions as a writer and lecturer. 2008–early 2019 In June 2008 Gravel endorsed the NYC 9/11 Ballot Initiative, saying the measure would create a "citizens commission rather than a government commission" with subpoena power against top U.S. officials to "make a true investigation as to what happened" regarding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He later said, "Individuals in and out of government may certainly have participated with the obviously known perpetrators of this dastardly act. Suspicions abound over the analysis presented by government. Obviously an act that has triggered three wars, Afghan, Iraqi and the continuing War on Terror, should be extensively investigated which was not done and which the government avoids addressing." In August 2008 Gravel was speaking to a crowd of supporters of Sami Al-Arian (who two years earlier had pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison for a charge of conspiracy in helping Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a "specially designated terrorist" organization) when he was caught on tape saying of Al-Arian's prosecutor, "Find out where he lives, find out where his kids go to school, find out where his office is: picket him all the time. Call him a racist in signs if you see him. Call him an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but in his face all the time." Gravel was criticized for potentially involving the children of the prosecutor, and Al-Arian's family disavowed the sentiments. Gravel defended Alaska Governor Sarah Palin after she was chosen as Republican presidential nominee John McCain's running mate in September 2008. He praised Palin's record in standing up to corruption among Alaskan Republicans, thought her national inexperience was an asset not a detriment, and predicted that the "Troopergate" investigation into whether she improperly fired a state official would "come out in her favor". Gravel made clear he would not support or vote for either McCain–Palin or Obama–Biden in the general election. The following year Gravel said that Palin's politics were "terrible, but that doesn't detract from the fact that she's a very talented person". He predicted that Palin would run for president in 2012 and that "she's going to surprise a lot of people". Palin did not run, but Gravel's prediction about "TrooperGate" was accurate as Palin was found not to have violated ethics laws. In 2013, by the invitation of Hamed Ghashghavi, the secretary for international affairs of the 3rd International Conference on Hollywoodism in Tehran, Iran, Gravel attended that event as an Iranian government-organized anti-Hollywood conference. Gravel noted that the conference was attended by "various elements of extremes" but said it was necessary to discuss how the U.S. film industry portrayed Iran in order to prevent "an insane war" between the two nations. In May 2013 Gravel was one of several former members of Congress to accept $20,000 from the Paradigm Research Group, an advocacy group for UFO disclosure, as part of holding what they termed a Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, modeled after congressional hearings, regarding supposed U.S. government suppression of evidence concerning UFOs. Gravel said, "Something is monitoring the planet, and they are monitoring it very cautiously, because we are a very warlike planet," and, "What we're faced with here is, in areas of the media, and the government too, an effort to marginalize and ridicule people who have specific knowledge." In December 2014 Gravel was announced as the new CEO of KUSH, a company which makes marijuana-infused products for medicinal and recreational use, and a subsidiary of Cannabis Sativa, Inc. He also became an Independent Director of Cannabis Sativa. During the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, Gravel praised Bernie Sanders and his campaign, saying "Bernie is one of the most gifted politicians I have ever observed. He's a person of great integrity and very clever." Gravel predicted that Sanders would be elected president but would be unable to get his key reforms through Congress, and thus that Sanders and his supporters should back some of the proposals of the National Initiative. In 2016, Gravel said in relation to the September 11 attacks: "We killed 58,000 American servicemen in the Vietnam War and all they did was die in vain. What's so unusual about killing 3,000 more in order to develop the grist for the mill to empower into infinity the military industrial complex?" and "There's no question in my mind that 9/11 was an inside job". The remarks were later disavowed by even Gravel supporters. By 2019 Gravel was living in Seaside, California. He was working on a book, at the time titled Human Governance, about his principal idea for direct democracy, a U.S. Constitutional Amendment to create a "Legislature of the People" that would circumvent the existing Congress. The book was self-published at the end of the year by AuthorHouse under the title The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People. 2020 presidential campaign On March 19, 2019, Gravel announced that he was considering running in the 2020 Democratic primaries. He said, "The goal will not be to win, but to bring a critique of American imperialism to the Democratic debate stage." An exploratory committee was formed, with filing a statement of organization with the Federal Election Commission on that same day. The filing was the idea of a group of teenagers, led by David Oks and Henry Williams, inspired by the podcast Chapo Trap House, and done with Gravel's consent (after a week spent convincing him of the idea's merits), but without his involvement. Intrigued by the group's commitment to amplifying his long-held policy goals, Gravel (who would be old on Inauguration Day in 2021) said he planned to meet with them in April, and to discuss a 2020 White House run with his wife. On April 2, 2019, Gravel filed to officially run for office. The campaign called itself the "#Gravelanche". Gravel's initial stated goal was merely to qualify for debates by getting the required 65,000 small donors. He discouraged people from voting for him and said his preferences were Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, both of whom favor a non-interventionist foreign policy. But on April 29, Gravel's campaign said he was running to win, not just to participate in debates. In a subsequent interview, though, Gravel emphasized the virtue of Sanders and Gabbard in some order as a presidential ticket. Statements like these caused Vox to call Gravel "2020's oddest Democratic presidential candidate". The New York Times Magazine included Gravel as an example in the rise of democratic socialism in the United States also exemplified by Sanders's 2016 race and the 2018 election of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "[Gravel's] campaign represents the most absurd form of a legitimate movement on the left that feels little obligation to the Democratic Party." In June 2019, Gravel touted the endorsement of Muntadher al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who, in December 2008, made headlines after he threw his shoes at President George W. Bush in protest of the U.S. war in Iraq. Al-Zaidi endorsed Gravel based on his promise to improve White House policies regarding Iraq and the Middle East. On June 13, 2019, the Democratic Party announced the 20 major candidates who qualified for the first debate later that month. Gravel was one of the four who missed out (the others were Montana Governor Steve Bullock, U.S. Representative Seth Moulton, and Miramar, Florida, Mayor Wayne Messam). Gravel had been unable to get the requisite number of donations, or to score one percent or better in enough polls (many polls did not even include him). Nevertheless, Gravel said he would not drop out and would try to qualify for the July debate. In early July, however, Gravel's campaign said it was still 10,000 contributions short of the 65,000-donor threshold and that it was "nearing its conclusion". It solicited suggestions for where to donate $100–150,000 of leftover campaign funds. Gravel added that he had always planned on ending the campaign before the teenagers in charge of it needed to return to school. A few days later the campaign became the first to run an attack ad against Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, using the text "Is this the best our party has to offer?" Gravel's campaign crossed the threshold of 65,000 donors on July 12, 2019, meeting the qualification mark for that month's debate. But because 20 other candidates, the maximum allowed to participate, had already met at least the polling criterion, which takes priority over the donor criterion, Gravel was not invited. The campaign officially came to a close on August 6, 2019, with Gravel endorsing both Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard for president. Gravel's campaign later stated on Twitter that they never wanted to win but saw the campaign as an "intimately democratic" project and expressed honor at working with Gravel. Gravel said he would divide remaining campaign funds between charity and a new think tank which would espouse his ideas. The Gravel Institute Gravel used some of the funds remaining from his 2020 presidential campaign to found an eponymous progressive think tank called The Gravel Institute in 2019. As noted by Vice magazine, the institute aims to do battle with PragerU from a left-wing perspective. Launched in September 2020, the new entity said it would "carry on the life's work of former U.S Senator Mike Gravel in fighting for global peace and democracy. Its mission is to promote bold and forward-looking ideas about a more peaceful and egalitarian world, and to build a robust movement of young people to win it". Contributors announced include Cornel West and Slavoj Žižek, as well as Lower Brule Indian Reservation activist Nick Estes. Other presenters have included and will include H. Jon Benjamin, Briahna Joy Gray, Bernie Sanders, Chelsea Manning, Richard Wolff, Stephanie Kelton, Zephyr Teachout, David Cross, Jabari Brisport, Zohran Mamdani, and Gravel himself (though it is unknown if his appearance will be cancelled due to his death in June 2021, or if the video has already been recorded). Death Gravel died of multiple myeloma at his home in Seaside, California, on June 26, 2021, at age 91. The obituary for him in The New York Times stated that Gravel was "a two-term Democratic senator from Alaska ... who was perhaps better known as an unabashed attention-getter" who later become known for "mounting long-shot presidential runs". The obituary in The Washington Post was similar, saying that Gravel was "an Alaska Democrat with a flair for the theatrical who rose from obscurity to brief renown" and later "ran quixotic campaigns for the presidency". The Anchorage Daily News quoted Gravel as saying of himself in 1989, "I'm an independent kind of guy. A rough and ready kind of guy. My glands work in a certain way that make me stand up, foolishly sometimes, and fight." Political positions Alan Abramowitz and Jeffrey Allan Segal described Gravel as "a maverick, if not an eccentric, in the Senate." His Americans for Democratic Action "Liberal Quotient" scores ranged from 81 out of 100 (1971) to 39 out of 100 (1980), with an average of around 61. His American Conservative Union scores ranged from 0 out of 100 (several years, including 1971 and 1972) to 38 out of 100 (1979), with an average of 14. Abramowitz and Segal note that Gravel's lowest ADA ratings coincided with his two Senate re-election bids, and for the most part his highest ACU ratings followed the same pattern. In 1972, as a young senator, Gravel published Citizen Power: A People's Platform, a manifesto outlining what Kirkus Reviews termed a "populist reform [that] would provide 'balanced political power' between the people and government and business interests." Civil rights issues On drug policy, Gravel said in 2007 that he favored decriminalization and treating addiction as a public health matter. During his 2008 presidential candidacy he condemned the War on Drugs as a failure, saying that it did "nothing but savage our inner cities and put our children at risk". Gravel called for abolition of capital punishment in his book Citizen Power, and adhered to this position during his 2008 run for president. He supported abortion rights. During the 2008 campaign Gravel was a strong supporter of LGBT rights. He supported same-sex marriage and opposed the Defense of Marriage Act and the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. He wrote in 2008 that "depriving gays and lesbians of equal rights is immoral". Foreign policy and defense issues Gravel was a critic of American imperialism. Gravel firmly opposed U.S. military action against Iran and Syria. He voiced opposition to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the use of torture, indefinite detention, and what he called "flagrant ignorance" of the Geneva Convention. In 2014 Gravel called for the release of the full, unredacted Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture. Gravel opposed the use of international sanctions as a policy tool and blamed the ones against Iraq under Saddam Hussein for the deaths of a half-million children in that country. In 2013 Gravel said that sanctions against Iran were "illegal". During his 2008 candidacy, Gravel called for a cut in military spending, variously reported to be 15 percent or 50 percent. He called for the savings to boost public education spending. To spur international nuclear nonproliferation efforts, Gravel called for unilateral reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. In 2008 Gravel criticized the decision of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to not pursue the efforts to impeach George W. Bush and the attempted impeachment of Dick Cheney, saying also that Bush and Cheney had committed crimes and deserved "to be prosecuted" at The Hague. In 2013 he expressed disdain for President Obama, calling him "a total fraud" and saying that both Bush and Obama should be tried "for the crimes and murders they've committed" in the International Court of Justice. Gravel specifically condemned Obama for the drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere. Economy, immigration, and environment During his 2008 candidacy Gravel favored a FairTax scheme, which would abolish the Internal Revenue Service, eliminate the federal income tax (which Gravel called "corrupt"), and impose a national sales tax. While Gravel described FairTax as "progressive", others have criticized it as "regressive", disproportionately benefiting the wealthiest Americans. To offset the new sales taxes on essential goods, Gravel's plan called for monthly government rebate payments to individuals and families. During his 2020 campaign Gravel also voiced support for a third legislative body that would give the people direct control of the budget as well as the implementation of a land value tax. Gravel opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during his 2008 candidacy, calling it unfair and economically harmful and needing renegotiation. Gravel believed that NAFTA was the "root cause" of illegal migration to the U.S. He favored a guest worker program and "setting up naturalization procedures that would fairly bring immigrants into legal status". In a 2007 interview, Gravel identified himself as "very much of a globalist" who believed in open markets and open borders and condemned the scapegoating of undocumented immigrants. Gravel also said that he favored eliminating the cap on H1B visas. As a senator from Alaska, Gravel favored drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but opposed it during his 2008 campaign. In 2008, Gravel supported a carbon tax to combat climate change. Gravel spoke in favor of net neutrality during his presidential campaign. Education and health care Gravel called for the cost of college tuition to be borne by the federal government, rather than students. In his 2008 campaign, he called the No Child Left Behind Act "a failure" and called for it to be "reformed and fully funded". He expressed support for universal pre-kindergarten and the expansion of the Head Start program; and expressed an openness to charter schools and school vouchers. He also suggested extending the school day and the school year, and supported merit pay for teachers. Gravel also called for publicly funded universal health care to replace the current employer-sponsored health insurance system. He supported "full funding" of the VA system. When asked in 2007 about naturopathy, homeopathy, and acupuncture, Gravel said that he was "very very much in favor" of holistic health care. Awards and honors In 2008 Gravel received the Columbia University School of General Studies' first annual Isaac Asimov Lifetime Achievement Award. Electoral history Writings Gravel, Mike. Jobs and More Jobs. Mt. McKinley Publishers, 1968. Gravel, Mike. Citizen Power: A People's Platform. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972. . revised and reissued as Citizen Power: A Mandate for Change, AuthorHouse, 2008. . Gravel, Mike and Lauria, Joe. A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and One Man's Fight to Stop It. Seven Stories Press, 2008. . Gravel, Mike and Eisenbach, David. The Kingmakers: How the Media Threatens Our Security and Our Democracy. Phoenix Books, 2008. . Gravel, Mike. Voice of a Maverick: The Speeches and Writings of Senator Mike Gravel. Brandywine House, 2008. Gravel, Mike. Foreword to Poisoned Power: The Case Against Nuclear Power Plants. John W. Goffman & Arthur R. Tamplin, Rodale Press, Inc., Emmaus, PA, June 1971. Gravel, Mike. The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People. AuthorHouse, 2020. Explanatory notes References Citations General references The Pentagon Papers Senator Gravel Edition. Vol. Five: Critical Essays. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972. 341p. plus 72p. of Index to Vol. I–IV of the Papers; Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, editors. External links Mike Gravel official website The Gravel Institute |- |- 1930 births 2021 deaths 1972 United States vice-presidential candidates 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American politicians 20th-century Roman Catholics 20th-century Unitarians 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American politicians 21st-century Unitarians 9/11 conspiracy theorists Alaska Democrats American International College alumni American Unitarian Universalists American anti–Iraq War activists American conspiracy theorists American democracy activists American male non-fiction writers American people of French-Canadian descent American political writers American real estate businesspeople American stockbrokers Anti-corporate activists Assumption University (Worcester) alumni Burials at Arlington National Cemetery Businesspeople from Anchorage, Alaska Businesspeople from Springfield, Massachusetts California Democrats Candidates in the 2008 United States presidential election Candidates in the 2020 United States presidential election Columbia University School of General Studies alumni Deaths from cancer in California Deaths from multiple myeloma Democratic Party United States senators Direct democracy activists Drug policy reform activists Former Roman Catholics Virginia Libertarians Members of the Alaska House of Representatives Military personnel from Massachusetts Non-interventionism People from Arlington County, Virginia People from Kenai Peninsula Borough, Alaska People with dyslexia Politicians from Anchorage, Alaska Politicians from Springfield, Massachusetts Speakers of the Alaska House of Representatives United States Army officers United States senators from Alaska Writers about direct democracy Writers from Anchorage, Alaska

C_99b905b192ab4470bbae0787f5f31d5c_1

What else can you tell me about Gravel?

Besides losing the vice-presidential nomination, what else can you tell me about Mike Gravel?

Mike Gravel

Gravel "decided to become a pioneer in a faraway place," and moved to pre-statehood Alaska in August 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place where someone without social or political connections could be a viable candidate for public office. Alaska's voting age of 19, less than most other states' 21, played a role in his decision, as did its newness and cooler climate. Broke when he arrived, he immediately found work in real estate sales until winter arrived. Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-Fairbanks run. Subsequently, he opened a small real estate brokerage in Anchorage (the Territory of Alaska not requiring a license) and saved enough so as not to have to work the railroad again. Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and continued a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life. Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin, who had been Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958, on April 29, 1959. They had two children, Martin Anthony Gravel and Lynne Denise Gravel, born c. 1960 and 1962 respectively. Meanwhile, he went to Washington, D.C. in 1957 to campaign for Alaskan statehood via the "Tennessee Plan": dressed as Paul Revere, he rode with a petition to the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Seeing Alaska as a wide-open place with no political establishment or entrenched interests, and using the slogan "Gravel, the Roadbed to Prosperity", he ran for the territorial legislature in 1958 but lost. He went on a national speaking tour concerning tax reform in 1959, sponsored by the Jaycees. He ran without avail for the City Council in Anchorage in 1960. During this time, he had become a successful real estate agent; after the 1960 election, he became a property developer in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Anchorage. A partner ran into financial difficulty, however, and the project went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and Gravel was forced out in 1962. In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one megaton calibration exercise for the second, and larger five megaton, Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests in Congress. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences, and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety to be created; he then made a personal appeal to President Nixon to stop the test. After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the larger Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971, Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage, in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign). Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for the commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971, Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975, he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974, Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power. Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.) in July 1971, Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with China, including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. Gravel reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971. Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in running for the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates. Towards this end he began soliciting delegates for their support in advance of the convention. He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose. At the convention's final day on July 14, 1972, presidential nominee McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice. Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations. Thus, there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska. He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination. In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting that included several other candidates as well. For his efforts, Gravel attracted some attention: famed writer Norman Mailer would say he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films", while Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances ..." Yet, the whole process had been doubly disastrous for the Democrats. The time consumed with the nominating and seconding and other speeches of all the vice-presidential candidates had lost the attention of the delegates on the floor and pushed McGovern's speech until 3:30 a.m. The haste with which Eagleton had been selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver. CANNOTANSWER

he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films",

Maurice Robert Gravel ( ; May 13, 1930 – June 26, 2021) was an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981 as a member of the Democratic Party, and who, in later life, twice ran for the presidential nomination of that party. Born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, by French-Canadian immigrant parents, Gravel moved to Alaska in the late 1950s, becoming a real estate developer and entering politics. He served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963 to 1967, and also became Speaker of the Alaska House. Gravel was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1968. As a senator, Gravel became nationally known for his forceful, but unsuccessful, attempts to end the draft during the War in Vietnam, and for putting the Pentagon Papers into the public record in 1971. He conducted a campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1972 for Vice President of the United States, and then played a crucial role in obtaining Congressional approval for the Trans-Alaska pipeline in 1973. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1974, but was defeated in his bid for a third term in the primary election in 1980. An advocate of direct democracy and the National Initiative, Gravel staged a run for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President of the United States. His campaign failed to gain support, and in March 2008, he left the Democratic Party and joined the Libertarian Party to compete unsuccessfully for its presidential nomination and the inclusion of the National Initiative into the Libertarian Platform. He ran for president as a Democrat again in the 2020 election, in a campaign that ended four months after it began. Two years before his death, Gravel and his campaign staff founded the progressive think tank The Gravel Institute. Early life, military service, education Gravel was born on May 13, 1930, in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of five children of French-Canadian immigrant parents, Alphonse and Marie (née Bourassa) Gravel. His parents were part of the Quebec diaspora, and he was raised in a working-class neighborhood during the Great Depression, speaking only French until he was seven years old. Calling him "Mike" from an early age, his father valued work above all else, while his mother stressed the importance of education. Gravel was educated in parochial schools as a Roman Catholic. There he struggled, due to what he later said was undiagnosed dyslexia, and was left back in third grade. He completed elementary school in 1945 and his class voted him "most charming personality". A summer job as a soda jerk led to Gravel handing out campaign fliers for local candidates on his boss's behalf; Gravel was immediately impressed with "the awesomeness of political office". Gravel then boarded at Assumption Preparatory School in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his performance was initially mediocre. By Gravel's telling, in the summer of 1948 he intended to volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces during the 1947–1949 Palestine war, but Alexandra Tolstaya told him to return to school. There an English teacher, the Assumptionist Edgar Bourque, gave him personal attention, improving Gravel's language skills and instructing him in public speaking. Gravel's grades improved measurably in his final year and he graduated in 1949. His sister, Marguerite, became a Holy Cross nun, but Gravel himself struggled with the Catholic faith. He studied for one year at Assumption College, a Catholic school in Worcester, then transferred for his sophomore year to American International College in Springfield. Journalist I. F. Stone and philosopher Bertrand Russell strongly influenced Gravel in their willingness to challenge assumptions and oppose social convention and political authority. Around May 1951, Gravel saw that he was about to be drafted and instead enlisted in the U.S. Army for a three-year term so that he could get into the Counterintelligence Corps. After basic training and counterintelligence school at Fort Holabird in Maryland and in South Carolina, he went to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. While he expected to be sent off to the Korean War when he graduated as a second lieutenant in early 1952, he was instead assigned to Stuttgart, West Germany, as a Special Adjutant in the Army's Communications Intelligence Service. In Germany, Gravel conducted surveillance operations on civilians and paid off spies. After about a year, he transferred to Orléans, France, where his French language abilities (if not his French-Canadian accent) allowed him to infiltrate French communist rallies. He worked as a Special Agent in the Counterintelligence Corps until 1954, eventually becoming a first lieutenant. Following his discharge, Gravel entered the Columbia University School of General Studies in New York City, where he studied economics and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1956. He moved to New York "flat broke" and supported himself by working as a bar boy in a hotel, driving a taxicab, and working in the investment bond department at Bankers Trust. During this time he left the Roman Catholic faith. Move to Alaska Gravel "decided to become a pioneer in a faraway place," and moved to pre-statehood Alaska in August 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place where someone without social or political connections could be a viable candidate for public office. Alaska's voting age of 19, less than most other states' 21, played a role in his decision, as did its newness and cooler climate. Broke when he arrived, he immediately found work in real estate sales until winter arrived. Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-to-Fairbanks run. Subsequently, he opened a small real estate brokerage in Anchorage (the Territory of Alaska not requiring a license) and saved enough so as not to have to work the railroad again. The firm was named the M. R. Gravel Real Estate Company. Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and continued a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life. Seeing Alaska as a wide-open place with no political establishment or entrenched interests, Gravel quickly became part of the civic scene there. By October 1957 he was a Division Chairman for Anchorage for the Democratic Central Committee in the territory, and by June 1958 he was president of the Alaska Young Democrats organization. He also became active in the United States Junior Chamber (Jaycees), and by early 1958 his duties included handing out awards for farmer of the year. By early 1958, Gravel was running as Democratic Party primary candidate for a Third Division seat in House of Representative of the territorial legislature. (This was one of the four judicial divisions into which Alaska was sectioned at the time.) Using the slogan "Gravel, the Roadbed to Prosperity", he ran but lost. At the same time, he was also an advocate for Alaskan statehood. Gravel went on a 44-state national speaking tour concerning tax reform in 1959, sponsored by the Jaycees, often dressing for events as Paul Revere. Gravel was selected from some two thousand applications for this position. The tour received a good amount of local newspaper coverage at its various stops, with Gravel's first name sometimes given as Mike and other times as Maurice. The tour's general message was an urging of "lower taxes, more efficiency in government and a system of taxation moderate at all levels of income". At several stops Gravel stated that the "tide of socialism" had to be stopped. He elaborated at another stop, "It is part of our Jaycee creed that economic justice can best be won by free men through free enterprise. We really want to see that free enterprise become our inheritance." The tour was scheduled to conclude in Washington D.C., on Tax Day, April 15, with petition signatures accumulated for reform to be presented to U.S. lawmakers: dressed as Revere, Gravel rode with the petition to the steps of the U.S. Capitol. The tour over, Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin at the First Methodist Church of Anchorage on April 29, 1959. She was a native of Montana who had attended Billings Business College before moving to Alaska two years prior and becoming a secretary in the office of the Anchorage city manager. She had also been named Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958. They had two children, Martin Anthony Gravel and Lynne Denise Gravel, born c. 1960 and 1962 respectively. Gravel ran without avail for the City Council in Anchorage in 1960. During this time, he had become a successful real estate agent; after the 1960 election, he became a property developer in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Anchorage. After a partner ran into financial difficulty, however, the project went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Gravel was forced out in 1962. State legislator With the support of Alaska wholesale grocer Barney Gottstein and supermarket builder Larry Carr, Gravel ran for the Alaska House of Representatives representing Anchorage in 1962, initially assigned the 10th and then 8th districts. Alaska had very crowded primaries that year: Gravel was one of 33 Democrats, along with 21 Republicans, who were running for the chance to compete for the 14 House seats allocated to the 8th district. Gravel made it through the primary, and in November eight Republicans and six Democrats were elected to the House from the district, with Gravel finishing eighth overall and third among with Democrats, with 8,174 votes. Gottstein became Gravel's main financial backer during most of his subsequent campaigns. Gravel served in the Alaska House of Representatives from January 28, 1963 to January 22, 1967, winning reelection in 1964. In his first term, he served as a minority member on two House committees: Commerce, and Labor and Management. He co-authored and sponsored the act that created the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights. Gravel was the chief architect of the law that created a regional high school system for rural Alaska; this allowed Alaska Natives to attend schools near where they lived instead of having to go to schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the lower 48 states. During the half-years that the legislature was not in session, Gravel resumed his real estate work. With Gottstein and Carr's backing, he became quite successful as a property developer on the Kenai Peninsula. During 1965 and 1966, he served as the Speaker of the House, surprising observers by winning that post. Gravel convinced former Speaker Warren A. Taylor to not try for the position against him by promising Taylor chairmanship of the Rules Committee, then reneged on the promise. Gravel denied later press charges that he had promised but not delivered on other committee chairmanships. As Speaker he antagonized fellow lawmakers by imposing his will on the legislature's committees and feuded with Alaska State Senate president Robert J. McNealy. Gravel did not run for reelection in 1966, instead choosing to run for Alaska's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, losing the primary to four-term incumbent Democrat Ralph Rivers by 1,300 votes and splitting the Democratic Party in the process. Rivers lost the general election that year to Republican state Senator Howard Pollock. Following this defeat, Gravel returned to the real estate business in Anchorage. U.S. Senator Election to Senate in 1968 In 1968, Gravel ran against 81-year-old incumbent Democratic United States Senator Ernest Gruening, a popular former governor of the Alaska Territory who was considered one of the fathers of Alaska's statehood, for his party's nomination to the U.S. Senate. Gravel's campaign was primarily based on his youth and telegenic appearance rather than issue differences. He hired Joseph Napolitan, the first self-described political consultant, in late 1966. They spent over a year and a half planning a short, nine-day primary election campaign that featured the slogans "Alaska first" and "Let's do something about the state we're in", the distribution of a collection of essays titled Jobs and More Jobs, and the creation of a half-hour, well-produced, glamorized biographical film of Gravel, Man for Alaska. The film was shown twice a day on every television station in Alaska, and carried by plane and shown on home projectors in hundreds of Alaska Native villages. The heavy showings quickly reversed a 2–to–1 Gruening lead in polls into a Gravel lead. Gravel visited many remote villages by seaplane and showed a thorough understanding of the needs of the bush country and the fishing and oil industries. Gravel also benefited from maintaining a deliberately ambiguous posture about Vietnam policy. Gruening had been one of only two Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and his opposition to President Lyndon B. Johnson's war policies was harming him among the Democratic electorate; according to Gravel, "all I had to do was stand up and not deal with the subject, and people would assume that I was to the right of Ernest Gruening, when in point of fact I was to the left of him". In Man for Alaska, Gravel argued that "the liberals" would come to West Germany's defense if it was attacked, and that the same standard should apply to the United States' allies in Asia. During the campaign he also claimed that he was "more in the mainstream of American thought on Vietnam" than Gruening, despite the fact that he had written to Gruening to praise his antiwar stance four years earlier. Decades later, Gravel conceded that "I said what I said [about Vietnam] to advance my career." Gravel beat Gruening in the primary by about 2,000 votes. Gruening found "the unexpected defeat hard to take" and thought that some aspects of his opponent's biographical film had misled viewers. In the general election, Gravel faced Republican Elmer E. Rasmuson, a banker and former mayor of Anchorage. College students in the state implored Gruening to run a write-in campaign as an Independent, but legal battles prevented him from getting approval for it until only two weeks were left. A late appearance by anti-war presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy did not offset Gruening's lack of funds and endorsements; meanwhile, Gravel and Rasmuson both saturated local media with their filmed biographies. On November 5, 1968, Gravel won the general election with 45 percent of the vote to Rasmuson's 37 percent and Gruening's 18 percent. Senate assignments and style When Gravel joined the U.S.Senate in January 1969, he requested and received a seat on the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, which had direct relevance to Alaskan issues. He also got a spot on the Public Works Committee, which he held throughout his time in the Senate. Finally, he was a member of the Select Committee on Small Business. In 1971 he became chair of the Public Works Committee's Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds, and by 1973 he was chair of its Subcommittee on Water Resources, then later its Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution. Gravel was also initially named to the Joint Committee on Congressional Operations. By 1973 Gravel was off the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee and the Select Small Business Committee and instead a member of the Finance Committee, and by 1977 was chair of that body's Subcommittee on Energy and Foundations. By 1973 he had also been on the ad hoc Special Committee to Study Secret and Confidential Government Documents. By his own admission, Gravel was too new and "too abrasive" to be effective in the Senate by the usual means of seniority-based committee assignments or negotiating deals with other senators, and was sometimes seen as arrogant or a nuisance by the more senior and tradition-oriented members. Gravel relied on attention-getting gestures to achieve what he wanted, hoping national exposure would force other senators to listen to him. But even senators who agreed with him on issues considered his methods to be showboating. As part of this approach, Gravel voted with Southern Democrats to keep the Senate filibuster rule in place, and accordingly supported Russell Long and Robert Byrd but opposed Ted Kennedy in Senate leadership battles. In retrospective assessment, University of Alaska Anchorage history professor Stephen Haycox said, "Loose cannon is a good description of Gravel's Senate career. He was an off-the-wall guy, and you weren't really ever sure what he would do." Nuclear issues and the Cold War In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one-megaton calibration exercise for the second and larger five-megaton Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety; he then made a personal appeal to President Richard Nixon to stop the test. After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971 Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign). In 1971 Gravel voted against the Nixon administration's proposed anti-ballistic missile system, the Safeguard Program, having previously vacillated over the issue, suggesting that he might be willing to support it in exchange for federal lands in Alaska being opened up for private oil drilling. His vote alienated Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who had raised funds for Gravel's primary campaign. Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971 Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975 he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974 Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power. Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's July 1971 secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.), Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with the P.R.C., including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. He reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971. Vietnam War, the draft, and the Pentagon Papers Although he did not campaign against the Vietnam War during his first Senate campaign, by the end of 1970 Gravel was speaking out against United States policy in southeast Asia: in December of that year he persuaded William Fulbright to join him in a spontaneous two-day filibuster against a $155 million military aid package to Cambodia's Khmer Republic government in the Cambodian Civil War. President Richard Nixon had campaigned in 1968 on a promise to end the U.S. military draft, a decision endorsed by the February 1970 report of the Gates Commission. The existing draft law was scheduled to conclude at the end of June 1971, and the Senate faced a contentious debate about whether to extend it as the Vietnam War continued. The Nixon administration announced in February 1971 that it wanted a two-year extension to June 1973, after which the draft would end; Army planners had already been operating under the assumption of a two-year extension, after which an all-volunteer force would be in place. Skeptics such as Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Stennis thought this unrealistic and wanted a four-year extension, but the two-year proposal is what went forward in Congress. By early May 1971, Gravel had indicated his intention to filibuster the draft renewal legislation, halting conscription and thereby bringing U.S. involvement in the war to a rapid end. During this period he also supported efforts to mobilize and influence public opinion against the war, endorsing the "Vietnam War Out Now" rallies in Washington D.C. and San Francisco on April 24, 1971, and financing a broadcast campaign by the antiwar group War No More with a personal loan. In June 1972 he escorted a group of over 100 antiwar protesters, including psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, actress Candice Bergen, theater producer and director Joseph Papp, and peditrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, into the United States Capitol Building; the group was arrested after blocking a hallway outside the Senate chamber. By June 1971, some Democratic senators opposed to the war wanted to limit the renewal to a one-year extension, while others wanted to end it immediately; Gravel reiterated that he was one of the latter, saying, "It's a senseless war, and one way to do away with it is to do away with the draft." A Senate vote on June 4 indicated majority support for the two-year extension. On June 18 Gravel announced again his intention to counteract that by filibustering the renewal legislation, defending the practice against those who associated it only with blocking civil rights legislation. The first filibuster attempt failed on June 23 when, by three votes, the Senate voted cloture for only the fifth time since 1927. Protracted negotiations took place over House conference negotiations on the bill, revolving in large part around Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's eventually unsuccessful amendment to tie renewal to a troop withdrawal timetable from Vietnam; during this time the draft law expired and no more were conscripted. On August 5, the Nixon administration pleaded for a renewal before the Senate went on recess, but Gravel blocked Stennis's attempt to limit debate, and no vote was held. Finally on September 21, 1971, the Senate invoked cloture over Gravel's second filibuster attempt by one vote, and then passed the two-year draft extension. Gravel's attempts to stop the draft had failed (notwithstanding Gravel's later claims that he had stopped or shortened the draft, taken at face value in some media reports, during his 2008 presidential campaign). Meanwhile, on June 13, 1971, The New York Times began printing large portions of the Pentagon Papers. The papers were a large collection of secret government documents and studies pertaining to the Vietnam War, of which former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg had made unauthorized copies and was determined to make public. Ellsberg had for a year and a half approached members of Congress – such as William Fulbright, George McGovern, Charles Mathias, and Pete McCloskey – about publishing the documents, on the grounds that the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution would give congressional members immunity from prosecution, but all had refused. Instead, Ellsberg gave the documents to the Times. The U.S. Justice Department immediately tried to halt publication, on the grounds that the information revealed within the papers harmed the national interest. Within the next two weeks, a federal court injunction halted publication in the Times; The Washington Post and several other newspapers began publishing parts of the documents, with some of them also being halted by injunctions; and the whole matter went to the U.S. Supreme Court for arguments. Looking for an alternate publication mechanism, Ellsberg returned to his idea of having a member of Congress read them, and chose Gravel based on the latter's efforts against the draft; Gravel agreed where previously others had not. Ellsberg arranged for the papers to be given to Gravel on June 26 via an intermediary, Post editor Ben Bagdikian. Gravel used his counter-intelligence experience to choose a midnight transfer in front of the Mayflower Hotel in the center of Washington, D.C. On the night of June 29, 1971, Gravel attempted to read the papers on the floor of the Senate as part of his filibuster against the draft, but was thwarted when no quorum could be formed. Gravel instead convened a session of the Buildings and Grounds subcommittee that he chaired. He got New York Congressman John G. Dow to testify that the war had soaked up funding for public buildings, thus making discussion of the war relevant to the committee. He began reading from the papers with the press in attendance, omitting supporting documents that he felt might compromise national security, and declaring, "It is my constitutional obligation to protect the security of the people by fostering the free flow of information absolutely essential to their democratic decision-making." He read until 1 a.m., culminating by saying "Arms are being severed. Metal is clashing through human bodies because of the public policy this government and all its branches continue to support." Then with tears and sobs he said that he could no longer physically continue, the previous three nights of sleeplessness and fear about the future having taken their toll. Gravel ended the session by, with no other senators present, establishing unanimous consent to insert 4,100 pages of the Papers into the Congressional Record of his subcommittee. The following day, the Supreme Court's New York Times Co. v. United States decision ruled in favor of the newspapers and publication in the Times and others resumed. In July 1971 Bantam Books published an inexpensive paperback edition of the papers containing the material the Times had published. Gravel, too, wanted to privately publish the portion of the papers he had read into the record, believing that "immediate disclosure of the contents of these papers will change the policy that supports the war". After being turned down by many commercial publishers, on August 4 he reached agreement with Beacon Press, the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which Gravel was a member. Announced on August 17 and published on October 22, 1971, this four-volume, relatively expensive set became the "Senator Gravel Edition", which studies from Cornell University and the Annenberg Center for Communication have labeled as the most complete edition of the Pentagon Papers to be published. The "Gravel Edition" was edited and annotated by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, and included an additional volume of analytical articles on the origins and progress of the war, also edited by Chomsky and Zinn. Beacon Press then was subjected to a FBI investigation; an outgrowth of this was the Gravel v. United States court case, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled upon in June 1972; it held that the Speech or Debate Clause did grant immunity to Gravel for his reading the papers in his subcommittee, did grant some immunity to Gravel's congressional aide, but granted no immunity to Beacon Press in relation to their publishing the same papers. The U.S. Senate Democratic Caucus backed Gravel in the case, but due to Republican opposition it did not pay Gravel's legal fees, leaving him owing $25,000 (the equivalent of $150,000 in 2019, adjusted for inflation). The events of 1971 changed Gravel in the following months from an obscure freshman senator to a nationally visible political figure. He became a sought-after speaker on the college circuit as well as at political fundraisers, opportunities he welcomed as lectures were "the one honest way a Senator has to supplement his income". But his speaking tours caused him to accrue one of the worst absentee records in the Senate. The Democratic candidates for the 1972 presidential election sought his endorsement. In January 1972 Gravel endorsed Maine Senator Ed Muskie, hoping that his support would help Muskie with the party's left wing and in ethnic French-Canadian areas during the first primary contest in New Hampshire (Muskie won, but not overwhelmingly, and his campaign faltered soon after). In April 1972 Gravel appeared on all three networks' nightly newscasts to decry the Nixon administration's reliance on Vietnamization by making reference to the secret National Security Study Memorandum 1 document, which stated it would take 8–13 years for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam to defend South Vietnam. Gravel made excerpts from the study public, but senators Robert P. Griffin and William B. Saxbe blocked his attempt to read NSSM 1 into the Congressional Record. Domestic policy In 1970 Gravel co-sponsored legislation to establish a guaranteed minimum income, entitling poor families to up to $6,300 a year (the equivalent of $42,000 in 2019 after adjustment for inflation). He subsequently voted for a "work bonus" program, which would have entitled low-income working families with dependent children if they were paying Social Security or Railroad Retirement taxes to a non-taxable bonus of up to 10 percent of their wages. Gravel also supported extending Social Security to all federal employees and introduced a campaign finance reform bill in 1971 that would have enacted full disclosure of campaign financing, placed limits on large donations, media spending and individual candidate spending. In 1969, Gravel was the only Democratic Senator outside of the South to vote for Nixon's Supreme Court nominee Clement Haynsworth. The following year Gravel opposed Nixon's next pick, G. Harrold Carswell. Run for vice president in 1972 Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates. Toward this end he began soliciting delegates for their support. He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose. On the convention's final day, July 14, 1972, McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice. Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations. Thus there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska. He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination. In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting that included several other candidates. Gravel attracted some attention for his efforts: writer Norman Mailer said he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films", while Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances". Yet the process was doubly disastrous for the Democrats. In the time consumed by nominating and seconding and all the vice-presidential candidates' speeches, the attention of the delegates on the floor was lost and McGovern's speech was pushed to 3:30 a.m. The haste with which Eagleton was selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver. Reelection to Senate in 1974 Several years earlier, Alaska politicians had speculated that Gravel would have a hard time getting both renominated and elected when his first term expired, given that he was originally elected without a base party organization and tended to focus on national rather than local issues. Nonetheless, after receiving support from national and local labor leaders, securing key earmarks, and producing another half-hour TV advertorial, in 1974 Gravel was reelected to the Senate, with 58 percent of the vote to 42 percent for Republican State Senator C. R. Lewis, who was a national officer of the John Birch Society. Second term Gravel's reelection campaign left him $65,000–$75,000 in debt. In 1975 The Washington Post reported on a memo by his executive assistant laying out a fundraising strategy to tackle this, including raising funds from oil companies, meeting with previous donors and "inquir[ing] into the governmental priorities of these people and their groups in the coming session", as well as obtaining further speaking fees to reduce his personal debt. This was followed by a number of stories about links between Gravel, lobbyists and fundraisers, including one that was widely publicized in Alaska about his holding a share in a Colorado resort with two Washington lobbyists he was working with on land and energy legislation. Gravel had been open about the investment and had opposing views to one of the lobbyists on nuclear power. In 1980 the Wall Street Journal published details about his fundraising activities, including writing to individuals and PACs in the oil industry, pledging to kill off proposals for a windfall profits tax on the sector, and traveling in the Middle East with the business partner of one of his donors to sell Alaskan land to businessmen. Gravel suggested that critics of his fundraising were "naive". In 1975 Gravel introduced an amendment to cut the number of troops overseas by 200,000, but it was defeated on a voice vote. In September 1975 Gravel was named as one of several Congressional Advisers to the Seventh Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly, which met to discuss problems related to economic development and international economic cooperation. In June 1976 Gravel was the focus of a federal investigation into allegations that he was involved in a sex-for-vote arrangement. Congressional staff clerk Elizabeth Ray (who had already been involved in a sex scandal that led to the downfall of Representative Wayne Hays) said that in August 1972 she had sex with Gravel aboard a houseboat on the Potomac River, under the instruction of Representative Kenneth J. Gray, her boss at the time. Gray allegedly wanted to secure Gravel's support for further funding for construction of the National Visitor Center in Washington, a troubled project that was under the jurisdiction of subcommittees that both members chaired. Another Congressional staffer said she witnessed the boat encounter, but Gravel said at the time that he had never met either of the women. Gravel and Gray strongly denied that they had made any arrangement regarding legislation, and neither was ever charged with any wrongdoing. Decades later Gravel wrote that he had indeed had sex with Ray, but had not changed any votes because of it. Gravel and his main financial backer, Gottstein, had a falling out in 1978, during the Congressional debate over whether to allow a controversial sale of U.S. F-15 fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia. An ardent backer of Israel, Gottstein opposed the sale and asked Gravel to vote against it. But Gravel not only voted for it but made an emotional speech attacking the anti-sale campaign. Gravel wrote in 2008 that it was the only time Gottstein had ever asked him for a favor, and the rupture resulted in their never speaking to each other again. Alaskan issues By 1971 Gravel was urging construction of the much-argued Trans-Alaska pipeline, addressing environmental concerns by saying that the pipeline's builders and operators should have "total and absolute" responsibility for any consequent environmental damage. Two years later the debate over the pipeline came to a crux, with The New York Times describing it as "environmentalists [in] a holy war with the major oil companies". In February 1973 the U.S. Court of Appeals blocked the issuance of permits for construction; Gravel and fellow Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens reacted by urging Congress to pass legislation overturning the court's decision. Environmentalists opposed to the pipeline, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club then sought to use the recently passed National Environmental Policy Act to their advantage; Gravel designed an amendment to the pipeline bill that would immunize the pipeline from any further court challenges under that law, and thus speed its construction. Passage of the amendment became the key battle regarding the pipeline. On July 17, 1973, in a dramatic roll-call vote, the Gravel amendment was approved as a 49–49 tie was broken in favor by Vice President Spiro Agnew. The actual bill enabling the pipeline then passed easily; Gravel had triumphed in what became perhaps his most lasting accomplishment as a senator. In opposition to the Alaskan fishing industry, Gravel advocated American participation in the formation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. For two years he opposed legislation that established a Exclusive Economic Zone for marine resources. He was one of only 19 senators to vote against Senate approval for the expanded zone in 1976, saying it would undermine the U.S. position in Law of the Sea negotiations and that nations arbitrarily extending their fishing rights limits would "produce anarchy of the seas". The legislation was passed, and the United States has signed but never ratified the Law of the Sea treaty. Gravel accumulated a complicated record on Indian affairs during his time in the Senate. During his first year in the Senate Gravel urged abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, criticizing the agency for the pace of development of schools in Alaska, its paternalistic attitudes and the culturally inappropriate nature of its education, and advocating greater shared decision-making between the federal government and native communities in Alaska. Later, his views changed; in the early 1970s Gravel supported a demonstration project that established links between Alaskan villages and the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, for medical diagnostic communications. In 1971, he fended off accusations from Alaskan natives that he was not spending enough time working on their land claims. Gravel helped secure a private grant to facilitate the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference in 1977, attended by Inuit representatives from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. These conferences now also include representatives from Russia. In 1977, Gravel helped lead an effort to have the U.S. Interior Department rename Mount McKinley to Denali; this eventually led to Denali National Park being so named. Subsequently, Gravel proposed a never-built "Denali City" development above the Tokositna River near the mountain, to consist of a giant Teflon dome enclosing hotels, golf courses, condominiums, and commercial buildings. A related idea of his to build a high-speed rail line to Denali also failed to gain traction. A key, emotional issue in the state at the time was "locking up Alaska", making reference to allocation of its vast, mostly uninhabited land. President Jimmy Carter desired to put large portions of this land under federal protection against development, a move that some Alaskans vociferously opposed. In 1978 Gravel blocked passage, via procedural delays such as walking out of House–Senate conference committee meetings, of a complex bill which represented a compromise on land use policy. The bill would have put some of Alaska's vast federal land holdings under state control while preserving other portions for federal parks and refuges; the blocking action earned Gravel the enmity of fellow Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who had supported the compromise. In 1980, a new lands bill came up for consideration, that was less favorable to Alaskan interests and more liked by environmentalists; it set aside of Alaska's for national parks, conservation areas, and other restricted federal uses. Gravel blocked it, as not ensuring enough future development in the state. A new compromise version of the 1980 bill came forward, which reduced the land set aside to . Representing Alaskan interests, Gravel tried to stop the bill, including by filibuster. But the Senate voted for cloture and passed the bill. Frustrated, Gravel said, "the legislation denies Alaska its rights as a state, and denies the U.S. crucial strategic resources," and opined that the Senate was "a little bit like a tank of barracudas". Nonetheless, the bill, known as the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, was signed by President Carter shortly before leaving the White House, and led to millions of acres being set aside in the state for national parks, wildlife refuges, and other kinds of areas under protection. In 1978 Gravel authored and secured the passage into federal law of the General Stock Ownership Corporation, that became Subchapter U of the Tax Code under the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. This gave states the ability to create corporations that would invest in for-profit enterprises, with all citizens within the state owning shares in the corporation. Gravel's attempt to convince the Alaska state legislature to create such a corporation failed, as did a 1980 state ballot initiative towards the same end, but nevertheless the creation of the General Stock Ownership Corporation in federal law turned out to be significant in the development of binary economics. Loss of Senate seat in 1980 In 1980 Gravel was challenged for the Democratic Party's nomination by State Representative Clark Gruening, the grandson of the man Gravel had defeated in a primary 12 years earlier. One of Gruening's supporters was Gravel's former backer Gottstein. Several factors made Gravel vulnerable. As an insurgent candidate in 1968 Gravel had never established a firm party base. Not liking to hunt or fish, he was also always culturally suspect in the state. The primary campaign was bitterly fought. A group of Democrats, including future governor Steve Cowper, led the campaign against Gravel, with Gravel's actions in respect to the 1978 and 1980 Alaskan lands bills a major issue. This was especially so given that the 1980 bill's dénouement happened but a week before the primary. The sources of Gravel's campaign funds, some of which Gravel readily acknowledged came from political action committees outside the state, also became an issue in the contest. Gruening had pledged that he would not take special interest group money, but Gravel said that Gruening was "dishonest" in accepting individual contributors from Jewish donors living outside the state because to him such contributors comprised "a special interest group ... that seeks to influence the foreign policy of the U.S." Gruening won the primary with about 55 percent of the vote to Gravel's 44 percent. Gravel later conceded that by the time of his defeat, he had alienated "almost every constituency in Alaska". Another factor may have been Alaska's blanket primary system of the time, which allowed unlimited voting across party lines and from its many independents; Republicans believed Gruening would be an easier candidate to defeat in the general election. Gruening lost the general election to Republican Frank Murkowski. Gravel was the last Democrat to represent Alaska in Congress for 28 years, until Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich defeated Ted Stevens, by then an aged, iconic figure who had just been convicted of seven felonies for taking unreported gifts, in a very close and protracted election result in 2008. Stevens's conviction was subsequently vacated due to prosecutorial misconduct. Career after leaving the Senate Of his 1980 defeat, Gravel later recalled: "I had lost my career. I lost my marriage. I was in the doldrums for ten years after my defeat," and "Nobody wanted to hire me for anything important. I felt like I was worthless. I didn't know what I could do." By his own later description, Gravel was a womanizer, and had an affair while in the Senate, and in December 1980 he and his wife Rita separated. They filed for divorce in September 1981; she later received all of his Senate pension income. During the 1980s Gravel was a real estate developer in Anchorage and Kenai, Alaska, a consultant, and a stockbroker. One of his real estate ventures, a condominium business, was forced to declare bankruptcy and a lawsuit ensued. In 1986 Gravel worked in partnership with Merrill Lynch Capital Markets to buy losses that financially troubled Alaska Native Corporations could not take as tax deductions and sell them to large national companies looking for tax writeoffs. Gravel also learned computer programming at some point but never practiced it. In 1984 Gravel married his second wife, Whitney Stewart Gravel, a former administrative assistant for Senator Jacob Javits. Return to politics In 1989 Gravel reentered politics. He founded and led The Democracy Foundation, which promotes direct democracy. He established the Philadelphia II corporation, which seeks to replicate the original 1787 Constitutional Convention and have a Second Constitutional Convention to bring about direct democracy Gravel led an effort to get a United States Constitutional amendment to allow voter-initiated federal legislation similar to state ballot initiatives. He argued that Americans are able to legislate responsibly, and that the Act and Amendment in the National Initiative would allow American citizens to become "law makers". However such efforts met with little success. In 2001, Gravel became director of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, where he admired institute co-founder Gregory Fossedal's work on direct democracy in Switzerland. By 2004, Gravel had become chair of the institute, and Fossedal (who in turn was a director of the Democracy Foundation) gave the introduction at Gravel's presidential announcement. In 2003 Gravel gave a speech on direct democracy at a conference hosted by the American Free Press. The event was cosponsored by the Barnes Review, a journal that endorses Holocaust denial. After some controversy over his appearance, Gravel apologized, saying he did not realize the group's ties. Gravel said repeatedly that he did not share the group's views on the Holocaust, stating, "You better believe I know that six million Jews were killed. [The Barnes Review publishers] are nutty as loons if they don't think it happened". The group invited Gravel to speak again, but he declined. Mike and Whitney Gravel lived in Arlington County, Virginia, until 2010 and then resided in Burlingame, California. They have the two grown children from his first marriage, Martin Gravel and Lynne Gravel Mosier, and four grandchildren. Whitney Gravel's income sustained the couple from 1998 on. In the 2000s, Gravel suffered poor health, requiring three surgeries in 2003 for back pain and neuropathy. Due to unreimbursed medical expenses and debts from his political causes, he declared personal bankruptcy in 2004. He began taking a salary from the non-profit organizations for which he was working; much of that income was lent to his presidential campaign. In 2007, he declared that he had "zero net worth". 2008 presidential campaign Democratic Party primaries At the start of 2006 Gravel decided the best way he could promote direct democracy and the National Initiative was to run for president. On April 17, 2006, Gravel became the first candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election, announcing his run in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Short on campaign cash, he took public transportation to get to his announcement. (Gravel called for public financing of elections.) Other principal Gravel positions were the FairTax, as well as withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days and a single payer national health care system. Gravel had opposed the Iraq War, and President George W. Bush's rationale for it, from the beginning, and in 2006 said that U.S. troops in Iraq, as in Vietnam, had "died in vain". He also favored a regional peace initiative, as well as reparation payments for Iraqis. Gravel also called for a "U.S. corporate withdrawal from Iraq", with reconstruction contracts held by U.S. companies to be turned over to Iraqi firms. Gravel campaigned almost full-time in New Hampshire, the first primary state, following his announcement. Opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination showed Gravel with 1 percent or less support. By the end of March 2007, Gravel's campaign had less than $500 in cash on hand against debts of nearly $90,000. Because of his time in the Senate, Gravel was invited to many of the early Democratic presidential debates. During the initial one at South Carolina State University on April 26, 2007, he suggested a bill requiring the president to withdraw from Iraq on pain of criminal penalties. He also advocated positions such as opposing preemptive nuclear war. He stated that the Iraq War had the effect of creating more terrorists and that the "war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis". Regarding his fellow candidates, he said, "I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me – they frighten me." In one such exchange, Gravel said, "Tell me, Barack, who do you want to nuke?" to which Obama responded, "I'm not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike, I promise." Media stories said that Gravel was responsible for much of whatever "heat" and "flashpoints" had taken place during the Democratic debates. Gravel gained considerable publicity by shaking up the normally staid multiple-candidate format; The New York Times' media critic said that what Gravel had done was "steal a debate with outrageous, curmudgeonly statements". The Internet was a benefit: a YouTube video of his responses in the debate was viewed more than 225,892 times, ranking seventeenth in most views for week and first among news and politics clips; his name became the fifteenth most searched-for in the blogosphere; and his website garnered more traffic than those of frontrunners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards. Gravel appeared on the popular Colbert Report on television on May 2, and his campaign and career were profiled in national publications such as Salon. Two wordless, Warholesque campaign videos, "Rock" and "Fire", were released on YouTube in late May and became hits, and eventually gained over 760,000 and 185,000 views respectively. "Rock", in turn, was given airtime during an episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Some thirty-five years after he first achieved the national spotlight, he had found it again. All this did not improve his performance in the polls; a May 2007 CNN poll showed him with less than 0.5 percent support among Democrats. Gravel was in the next several debates, in one case after CNN reversed a decision to exclude him. Like some of the other second-tier candidates, Gravel did not get as much time as the leaders; during the June 2, 2007, New Hampshire debate, which lasted two hours, he was asked 10 questions and allowed to speak for five minutes and 37 seconds. During the July 23, 2007, CNN-YouTube presidential debate, Gravel responded to audience applause when he had complained of a lack of airtime and said: "Thank you. Has it been fair thus far?" Detractors began to liken him to "the cranky uncle who lives in the attic," or "the angry old guy that just seemed to want to become angrier". Berkeley political scientist David Terr found that moderator George Stephanopoulos directed roughly five percent of his questions to Gravel; in a poll asking who did the best in the debate, Gravel placed seventh among the eight candidates. National opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination continued to show Gravel with one percent or zero percent numbers. By the end of the third-quarter 2007, Gravel had about $17,500 in cash on hand, had collected a total of about $380,000 during the 2008 election cycle, and was continuing to run a threadbare campaign with minimal staff. Beginning with the October 30, 2007, Philadelphia event, Gravel was excluded from most of the debates, with the debate sponsors or the Democratic National Committee saying Gravel's campaign had not met fund-raising, polling, or local campaign organizational thresholds. For the Philadelphia exclusion, Gravel blamed corporate censorship on the part of sponsor owner and alleged military-industrial complex member General Electric for his exclusion and mounted a counter-gathering and debate against a video screen a short distance away, but he had lost his easiest publicity. In reaction, supporters organized "mass donation days" to try to help the campaign gain momentum and funds, such as on December 5, 2007, the anniversary of the Repeal of Prohibition. Gravel did not compete in the initial 2008 vote, the Iowa caucuses, but was still subjected to a false report from MSNBC that he had pulled out of the race afterward. Gravel did focus his attention on the second 2008 vote, the New Hampshire primary. In early January, Mother Jones' investigative reporter James Ridgeway was filmed interviewing and following Gravel in New Hampshire, in which Gravel is interviewed on the phone by Neal Conan for NPR's, Talk of the Nation. He received about 400 votes out of some 280,000 cast in New Hampshire, or 0.14 percent, before taking time off to improve his health. He resumed campaigning, but fared no better in subsequent states. By the end of January 2008, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Gravel were the only remaining Democrats from the initial debates still running; Gravel vowed to stay in the presidential campaign until November. On March 11, 2008, Gravel continued to remain in the Democratic race but additionally endorsed a Green Party candidate for president, Jesse Johnson, saying he wanted to help Johnson prevail against Green Party rivals Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader. By late March, Gravel had almost no fundraising and was only on the ballot in one of the next ten Democratic primaries. Switch to Libertarian Party On March 25, 2008, Gravel announced that he would leave the Democrats and join the Libertarian Party, saying: "My libertarian views, as well as my strong stance against war, the military industrial complex and American imperialism, seem not to be tolerated by Democratic Party elites who are out of touch with the average American; elites that reject the empowerment of American citizens I offered to the Democratic Party at the beginning of this presidential campaign with the National Initiative for Democracy." The following day Gravel entered the race for the 2008 Libertarian presidential nomination, saying that he would have run as a third-party candidate all along except that he needed the public exposure that came from being in the earlier Democratic debates. Gravel's initial notion of running as a fusion candidate with other parties was met with skepticism. As a Libertarian candidate, Gravel faced resistance to his past support of big government initiatives and his unorthodox positions around direct democracy. Nevertheless, he garnered more support than he had as a Democrat, placing second and third in two April 2008 straw polls. In the May 25 balloting at the 2008 Libertarian National Convention in Denver, Gravel finished fourth out of eight candidates on the initial ballot, with 71 votes out of a total 618; he trailed former Congressman and eventual winner Bob Barr, author Mary Ruwart, and businessman Wayne Allyn Root. Gravel's position did not subsequently improve and he was eliminated on the fourth ballot. Afterwards he stated that "I just ended my political career," but he vowed to continue promoting his positions as a writer and lecturer. 2008–early 2019 In June 2008 Gravel endorsed the NYC 9/11 Ballot Initiative, saying the measure would create a "citizens commission rather than a government commission" with subpoena power against top U.S. officials to "make a true investigation as to what happened" regarding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He later said, "Individuals in and out of government may certainly have participated with the obviously known perpetrators of this dastardly act. Suspicions abound over the analysis presented by government. Obviously an act that has triggered three wars, Afghan, Iraqi and the continuing War on Terror, should be extensively investigated which was not done and which the government avoids addressing." In August 2008 Gravel was speaking to a crowd of supporters of Sami Al-Arian (who two years earlier had pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison for a charge of conspiracy in helping Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a "specially designated terrorist" organization) when he was caught on tape saying of Al-Arian's prosecutor, "Find out where he lives, find out where his kids go to school, find out where his office is: picket him all the time. Call him a racist in signs if you see him. Call him an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but in his face all the time." Gravel was criticized for potentially involving the children of the prosecutor, and Al-Arian's family disavowed the sentiments. Gravel defended Alaska Governor Sarah Palin after she was chosen as Republican presidential nominee John McCain's running mate in September 2008. He praised Palin's record in standing up to corruption among Alaskan Republicans, thought her national inexperience was an asset not a detriment, and predicted that the "Troopergate" investigation into whether she improperly fired a state official would "come out in her favor". Gravel made clear he would not support or vote for either McCain–Palin or Obama–Biden in the general election. The following year Gravel said that Palin's politics were "terrible, but that doesn't detract from the fact that she's a very talented person". He predicted that Palin would run for president in 2012 and that "she's going to surprise a lot of people". Palin did not run, but Gravel's prediction about "TrooperGate" was accurate as Palin was found not to have violated ethics laws. In 2013, by the invitation of Hamed Ghashghavi, the secretary for international affairs of the 3rd International Conference on Hollywoodism in Tehran, Iran, Gravel attended that event as an Iranian government-organized anti-Hollywood conference. Gravel noted that the conference was attended by "various elements of extremes" but said it was necessary to discuss how the U.S. film industry portrayed Iran in order to prevent "an insane war" between the two nations. In May 2013 Gravel was one of several former members of Congress to accept $20,000 from the Paradigm Research Group, an advocacy group for UFO disclosure, as part of holding what they termed a Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, modeled after congressional hearings, regarding supposed U.S. government suppression of evidence concerning UFOs. Gravel said, "Something is monitoring the planet, and they are monitoring it very cautiously, because we are a very warlike planet," and, "What we're faced with here is, in areas of the media, and the government too, an effort to marginalize and ridicule people who have specific knowledge." In December 2014 Gravel was announced as the new CEO of KUSH, a company which makes marijuana-infused products for medicinal and recreational use, and a subsidiary of Cannabis Sativa, Inc. He also became an Independent Director of Cannabis Sativa. During the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, Gravel praised Bernie Sanders and his campaign, saying "Bernie is one of the most gifted politicians I have ever observed. He's a person of great integrity and very clever." Gravel predicted that Sanders would be elected president but would be unable to get his key reforms through Congress, and thus that Sanders and his supporters should back some of the proposals of the National Initiative. In 2016, Gravel said in relation to the September 11 attacks: "We killed 58,000 American servicemen in the Vietnam War and all they did was die in vain. What's so unusual about killing 3,000 more in order to develop the grist for the mill to empower into infinity the military industrial complex?" and "There's no question in my mind that 9/11 was an inside job". The remarks were later disavowed by even Gravel supporters. By 2019 Gravel was living in Seaside, California. He was working on a book, at the time titled Human Governance, about his principal idea for direct democracy, a U.S. Constitutional Amendment to create a "Legislature of the People" that would circumvent the existing Congress. The book was self-published at the end of the year by AuthorHouse under the title The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People. 2020 presidential campaign On March 19, 2019, Gravel announced that he was considering running in the 2020 Democratic primaries. He said, "The goal will not be to win, but to bring a critique of American imperialism to the Democratic debate stage." An exploratory committee was formed, with filing a statement of organization with the Federal Election Commission on that same day. The filing was the idea of a group of teenagers, led by David Oks and Henry Williams, inspired by the podcast Chapo Trap House, and done with Gravel's consent (after a week spent convincing him of the idea's merits), but without his involvement. Intrigued by the group's commitment to amplifying his long-held policy goals, Gravel (who would be old on Inauguration Day in 2021) said he planned to meet with them in April, and to discuss a 2020 White House run with his wife. On April 2, 2019, Gravel filed to officially run for office. The campaign called itself the "#Gravelanche". Gravel's initial stated goal was merely to qualify for debates by getting the required 65,000 small donors. He discouraged people from voting for him and said his preferences were Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, both of whom favor a non-interventionist foreign policy. But on April 29, Gravel's campaign said he was running to win, not just to participate in debates. In a subsequent interview, though, Gravel emphasized the virtue of Sanders and Gabbard in some order as a presidential ticket. Statements like these caused Vox to call Gravel "2020's oddest Democratic presidential candidate". The New York Times Magazine included Gravel as an example in the rise of democratic socialism in the United States also exemplified by Sanders's 2016 race and the 2018 election of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "[Gravel's] campaign represents the most absurd form of a legitimate movement on the left that feels little obligation to the Democratic Party." In June 2019, Gravel touted the endorsement of Muntadher al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who, in December 2008, made headlines after he threw his shoes at President George W. Bush in protest of the U.S. war in Iraq. Al-Zaidi endorsed Gravel based on his promise to improve White House policies regarding Iraq and the Middle East. On June 13, 2019, the Democratic Party announced the 20 major candidates who qualified for the first debate later that month. Gravel was one of the four who missed out (the others were Montana Governor Steve Bullock, U.S. Representative Seth Moulton, and Miramar, Florida, Mayor Wayne Messam). Gravel had been unable to get the requisite number of donations, or to score one percent or better in enough polls (many polls did not even include him). Nevertheless, Gravel said he would not drop out and would try to qualify for the July debate. In early July, however, Gravel's campaign said it was still 10,000 contributions short of the 65,000-donor threshold and that it was "nearing its conclusion". It solicited suggestions for where to donate $100–150,000 of leftover campaign funds. Gravel added that he had always planned on ending the campaign before the teenagers in charge of it needed to return to school. A few days later the campaign became the first to run an attack ad against Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, using the text "Is this the best our party has to offer?" Gravel's campaign crossed the threshold of 65,000 donors on July 12, 2019, meeting the qualification mark for that month's debate. But because 20 other candidates, the maximum allowed to participate, had already met at least the polling criterion, which takes priority over the donor criterion, Gravel was not invited. The campaign officially came to a close on August 6, 2019, with Gravel endorsing both Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard for president. Gravel's campaign later stated on Twitter that they never wanted to win but saw the campaign as an "intimately democratic" project and expressed honor at working with Gravel. Gravel said he would divide remaining campaign funds between charity and a new think tank which would espouse his ideas. The Gravel Institute Gravel used some of the funds remaining from his 2020 presidential campaign to found an eponymous progressive think tank called The Gravel Institute in 2019. As noted by Vice magazine, the institute aims to do battle with PragerU from a left-wing perspective. Launched in September 2020, the new entity said it would "carry on the life's work of former U.S Senator Mike Gravel in fighting for global peace and democracy. Its mission is to promote bold and forward-looking ideas about a more peaceful and egalitarian world, and to build a robust movement of young people to win it". Contributors announced include Cornel West and Slavoj Žižek, as well as Lower Brule Indian Reservation activist Nick Estes. Other presenters have included and will include H. Jon Benjamin, Briahna Joy Gray, Bernie Sanders, Chelsea Manning, Richard Wolff, Stephanie Kelton, Zephyr Teachout, David Cross, Jabari Brisport, Zohran Mamdani, and Gravel himself (though it is unknown if his appearance will be cancelled due to his death in June 2021, or if the video has already been recorded). Death Gravel died of multiple myeloma at his home in Seaside, California, on June 26, 2021, at age 91. The obituary for him in The New York Times stated that Gravel was "a two-term Democratic senator from Alaska ... who was perhaps better known as an unabashed attention-getter" who later become known for "mounting long-shot presidential runs". The obituary in The Washington Post was similar, saying that Gravel was "an Alaska Democrat with a flair for the theatrical who rose from obscurity to brief renown" and later "ran quixotic campaigns for the presidency". The Anchorage Daily News quoted Gravel as saying of himself in 1989, "I'm an independent kind of guy. A rough and ready kind of guy. My glands work in a certain way that make me stand up, foolishly sometimes, and fight." Political positions Alan Abramowitz and Jeffrey Allan Segal described Gravel as "a maverick, if not an eccentric, in the Senate." His Americans for Democratic Action "Liberal Quotient" scores ranged from 81 out of 100 (1971) to 39 out of 100 (1980), with an average of around 61. His American Conservative Union scores ranged from 0 out of 100 (several years, including 1971 and 1972) to 38 out of 100 (1979), with an average of 14. Abramowitz and Segal note that Gravel's lowest ADA ratings coincided with his two Senate re-election bids, and for the most part his highest ACU ratings followed the same pattern. In 1972, as a young senator, Gravel published Citizen Power: A People's Platform, a manifesto outlining what Kirkus Reviews termed a "populist reform [that] would provide 'balanced political power' between the people and government and business interests." Civil rights issues On drug policy, Gravel said in 2007 that he favored decriminalization and treating addiction as a public health matter. During his 2008 presidential candidacy he condemned the War on Drugs as a failure, saying that it did "nothing but savage our inner cities and put our children at risk". Gravel called for abolition of capital punishment in his book Citizen Power, and adhered to this position during his 2008 run for president. He supported abortion rights. During the 2008 campaign Gravel was a strong supporter of LGBT rights. He supported same-sex marriage and opposed the Defense of Marriage Act and the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. He wrote in 2008 that "depriving gays and lesbians of equal rights is immoral". Foreign policy and defense issues Gravel was a critic of American imperialism. Gravel firmly opposed U.S. military action against Iran and Syria. He voiced opposition to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the use of torture, indefinite detention, and what he called "flagrant ignorance" of the Geneva Convention. In 2014 Gravel called for the release of the full, unredacted Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture. Gravel opposed the use of international sanctions as a policy tool and blamed the ones against Iraq under Saddam Hussein for the deaths of a half-million children in that country. In 2013 Gravel said that sanctions against Iran were "illegal". During his 2008 candidacy, Gravel called for a cut in military spending, variously reported to be 15 percent or 50 percent. He called for the savings to boost public education spending. To spur international nuclear nonproliferation efforts, Gravel called for unilateral reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. In 2008 Gravel criticized the decision of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to not pursue the efforts to impeach George W. Bush and the attempted impeachment of Dick Cheney, saying also that Bush and Cheney had committed crimes and deserved "to be prosecuted" at The Hague. In 2013 he expressed disdain for President Obama, calling him "a total fraud" and saying that both Bush and Obama should be tried "for the crimes and murders they've committed" in the International Court of Justice. Gravel specifically condemned Obama for the drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere. Economy, immigration, and environment During his 2008 candidacy Gravel favored a FairTax scheme, which would abolish the Internal Revenue Service, eliminate the federal income tax (which Gravel called "corrupt"), and impose a national sales tax. While Gravel described FairTax as "progressive", others have criticized it as "regressive", disproportionately benefiting the wealthiest Americans. To offset the new sales taxes on essential goods, Gravel's plan called for monthly government rebate payments to individuals and families. During his 2020 campaign Gravel also voiced support for a third legislative body that would give the people direct control of the budget as well as the implementation of a land value tax. Gravel opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during his 2008 candidacy, calling it unfair and economically harmful and needing renegotiation. Gravel believed that NAFTA was the "root cause" of illegal migration to the U.S. He favored a guest worker program and "setting up naturalization procedures that would fairly bring immigrants into legal status". In a 2007 interview, Gravel identified himself as "very much of a globalist" who believed in open markets and open borders and condemned the scapegoating of undocumented immigrants. Gravel also said that he favored eliminating the cap on H1B visas. As a senator from Alaska, Gravel favored drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but opposed it during his 2008 campaign. In 2008, Gravel supported a carbon tax to combat climate change. Gravel spoke in favor of net neutrality during his presidential campaign. Education and health care Gravel called for the cost of college tuition to be borne by the federal government, rather than students. In his 2008 campaign, he called the No Child Left Behind Act "a failure" and called for it to be "reformed and fully funded". He expressed support for universal pre-kindergarten and the expansion of the Head Start program; and expressed an openness to charter schools and school vouchers. He also suggested extending the school day and the school year, and supported merit pay for teachers. Gravel also called for publicly funded universal health care to replace the current employer-sponsored health insurance system. He supported "full funding" of the VA system. When asked in 2007 about naturopathy, homeopathy, and acupuncture, Gravel said that he was "very very much in favor" of holistic health care. Awards and honors In 2008 Gravel received the Columbia University School of General Studies' first annual Isaac Asimov Lifetime Achievement Award. Electoral history Writings Gravel, Mike. Jobs and More Jobs. Mt. McKinley Publishers, 1968. Gravel, Mike. Citizen Power: A People's Platform. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972. . revised and reissued as Citizen Power: A Mandate for Change, AuthorHouse, 2008. . Gravel, Mike and Lauria, Joe. A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and One Man's Fight to Stop It. Seven Stories Press, 2008. . Gravel, Mike and Eisenbach, David. The Kingmakers: How the Media Threatens Our Security and Our Democracy. Phoenix Books, 2008. . Gravel, Mike. Voice of a Maverick: The Speeches and Writings of Senator Mike Gravel. Brandywine House, 2008. Gravel, Mike. Foreword to Poisoned Power: The Case Against Nuclear Power Plants. John W. Goffman & Arthur R. Tamplin, Rodale Press, Inc., Emmaus, PA, June 1971. Gravel, Mike. The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People. AuthorHouse, 2020. Explanatory notes References Citations General references The Pentagon Papers Senator Gravel Edition. Vol. Five: Critical Essays. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972. 341p. plus 72p. of Index to Vol. I–IV of the Papers; Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, editors. External links Mike Gravel official website The Gravel Institute |- |- 1930 births 2021 deaths 1972 United States vice-presidential candidates 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American politicians 20th-century Roman Catholics 20th-century Unitarians 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American politicians 21st-century Unitarians 9/11 conspiracy theorists Alaska Democrats American International College alumni American Unitarian Universalists American anti–Iraq War activists American conspiracy theorists American democracy activists American male non-fiction writers American people of French-Canadian descent American political writers American real estate businesspeople American stockbrokers Anti-corporate activists Assumption University (Worcester) alumni Burials at Arlington National Cemetery Businesspeople from Anchorage, Alaska Businesspeople from Springfield, Massachusetts California Democrats Candidates in the 2008 United States presidential election Candidates in the 2020 United States presidential election Columbia University School of General Studies alumni Deaths from cancer in California Deaths from multiple myeloma Democratic Party United States senators Direct democracy activists Drug policy reform activists Former Roman Catholics Virginia Libertarians Members of the Alaska House of Representatives Military personnel from Massachusetts Non-interventionism People from Arlington County, Virginia People from Kenai Peninsula Borough, Alaska People with dyslexia Politicians from Anchorage, Alaska Politicians from Springfield, Massachusetts Speakers of the Alaska House of Representatives United States Army officers United States senators from Alaska Writers about direct democracy Writers from Anchorage, Alaska

C_57ef3079d2cb4481bdcc3f5beea88674_1

Who were the other members of the Belmonts?

Besides Dion DiMucci, Who were the other members of the Belmonts?

Dion DiMucci

Bob and Gene Schwartz also signed Dion's friends, the Belmonts, (Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo D'Aleo), a vocal group named for nearby Belmont Avenue, and teamed them, with Dion singing lead. The new group's breakthrough came in early 1958, when "I Wonder Why" (on their newly formed "Laurie" label) made No. 22 on the U.S. charts. Dion said of the Belmonts; "I'd give 'em sounds. I'd give 'em parts and stuff. That's what 'I Wonder Why' was about. We kind of invented this percussive rhythmic sound. If you listen to that song, everybody was doing something different. There's four guys, one guy was doing bass, I was singing lead, one guy's going 'ooh wah ooh,' and another guy's doing tenor. It was totally amazing. When I listen to it today, oftentimes I think, 'man, those kids are talented.'" Their initial hit was followed by "No One Knows" and "Don't Pity Me," which also charted the Billboard Top 100. This success won a place for Dion and the Belmonts on the ill-fated "The Winter Dance Party" tour with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson), Frankie Sardo, and other performers. On February 3, 1959, after a concert stop in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly and others decided to charter a flight to the next venue rather than travel on the tour bus. Dion was invited to accompany the group but decided that he did not want to spend $36 for the flight, as it was the same monthly rent his parents paid for his childhood apartment and he couldn't justify the indulgence. The plane crashed, killing all on board; Holly, Valens, Richardson, and the pilot Roger Peterson. Dion and the Belmonts continued on the tour, along with Frankie Sardo, while Bobby Vee, then an unknown artist, performed in Holly's place at the very next concert. Later, Jimmy Clanton, Frankie Avalon, and Fabian were added to replace the other now-deceased headliners. Dion and the Belmonts' next single, "A Teenager in Love," was released in March 1959, eventually hitting No. 5 on the U.S. pop charts and No. 28 in the UK. The group's biggest hit, "Where or When," was released in November of that year, and reached No. 3 on the U.S. charts. However, in early 1960, Dion checked into hospital for heroin addiction, a problem he had had since his mid-teens. Further single releases for the group that year were less successful. There were musical, personal and financial differences between Dion and members of the Belmonts, and in October 1960, Dion decided to quit for a solo career. By the time of their breakup, all eight Laurie releases had charted on the Hot 100. CANNOTANSWER

Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo D'Aleo

Dion Francis DiMucci (born July 18, 1939), better known simply as Dion, is an American singer and songwriter whose music has incorporated elements of doo-wop, rock, R&B and blues. Initially as lead singer of Dion and the Belmonts, and then in his solo career, he was one of the most popular American rock and roll performers of the pre-British Invasion era. He had 39 Top 40 hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a solo performer, with the Belmonts or with the Del-Satins. He is best remembered for the singles "Runaround Sue", "The Wanderer", "Ruby Baby" and "Lovers Who Wander", among other hits. Dion's popularity waned in the mid-1960s. Toward the end of the decade, he shifted his style and produced songs that were more mature and contemplative, such as "Abraham, Martin and John". He remained popular in the late 1960s until the mid-1970s, and continues making music. During the 1980s, Dion produced several Christian albums, winning a GMA Dove Award in 1984 for the album I Put Away My Idols. He returned to secular music in the late 1980s with Yo Frankie (1989). Between the mid-2000s and 2021, Dion released six chart-topping blues albums. Critics who had dismissed his early work, labeling him as a teen idol, praised his later work and noted the influence he has had on other musicians. A Grammy-nominated artist, Dion has released nearly 40 albums and scored eight Top 10 hits (ten including the Belmonts) on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. Early life Dion was born to an Italian-American family in the Bronx, New York. As a child, he accompanied his father, Pasquale DiMucci, a vaudeville entertainer, on tour, and developed a love of country music – particularly the work of Hank Williams. He also developed a fondness for the blues and doo-wop musicians he heard performing in local bars and on the radio. His singing was honed on the street corners and local clubs of the Bronx, where he and other neighborhood singers created a cappella riffs. In early 1957, he auditioned for Bob and Gene Schwartz for their short-lived Mohawk Records label. They asked Dion to sing a song which had been arranged by Hugo Montenegro and recorded featuring Vic Damone doing vocals. At first Dion refused, stating the song would sound like something his old fashioned parents would listen to, but the Schwartzes convinced him to give it a try. The backing vocals were by a group called "the Timberlanes", whom Dion had never met. The resulting single, "The Chosen Few", was released under the name "Dion and the Timberlanes", and became a minor regional hit. Dion himself stated in 2019 during an interview at "Crashing the Party" (a radio program related to Norton Records in Brooklyn, New York) that "The Chosen Few" hit the Top Ten locally in Boston and enabled him to perform this song on American Bandstand where the kids at the show started screaming during his performance, which gave him his first impression of being a record star. Writing about this experience later, in his autobiography, The Wanderer, Dion said that he had never met the Timberlanes and did not even know who they were. "The vocal group was so white bread, I went back to my neighborhood and I recruited a bunch of guys – three guys – and we called ourselves Dion and the Belmonts." Career Beginnings with the Belmonts: 1957–1960 Bob and Gene Schwartz signed Dion's friends, the Belmonts (Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo D'Aleo), a vocal group named for the Belmont, Bronx neighborhood, and teamed them up with Dion singing lead. The new group's breakthrough came in early 1958, when "I Wonder Why" (on their newly formed Laurie Records) made No. 22 on the U.S. charts. Dion said of the Belmonts; "I'd give 'em sounds. I'd give 'em parts and stuff. That's what 'I Wonder Why' was about. We kind of invented this percussive rhythmic sound. If you listen to that song, everybody was doing something different. There's four guys, one guy was doing bass, I was singing lead, one guy's going 'ooh wah ooh,' and another guy's doing tenor. It was totally amazing. When I listen to it today, oftentimes I think, 'man, those kids are talented.'" Their initial hit was followed by "No One Knows" and "Don't Pity Me", which also charted the Billboard Top 100. This success won a place for Dion and the Belmonts on the ill-fated "The Winter Dance Party" tour with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson), Frankie Sardo, and other performers. On February 3, 1959, after a concert stop in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly and others decided to charter a flight to the next venue rather than travel on the tour bus. Dion was invited to accompany the group but decided that he did not want to spend $36 for the flight, as it was the same monthly rent his parents paid for his childhood apartment and he could not justify the indulgence. The plane crashed, killing all on board: Holly, Valens, Richardson, and the pilot Roger Peterson. Dion and the Belmonts continued on the tour, along with Frankie Sardo, while Bobby Vee, then an unknown artist, performed in Holly's place at the very next concert. Later, Jimmy Clanton, Frankie Avalon, and Fabian were added to replace the other now-deceased headliners. Dion and the Belmonts' next single, "A Teenager in Love", was released in March 1959, eventually hitting No. 5 on the U.S. pop charts and No. 28 in the UK. The group's biggest hit, "Where or When", was released in November of that year, and reached No. 3 on the U.S. charts. However, in early 1960, Dion checked into hospital for heroin addiction, a problem he had had since his mid-teens. Further single releases for the group that year were less successful. There were musical, personal and financial differences between Dion and members of the Belmonts, and in October 1960, Dion decided to quit for a solo career. By the time of their breakup, all eight Laurie releases had charted on the Hot 100. Solo stardom and touring worldwide: 1960–1964 By the end of 1960, Dion produced his first solo album on Laurie Records, Alone with Dion, released in 1961. The single "Lonely Teenager" rose to No. 12 in the US charts. The name on his solo releases was simply "Dion". Follow-ups "Havin' Fun" and "Kissin' Game" had less success, and the signs were that Dion would drift onto the cabaret circuit. However, he then recorded an up-tempo number co-written with Ernie Maresca with a new vocal group, the Del-Satins. The record, "Runaround Sue", stormed up the U.S. charts, reaching No. 1 in October 1961, and No. 11 in the UK, where he also toured. "Runaround Sue" sold over a million copies, achieving gold disc status. For the next single, Laurie promoted the A-side, "The Majestic", but it was the B-side, Maresca's "The Wanderer", which received more radio play and climbed swiftly up the charts to reach No. 2 in the U.S. in February 1962 and No. 10 in the UK. The 1976 re-release made the UK Top 20. By the end of 1961, Dion had become a major star, touring worldwide and making an appearance in the Columbia Pictures musical film Twist Around the Clock. In 1962, he followed with a string of singles he wrote or co-wrote including "Lovers Who Wander" (No. 3), "Little Diane" (No. 8), "Love Came to Me" (No. 10). He also had successful albums with Runaround Sue and Lovers Who Wander. At the end of 1962, Dion moved from Laurie to Columbia Records. He was the first rock and roll artist signed to the label, which was an anomaly considering that its then-A&R director, Mitch Miller, loathed that particular genre of music. The first Columbia single, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller's "Ruby Baby" (originally a hit for the Drifters) reached No. 2, while "Donna the Prima Donna" and "Drip Drop" (another remake of a Drifters hit) both reached No. 6 in late 1963. (Dion also recorded an Italian version of "Donna the Prima Donna" using the identical backup vocals.) His other Columbia releases were less successful, and problems with his drug addiction and changing public tastes, especially the British Invasion, saw a period of commercial decline. Belmonts reunion and renewed contract: 1965–1968 Following a European tour, Dion returned to the U.S. and was introduced to classic blues by Columbia's John Hammond. To the consternation of his management, he began recording more blues-oriented material, including Willie Dixon's "Hoochie Coochie Man" and "Spoonful", but these releases – some produced by Tom Wilson, with Al Kooper on keyboards – were not commercially successful. In 1965, still with Columbia, Dion formed a new group to back him, The Wanderers, composed of John Falbo on guitar, Pete Baron (Pete Falciglia) on bass, and Carlo Mastrangelo of the Belmonts on drums. They made national appearances on Dick Clark's, Where The Action Is, and The Lloyd Thaxton Show. A number of self-penned tracks were recorded and released unsuccessfully as singles, and did not appear in album format until years later. In June 1965 he recorded fellow Columbia Records's contemporary Bob Dylan's composition "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" a half-year before Them (featuring Van Morrison)'s hit version. In 1966–67, Dion briefly reunited with the Belmonts, recording the LP Together Again for ABC Records. The album was unsuccessful, despite one classic self-penned song, "My Girl the Month of May". Two singles were released from the LP. While neither charted in the United States, they fared better in the UK. "My Girl The Month of May" entered the Radio London "Fab 40" at No. 9 the week of December 25, 1966. A 'turntable' hit at London underground clubs like Middle Earth, the disc received a lot of play from pirate radio DJ's John Peel and Kenny Everett. The follow up, "Movin' Man", reached No. 17 on the "Radio London" charts on Easter Sunday, March 26, 1967. "My Girl The Month of May" was later covered by English artists Alan Bown in 1967, and Island Records artists The Bunch (featuring Sandy Denny and other members of Fairport Convention) in April 1972. During their brief mid-60's reunion, Dion and the Belmonts appeared on the popular Clay Cole Show performing "Berimbau" and "My Girl The Month of May", and occasionally performed at local New York City clubs such as "The Mardi Gras" on Staten Island (April 29, 1967) before disbanding. While Dion's career appeared to be nearing an end, he still retained enough credibility to be, along with Bob Dylan, one of only two rock artists featured on the album cover of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. In April 1968, Dion experienced what he identified as a powerful religious transformation. After getting clean once again from heroin addiction, an experience he documented in his 1970 song "Your Own Backyard", he approached Laurie Records for a new contract. They agreed on the condition that he record the song "Abraham, Martin & John", written by Dick Holler (also the writer of the Royal Guardsmen's "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron") in response to the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, and those of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy during the spring of 1968. The success of this song (released by Dion in August 1968 and later recorded by many others including Marvin Gaye) which reached No. 4 in the US charts and No. 1 in Canada, resuscitated Dion's career. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc. Mature and Christian music period: 1969–1986 For the next few years, Dion's music became radically different, moving to more contemplative and mature material. He released several albums essentially as a singer-songwriter, to moderate sales, moving to the Warner Brothers label in 1969. There followed a live reunion show with the Belmonts at Madison Square Garden on June 2, 1972, which was recorded and released as a live album by Warner. A year later, in 1973, Dion and the original Belmonts performed once more, doing a sold-out concert at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, New York. However, no recording of the 1973 reunion was released. This was followed in 1975 by the album Born to Be with You produced by Phil Spector. The album was a commercial failure, but has been subsequently praised by such artists as Jason Pierce of Spiritualized and Pete Townshend of The Who with the track "Only You Know" being sampled by Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker for his single "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time" from his 2006 solo album Jarvis. In 1978, Dion released an album drawing on many of his teenage influences, Return of the Wanderer, another commercial failure. In December 1979, there was a radical spiritual change in Dion, who had become a born again Christian. Thereafter, his recordings for several years were in a contemporary Christian vein, in which he released five albums on the DaySpring Records label, a division of Word Records in Waco, Texas. These albums reflecting his evangelical Christian convictions were Inside Job (1980), Only Jesus (1981), I Put Away My Idols (1983) which charted at No. 37, Seasons (1984), Kingdom in the Streets (1985) and Velvet & Steel (1986). Several singles were successfully released to Christian radio, notably "Still in the Spirit" from Kingdom in the Streets. In 1984, Dion won the GMA Dove Award (Christian Music Award) for the album I Put Away My Idols. He was also nominated for Grammy Award for Best Gospel Vocal Performance, Male for the same album. On September 24, 1985, Dion was a guest on 100 Huntley Street. Return to secular music and RRHOF induction: 1987–1999 In 1987, Dion agreed to do a concert of his old hits at Radio City Music Hall in New York. The two disc CD of this concert was released in 2005, featuring concert photos by Dion's friend, Michael J. Friedman. This concert helped free him to celebrate both his past and his future, and led to a series of special appearances, including a fundraiser for homeless medical relief. There he shared the stage with fans such as Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon and Lou Reed, all of whom cited Dion as one of their prime influences. Dion's autobiography, The Wanderer: Dion's Story, co-authored by Davin Seay, was published in the late-1980s. In 1989, DiMucci returned to rock music with the contemporary album Yo Frankie, which included appearances by Paul Simon, Lou Reed, k.d. lang, Patty Smyth and Bryan Adams. Produced by Dave Edmunds (who also played guitar on the album), "Yo Frankie has a sharp sound while never losing sight of Dion's soulful, doo-wop voice." Overall, "the relevant and nostalgic statement from an artist who helped forge rock & roll's first wave" found his way back on radio and in music videos during this period (both on VH1 and MTV), as well as touring. Dion was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF) in 1989 (with an introduction by Lou Reed). Controversially, when Dion's solo induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame occurred, the other original members of the Belmonts (Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo D'Aleo) were not inducted. A January 3, 2012 Billboard magazine article stated: "There was strife between DiMucci and Belmonts members, who were not pleased when DiMucci was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame without them in 1989." DiMucci joined Scott Kempner and Frank Funaro of the Del-Lords and Mike Mesaros of the Smithereens in a short-lived band called Little Kings. A live album was later released, but not widely circulated or promoted. Grammy Hall of Fame and blues success: 2000–2019 Dion has released several albums with contemporary rock artists. His Déjà Nu album in 2000 found him covering Bruce Springsteen, a major follower over the years. He joined Springsteen onstage in Miami in 2002 for a performance of "If I Should Fall Behind" from Dream on Fire. In 2002, Dion was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for "Runaround Sue". He continues to perform songs from his albums live, including a concert in 2004 being recorded for release on DVD. In January 2006, Dion released Bronx in Blue, an album of blues and country standards, which was nominated for a Grammy Award. It peaked at No. 2 on the Top Blues Albums chart. In November 2007, Dion issued a follow-up album titled Son of Skip James, which peaked at No. 4 on the Top Blues Albums chart. In October 2008, DiMucci released Heroes: Giants of Early Guitar Rock, an album of his covers of early rock and roll songs he considers seminal to the genre. The album includes versions of songs originally recorded by Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Ricky Nelson, Johnny Cash, and many other early rock guitarists. In October 2009, Dion performed "The Wanderer" with Paul Simon at the 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert. An audiobook and paperback by Dion and Mike Aquilina, titled Dion: The Wanderer Talks Truth (Stories, Humor Music), was published in April 2011. DiMucci shares stories about The Bronx in the 1950s, how he ended up on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and his travels with Sam Cooke in the Jim Crow South. Dion released Tank Full of Blues on January 24, 2012. It peaked at No. 3 on the Top Blues Albums chart. While touring on April 5, 2015, Dion performed "Donna the Prima Donna" live in Las Vegas. On July 11, 2015, he held a concert in Westbury, New York. In 2015, Dion released the single "New York Is My Home" with Paul Simon. Dion had previously worked with Simon on his 1989 hit "Written on the Subway Wall". The single was followed by the album New York Is My Home, released February 12, 2016. The album peaked at No. 3 on the Top Blues Album chart. Dion planned four concerts in the U.S. during early 2016 and was invited as a keynote speaker for the 2016 SXSW in Texas. He spoke on the topic A Conversation with Dion: Rock's Enduring Voice on March 17, 2016. Dion appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on April 8, 2016. In May 2017, Dion released Kickin' Child: The Lost Album 1965 from Norton Records, containing songs recorded in 1965 when he was with Columbia Records but were not previously released. Also in May 2017, Richard Barone's Sorrows & Promises: Greenwich Village in the 1960s was released, which included Dion performing a duet of his 1964 song "The Road I'm On (Gloria)" with Barone. The album is a celebration of the New York City scene that Dion was part of during that pivotal era. Recent albums with KTBA Records: 2020–present In June 2020, Dion released Blues with Friends via Keeping the Blues Alive Records (KTBA), a new record label created by Joe Bonamassa and Roy Weisman for Dion and other blues musicians to showcase their talents. The album features Van Morrison, Jeff Beck, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, and others (including liner notes by Bob Dylan). A digital album (and a double vinyl record set), Dion released a music video for every song from the album on his website and social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. The album reached No. 1 on the Billboard Blues Albums chart (9 weeks at No. 1 and 59 weeks total). It also charted in United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Australia. American Songwriter magazine honored Dion's "Song for Sam Cooke (Here in America)" as the "Greatest of the Great 2020 Songs". Dion also released two Christmas songs in 2020: "Hello Christmas" (featuring Amy Grant) and "You Know It's Christmas" (featuring Bonamassa). Both songs were co-written with Mike Aquilina. Music videos were produced for both songs. Dion's song "Blues Comin' On" (with Bonamassa) from Blues with Friends was nominated for a 2021 Blues Music Award. In November 2021, Dion released Stomping Ground (with music videos), which includes extensive liner notes written by Pete Townshend. Except for a cover of "Red House", the songs were written by Dion and Aquilina. Multiple guest artists participate on the album. The album became Dion's second No. 1 blues album. The Wanderer musical On October 13, 2011, an industry-only reading of a new play about Dion's life was performed in New York City. In a December 9, 2011 article from The New York Times, Dion and his collaborator (writer/director Charles Messina) discussed details about the project – titled The Wanderer: The Life and Music of Dion – which will focus on the years between 1957 until the late-1960s, and will feature more than 20 songs from that era as well as new/original music. In the article, Dion gave his perspective on the story: "You know, I always saw my story as a young Sopranos with great music and a Rocky Graziano Somebody Up There Likes Me ending. It's a story of redemption. A rock and roll redemption story!" DiMucci revealed that Michael Wartella would be starring in The Wanderer on December 16, 2017. There was a reading of the musical on November 2, 2017 while working on it continued. On December 4, 2019, it was announced that former New Kids on the Block member Joey McIntyre would star as Johnny, Michael Wartella as Dion, and Christy Altomare as wife, Susan. The first performance was scheduled to start on May 28, 2020, at the Paper Mill Playhouse. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the opening performance was rescheduled to March 24, 2022. Personal life Dion lives in Boca Raton, Florida and New York City. In the late 1990s, Dion visited his old Bronx parish, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and returned to Catholicism. Sparking Dion's reversion to Catholicism was "a chance viewing of The Journey Home program on EWTN." As a practicing Roman Catholic and having struggled with a heroin addiction during his youth, Dion has been involved in prison religion, reaching out to men going through drug recovery. DiMucci was a member of the American board of directors for Renewal Ministries in 2004. Dion appeared on The Journey Home and discussed his wanderings from Catholicism to Protestantism and back again on May 1, 2006. Selective discography With the Belmonts Presenting Dion and the Belmonts (1959) Wish Upon a Star with Dion and the Belmonts (1960) Together Again (1966) Live at Madison Square Garden 1972 (1973) Solo albums Alone with Dion (1961) Runaround Sue (1961) Donna the Prima Donna (1963) Dion (1968) Suite for Late Summer (1972) Born to Be with You (1975) Streetheart (1976) I Put Away My Idols (1983) Yo Frankie (1989) Son of Skip James (2007) Blues with Friends (2020) Stomping Ground (2021) References External links Comprehensive Rolling Stone profile The Spiritual Journey of the Wanderer Who Came Home By Dion Dimucci Dion the Wanderer, Back In Blue (an article at NPR.com) 1939 births Living people American male singers American people of Italian descent American male pop singers American folk singers American rock singers Musicians from the Bronx American performers of Christian music Laurie Records artists Columbia Records artists Singers from New York City Dion and the Belmonts members Doo-wop musicians Catholics from New York (state)

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Did they know each other from school?

Did The Belmonts know each other from school?

Dion DiMucci

Bob and Gene Schwartz also signed Dion's friends, the Belmonts, (Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo D'Aleo), a vocal group named for nearby Belmont Avenue, and teamed them, with Dion singing lead. The new group's breakthrough came in early 1958, when "I Wonder Why" (on their newly formed "Laurie" label) made No. 22 on the U.S. charts. Dion said of the Belmonts; "I'd give 'em sounds. I'd give 'em parts and stuff. That's what 'I Wonder Why' was about. We kind of invented this percussive rhythmic sound. If you listen to that song, everybody was doing something different. There's four guys, one guy was doing bass, I was singing lead, one guy's going 'ooh wah ooh,' and another guy's doing tenor. It was totally amazing. When I listen to it today, oftentimes I think, 'man, those kids are talented.'" Their initial hit was followed by "No One Knows" and "Don't Pity Me," which also charted the Billboard Top 100. This success won a place for Dion and the Belmonts on the ill-fated "The Winter Dance Party" tour with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson), Frankie Sardo, and other performers. On February 3, 1959, after a concert stop in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly and others decided to charter a flight to the next venue rather than travel on the tour bus. Dion was invited to accompany the group but decided that he did not want to spend $36 for the flight, as it was the same monthly rent his parents paid for his childhood apartment and he couldn't justify the indulgence. The plane crashed, killing all on board; Holly, Valens, Richardson, and the pilot Roger Peterson. Dion and the Belmonts continued on the tour, along with Frankie Sardo, while Bobby Vee, then an unknown artist, performed in Holly's place at the very next concert. Later, Jimmy Clanton, Frankie Avalon, and Fabian were added to replace the other now-deceased headliners. Dion and the Belmonts' next single, "A Teenager in Love," was released in March 1959, eventually hitting No. 5 on the U.S. pop charts and No. 28 in the UK. The group's biggest hit, "Where or When," was released in November of that year, and reached No. 3 on the U.S. charts. However, in early 1960, Dion checked into hospital for heroin addiction, a problem he had had since his mid-teens. Further single releases for the group that year were less successful. There were musical, personal and financial differences between Dion and members of the Belmonts, and in October 1960, Dion decided to quit for a solo career. By the time of their breakup, all eight Laurie releases had charted on the Hot 100. CANNOTANSWER

CANNOTANSWER

Dion Francis DiMucci (born July 18, 1939), better known simply as Dion, is an American singer and songwriter whose music has incorporated elements of doo-wop, rock, R&B and blues. Initially as lead singer of Dion and the Belmonts, and then in his solo career, he was one of the most popular American rock and roll performers of the pre-British Invasion era. He had 39 Top 40 hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a solo performer, with the Belmonts or with the Del-Satins. He is best remembered for the singles "Runaround Sue", "The Wanderer", "Ruby Baby" and "Lovers Who Wander", among other hits. Dion's popularity waned in the mid-1960s. Toward the end of the decade, he shifted his style and produced songs that were more mature and contemplative, such as "Abraham, Martin and John". He remained popular in the late 1960s until the mid-1970s, and continues making music. During the 1980s, Dion produced several Christian albums, winning a GMA Dove Award in 1984 for the album I Put Away My Idols. He returned to secular music in the late 1980s with Yo Frankie (1989). Between the mid-2000s and 2021, Dion released six chart-topping blues albums. Critics who had dismissed his early work, labeling him as a teen idol, praised his later work and noted the influence he has had on other musicians. A Grammy-nominated artist, Dion has released nearly 40 albums and scored eight Top 10 hits (ten including the Belmonts) on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. Early life Dion was born to an Italian-American family in the Bronx, New York. As a child, he accompanied his father, Pasquale DiMucci, a vaudeville entertainer, on tour, and developed a love of country music – particularly the work of Hank Williams. He also developed a fondness for the blues and doo-wop musicians he heard performing in local bars and on the radio. His singing was honed on the street corners and local clubs of the Bronx, where he and other neighborhood singers created a cappella riffs. In early 1957, he auditioned for Bob and Gene Schwartz for their short-lived Mohawk Records label. They asked Dion to sing a song which had been arranged by Hugo Montenegro and recorded featuring Vic Damone doing vocals. At first Dion refused, stating the song would sound like something his old fashioned parents would listen to, but the Schwartzes convinced him to give it a try. The backing vocals were by a group called "the Timberlanes", whom Dion had never met. The resulting single, "The Chosen Few", was released under the name "Dion and the Timberlanes", and became a minor regional hit. Dion himself stated in 2019 during an interview at "Crashing the Party" (a radio program related to Norton Records in Brooklyn, New York) that "The Chosen Few" hit the Top Ten locally in Boston and enabled him to perform this song on American Bandstand where the kids at the show started screaming during his performance, which gave him his first impression of being a record star. Writing about this experience later, in his autobiography, The Wanderer, Dion said that he had never met the Timberlanes and did not even know who they were. "The vocal group was so white bread, I went back to my neighborhood and I recruited a bunch of guys – three guys – and we called ourselves Dion and the Belmonts." Career Beginnings with the Belmonts: 1957–1960 Bob and Gene Schwartz signed Dion's friends, the Belmonts (Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo D'Aleo), a vocal group named for the Belmont, Bronx neighborhood, and teamed them up with Dion singing lead. The new group's breakthrough came in early 1958, when "I Wonder Why" (on their newly formed Laurie Records) made No. 22 on the U.S. charts. Dion said of the Belmonts; "I'd give 'em sounds. I'd give 'em parts and stuff. That's what 'I Wonder Why' was about. We kind of invented this percussive rhythmic sound. If you listen to that song, everybody was doing something different. There's four guys, one guy was doing bass, I was singing lead, one guy's going 'ooh wah ooh,' and another guy's doing tenor. It was totally amazing. When I listen to it today, oftentimes I think, 'man, those kids are talented.'" Their initial hit was followed by "No One Knows" and "Don't Pity Me", which also charted the Billboard Top 100. This success won a place for Dion and the Belmonts on the ill-fated "The Winter Dance Party" tour with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson), Frankie Sardo, and other performers. On February 3, 1959, after a concert stop in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly and others decided to charter a flight to the next venue rather than travel on the tour bus. Dion was invited to accompany the group but decided that he did not want to spend $36 for the flight, as it was the same monthly rent his parents paid for his childhood apartment and he could not justify the indulgence. The plane crashed, killing all on board: Holly, Valens, Richardson, and the pilot Roger Peterson. Dion and the Belmonts continued on the tour, along with Frankie Sardo, while Bobby Vee, then an unknown artist, performed in Holly's place at the very next concert. Later, Jimmy Clanton, Frankie Avalon, and Fabian were added to replace the other now-deceased headliners. Dion and the Belmonts' next single, "A Teenager in Love", was released in March 1959, eventually hitting No. 5 on the U.S. pop charts and No. 28 in the UK. The group's biggest hit, "Where or When", was released in November of that year, and reached No. 3 on the U.S. charts. However, in early 1960, Dion checked into hospital for heroin addiction, a problem he had had since his mid-teens. Further single releases for the group that year were less successful. There were musical, personal and financial differences between Dion and members of the Belmonts, and in October 1960, Dion decided to quit for a solo career. By the time of their breakup, all eight Laurie releases had charted on the Hot 100. Solo stardom and touring worldwide: 1960–1964 By the end of 1960, Dion produced his first solo album on Laurie Records, Alone with Dion, released in 1961. The single "Lonely Teenager" rose to No. 12 in the US charts. The name on his solo releases was simply "Dion". Follow-ups "Havin' Fun" and "Kissin' Game" had less success, and the signs were that Dion would drift onto the cabaret circuit. However, he then recorded an up-tempo number co-written with Ernie Maresca with a new vocal group, the Del-Satins. The record, "Runaround Sue", stormed up the U.S. charts, reaching No. 1 in October 1961, and No. 11 in the UK, where he also toured. "Runaround Sue" sold over a million copies, achieving gold disc status. For the next single, Laurie promoted the A-side, "The Majestic", but it was the B-side, Maresca's "The Wanderer", which received more radio play and climbed swiftly up the charts to reach No. 2 in the U.S. in February 1962 and No. 10 in the UK. The 1976 re-release made the UK Top 20. By the end of 1961, Dion had become a major star, touring worldwide and making an appearance in the Columbia Pictures musical film Twist Around the Clock. In 1962, he followed with a string of singles he wrote or co-wrote including "Lovers Who Wander" (No. 3), "Little Diane" (No. 8), "Love Came to Me" (No. 10). He also had successful albums with Runaround Sue and Lovers Who Wander. At the end of 1962, Dion moved from Laurie to Columbia Records. He was the first rock and roll artist signed to the label, which was an anomaly considering that its then-A&R director, Mitch Miller, loathed that particular genre of music. The first Columbia single, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller's "Ruby Baby" (originally a hit for the Drifters) reached No. 2, while "Donna the Prima Donna" and "Drip Drop" (another remake of a Drifters hit) both reached No. 6 in late 1963. (Dion also recorded an Italian version of "Donna the Prima Donna" using the identical backup vocals.) His other Columbia releases were less successful, and problems with his drug addiction and changing public tastes, especially the British Invasion, saw a period of commercial decline. Belmonts reunion and renewed contract: 1965–1968 Following a European tour, Dion returned to the U.S. and was introduced to classic blues by Columbia's John Hammond. To the consternation of his management, he began recording more blues-oriented material, including Willie Dixon's "Hoochie Coochie Man" and "Spoonful", but these releases – some produced by Tom Wilson, with Al Kooper on keyboards – were not commercially successful. In 1965, still with Columbia, Dion formed a new group to back him, The Wanderers, composed of John Falbo on guitar, Pete Baron (Pete Falciglia) on bass, and Carlo Mastrangelo of the Belmonts on drums. They made national appearances on Dick Clark's, Where The Action Is, and The Lloyd Thaxton Show. A number of self-penned tracks were recorded and released unsuccessfully as singles, and did not appear in album format until years later. In June 1965 he recorded fellow Columbia Records's contemporary Bob Dylan's composition "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" a half-year before Them (featuring Van Morrison)'s hit version. In 1966–67, Dion briefly reunited with the Belmonts, recording the LP Together Again for ABC Records. The album was unsuccessful, despite one classic self-penned song, "My Girl the Month of May". Two singles were released from the LP. While neither charted in the United States, they fared better in the UK. "My Girl The Month of May" entered the Radio London "Fab 40" at No. 9 the week of December 25, 1966. A 'turntable' hit at London underground clubs like Middle Earth, the disc received a lot of play from pirate radio DJ's John Peel and Kenny Everett. The follow up, "Movin' Man", reached No. 17 on the "Radio London" charts on Easter Sunday, March 26, 1967. "My Girl The Month of May" was later covered by English artists Alan Bown in 1967, and Island Records artists The Bunch (featuring Sandy Denny and other members of Fairport Convention) in April 1972. During their brief mid-60's reunion, Dion and the Belmonts appeared on the popular Clay Cole Show performing "Berimbau" and "My Girl The Month of May", and occasionally performed at local New York City clubs such as "The Mardi Gras" on Staten Island (April 29, 1967) before disbanding. While Dion's career appeared to be nearing an end, he still retained enough credibility to be, along with Bob Dylan, one of only two rock artists featured on the album cover of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. In April 1968, Dion experienced what he identified as a powerful religious transformation. After getting clean once again from heroin addiction, an experience he documented in his 1970 song "Your Own Backyard", he approached Laurie Records for a new contract. They agreed on the condition that he record the song "Abraham, Martin & John", written by Dick Holler (also the writer of the Royal Guardsmen's "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron") in response to the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, and those of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy during the spring of 1968. The success of this song (released by Dion in August 1968 and later recorded by many others including Marvin Gaye) which reached No. 4 in the US charts and No. 1 in Canada, resuscitated Dion's career. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc. Mature and Christian music period: 1969–1986 For the next few years, Dion's music became radically different, moving to more contemplative and mature material. He released several albums essentially as a singer-songwriter, to moderate sales, moving to the Warner Brothers label in 1969. There followed a live reunion show with the Belmonts at Madison Square Garden on June 2, 1972, which was recorded and released as a live album by Warner. A year later, in 1973, Dion and the original Belmonts performed once more, doing a sold-out concert at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, New York. However, no recording of the 1973 reunion was released. This was followed in 1975 by the album Born to Be with You produced by Phil Spector. The album was a commercial failure, but has been subsequently praised by such artists as Jason Pierce of Spiritualized and Pete Townshend of The Who with the track "Only You Know" being sampled by Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker for his single "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time" from his 2006 solo album Jarvis. In 1978, Dion released an album drawing on many of his teenage influences, Return of the Wanderer, another commercial failure. In December 1979, there was a radical spiritual change in Dion, who had become a born again Christian. Thereafter, his recordings for several years were in a contemporary Christian vein, in which he released five albums on the DaySpring Records label, a division of Word Records in Waco, Texas. These albums reflecting his evangelical Christian convictions were Inside Job (1980), Only Jesus (1981), I Put Away My Idols (1983) which charted at No. 37, Seasons (1984), Kingdom in the Streets (1985) and Velvet & Steel (1986). Several singles were successfully released to Christian radio, notably "Still in the Spirit" from Kingdom in the Streets. In 1984, Dion won the GMA Dove Award (Christian Music Award) for the album I Put Away My Idols. He was also nominated for Grammy Award for Best Gospel Vocal Performance, Male for the same album. On September 24, 1985, Dion was a guest on 100 Huntley Street. Return to secular music and RRHOF induction: 1987–1999 In 1987, Dion agreed to do a concert of his old hits at Radio City Music Hall in New York. The two disc CD of this concert was released in 2005, featuring concert photos by Dion's friend, Michael J. Friedman. This concert helped free him to celebrate both his past and his future, and led to a series of special appearances, including a fundraiser for homeless medical relief. There he shared the stage with fans such as Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon and Lou Reed, all of whom cited Dion as one of their prime influences. Dion's autobiography, The Wanderer: Dion's Story, co-authored by Davin Seay, was published in the late-1980s. In 1989, DiMucci returned to rock music with the contemporary album Yo Frankie, which included appearances by Paul Simon, Lou Reed, k.d. lang, Patty Smyth and Bryan Adams. Produced by Dave Edmunds (who also played guitar on the album), "Yo Frankie has a sharp sound while never losing sight of Dion's soulful, doo-wop voice." Overall, "the relevant and nostalgic statement from an artist who helped forge rock & roll's first wave" found his way back on radio and in music videos during this period (both on VH1 and MTV), as well as touring. Dion was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF) in 1989 (with an introduction by Lou Reed). Controversially, when Dion's solo induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame occurred, the other original members of the Belmonts (Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo D'Aleo) were not inducted. A January 3, 2012 Billboard magazine article stated: "There was strife between DiMucci and Belmonts members, who were not pleased when DiMucci was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame without them in 1989." DiMucci joined Scott Kempner and Frank Funaro of the Del-Lords and Mike Mesaros of the Smithereens in a short-lived band called Little Kings. A live album was later released, but not widely circulated or promoted. Grammy Hall of Fame and blues success: 2000–2019 Dion has released several albums with contemporary rock artists. His Déjà Nu album in 2000 found him covering Bruce Springsteen, a major follower over the years. He joined Springsteen onstage in Miami in 2002 for a performance of "If I Should Fall Behind" from Dream on Fire. In 2002, Dion was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for "Runaround Sue". He continues to perform songs from his albums live, including a concert in 2004 being recorded for release on DVD. In January 2006, Dion released Bronx in Blue, an album of blues and country standards, which was nominated for a Grammy Award. It peaked at No. 2 on the Top Blues Albums chart. In November 2007, Dion issued a follow-up album titled Son of Skip James, which peaked at No. 4 on the Top Blues Albums chart. In October 2008, DiMucci released Heroes: Giants of Early Guitar Rock, an album of his covers of early rock and roll songs he considers seminal to the genre. The album includes versions of songs originally recorded by Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Ricky Nelson, Johnny Cash, and many other early rock guitarists. In October 2009, Dion performed "The Wanderer" with Paul Simon at the 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert. An audiobook and paperback by Dion and Mike Aquilina, titled Dion: The Wanderer Talks Truth (Stories, Humor Music), was published in April 2011. DiMucci shares stories about The Bronx in the 1950s, how he ended up on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and his travels with Sam Cooke in the Jim Crow South. Dion released Tank Full of Blues on January 24, 2012. It peaked at No. 3 on the Top Blues Albums chart. While touring on April 5, 2015, Dion performed "Donna the Prima Donna" live in Las Vegas. On July 11, 2015, he held a concert in Westbury, New York. In 2015, Dion released the single "New York Is My Home" with Paul Simon. Dion had previously worked with Simon on his 1989 hit "Written on the Subway Wall". The single was followed by the album New York Is My Home, released February 12, 2016. The album peaked at No. 3 on the Top Blues Album chart. Dion planned four concerts in the U.S. during early 2016 and was invited as a keynote speaker for the 2016 SXSW in Texas. He spoke on the topic A Conversation with Dion: Rock's Enduring Voice on March 17, 2016. Dion appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on April 8, 2016. In May 2017, Dion released Kickin' Child: The Lost Album 1965 from Norton Records, containing songs recorded in 1965 when he was with Columbia Records but were not previously released. Also in May 2017, Richard Barone's Sorrows & Promises: Greenwich Village in the 1960s was released, which included Dion performing a duet of his 1964 song "The Road I'm On (Gloria)" with Barone. The album is a celebration of the New York City scene that Dion was part of during that pivotal era. Recent albums with KTBA Records: 2020–present In June 2020, Dion released Blues with Friends via Keeping the Blues Alive Records (KTBA), a new record label created by Joe Bonamassa and Roy Weisman for Dion and other blues musicians to showcase their talents. The album features Van Morrison, Jeff Beck, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, and others (including liner notes by Bob Dylan). A digital album (and a double vinyl record set), Dion released a music video for every song from the album on his website and social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. The album reached No. 1 on the Billboard Blues Albums chart (9 weeks at No. 1 and 59 weeks total). It also charted in United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Australia. American Songwriter magazine honored Dion's "Song for Sam Cooke (Here in America)" as the "Greatest of the Great 2020 Songs". Dion also released two Christmas songs in 2020: "Hello Christmas" (featuring Amy Grant) and "You Know It's Christmas" (featuring Bonamassa). Both songs were co-written with Mike Aquilina. Music videos were produced for both songs. Dion's song "Blues Comin' On" (with Bonamassa) from Blues with Friends was nominated for a 2021 Blues Music Award. In November 2021, Dion released Stomping Ground (with music videos), which includes extensive liner notes written by Pete Townshend. Except for a cover of "Red House", the songs were written by Dion and Aquilina. Multiple guest artists participate on the album. The album became Dion's second No. 1 blues album. The Wanderer musical On October 13, 2011, an industry-only reading of a new play about Dion's life was performed in New York City. In a December 9, 2011 article from The New York Times, Dion and his collaborator (writer/director Charles Messina) discussed details about the project – titled The Wanderer: The Life and Music of Dion – which will focus on the years between 1957 until the late-1960s, and will feature more than 20 songs from that era as well as new/original music. In the article, Dion gave his perspective on the story: "You know, I always saw my story as a young Sopranos with great music and a Rocky Graziano Somebody Up There Likes Me ending. It's a story of redemption. A rock and roll redemption story!" DiMucci revealed that Michael Wartella would be starring in The Wanderer on December 16, 2017. There was a reading of the musical on November 2, 2017 while working on it continued. On December 4, 2019, it was announced that former New Kids on the Block member Joey McIntyre would star as Johnny, Michael Wartella as Dion, and Christy Altomare as wife, Susan. The first performance was scheduled to start on May 28, 2020, at the Paper Mill Playhouse. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the opening performance was rescheduled to March 24, 2022. Personal life Dion lives in Boca Raton, Florida and New York City. In the late 1990s, Dion visited his old Bronx parish, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and returned to Catholicism. Sparking Dion's reversion to Catholicism was "a chance viewing of The Journey Home program on EWTN." As a practicing Roman Catholic and having struggled with a heroin addiction during his youth, Dion has been involved in prison religion, reaching out to men going through drug recovery. DiMucci was a member of the American board of directors for Renewal Ministries in 2004. Dion appeared on The Journey Home and discussed his wanderings from Catholicism to Protestantism and back again on May 1, 2006. Selective discography With the Belmonts Presenting Dion and the Belmonts (1959) Wish Upon a Star with Dion and the Belmonts (1960) Together Again (1966) Live at Madison Square Garden 1972 (1973) Solo albums Alone with Dion (1961) Runaround Sue (1961) Donna the Prima Donna (1963) Dion (1968) Suite for Late Summer (1972) Born to Be with You (1975) Streetheart (1976) I Put Away My Idols (1983) Yo Frankie (1989) Son of Skip James (2007) Blues with Friends (2020) Stomping Ground (2021) References External links Comprehensive Rolling Stone profile The Spiritual Journey of the Wanderer Who Came Home By Dion Dimucci Dion the Wanderer, Back In Blue (an article at NPR.com) 1939 births Living people American male singers American people of Italian descent American male pop singers American folk singers American rock singers Musicians from the Bronx American performers of Christian music Laurie Records artists Columbia Records artists Singers from New York City Dion and the Belmonts members Doo-wop musicians Catholics from New York (state)

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How old were the members of the group?

How old were the members of the Belmonts?

Dion DiMucci

Bob and Gene Schwartz also signed Dion's friends, the Belmonts, (Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo D'Aleo), a vocal group named for nearby Belmont Avenue, and teamed them, with Dion singing lead. The new group's breakthrough came in early 1958, when "I Wonder Why" (on their newly formed "Laurie" label) made No. 22 on the U.S. charts. Dion said of the Belmonts; "I'd give 'em sounds. I'd give 'em parts and stuff. That's what 'I Wonder Why' was about. We kind of invented this percussive rhythmic sound. If you listen to that song, everybody was doing something different. There's four guys, one guy was doing bass, I was singing lead, one guy's going 'ooh wah ooh,' and another guy's doing tenor. It was totally amazing. When I listen to it today, oftentimes I think, 'man, those kids are talented.'" Their initial hit was followed by "No One Knows" and "Don't Pity Me," which also charted the Billboard Top 100. This success won a place for Dion and the Belmonts on the ill-fated "The Winter Dance Party" tour with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson), Frankie Sardo, and other performers. On February 3, 1959, after a concert stop in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly and others decided to charter a flight to the next venue rather than travel on the tour bus. Dion was invited to accompany the group but decided that he did not want to spend $36 for the flight, as it was the same monthly rent his parents paid for his childhood apartment and he couldn't justify the indulgence. The plane crashed, killing all on board; Holly, Valens, Richardson, and the pilot Roger Peterson. Dion and the Belmonts continued on the tour, along with Frankie Sardo, while Bobby Vee, then an unknown artist, performed in Holly's place at the very next concert. Later, Jimmy Clanton, Frankie Avalon, and Fabian were added to replace the other now-deceased headliners. Dion and the Belmonts' next single, "A Teenager in Love," was released in March 1959, eventually hitting No. 5 on the U.S. pop charts and No. 28 in the UK. The group's biggest hit, "Where or When," was released in November of that year, and reached No. 3 on the U.S. charts. However, in early 1960, Dion checked into hospital for heroin addiction, a problem he had had since his mid-teens. Further single releases for the group that year were less successful. There were musical, personal and financial differences between Dion and members of the Belmonts, and in October 1960, Dion decided to quit for a solo career. By the time of their breakup, all eight Laurie releases had charted on the Hot 100. CANNOTANSWER

No One Knows

Dion Francis DiMucci (born July 18, 1939), better known simply as Dion, is an American singer and songwriter whose music has incorporated elements of doo-wop, rock, R&B and blues. Initially as lead singer of Dion and the Belmonts, and then in his solo career, he was one of the most popular American rock and roll performers of the pre-British Invasion era. He had 39 Top 40 hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a solo performer, with the Belmonts or with the Del-Satins. He is best remembered for the singles "Runaround Sue", "The Wanderer", "Ruby Baby" and "Lovers Who Wander", among other hits. Dion's popularity waned in the mid-1960s. Toward the end of the decade, he shifted his style and produced songs that were more mature and contemplative, such as "Abraham, Martin and John". He remained popular in the late 1960s until the mid-1970s, and continues making music. During the 1980s, Dion produced several Christian albums, winning a GMA Dove Award in 1984 for the album I Put Away My Idols. He returned to secular music in the late 1980s with Yo Frankie (1989). Between the mid-2000s and 2021, Dion released six chart-topping blues albums. Critics who had dismissed his early work, labeling him as a teen idol, praised his later work and noted the influence he has had on other musicians. A Grammy-nominated artist, Dion has released nearly 40 albums and scored eight Top 10 hits (ten including the Belmonts) on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. Early life Dion was born to an Italian-American family in the Bronx, New York. As a child, he accompanied his father, Pasquale DiMucci, a vaudeville entertainer, on tour, and developed a love of country music – particularly the work of Hank Williams. He also developed a fondness for the blues and doo-wop musicians he heard performing in local bars and on the radio. His singing was honed on the street corners and local clubs of the Bronx, where he and other neighborhood singers created a cappella riffs. In early 1957, he auditioned for Bob and Gene Schwartz for their short-lived Mohawk Records label. They asked Dion to sing a song which had been arranged by Hugo Montenegro and recorded featuring Vic Damone doing vocals. At first Dion refused, stating the song would sound like something his old fashioned parents would listen to, but the Schwartzes convinced him to give it a try. The backing vocals were by a group called "the Timberlanes", whom Dion had never met. The resulting single, "The Chosen Few", was released under the name "Dion and the Timberlanes", and became a minor regional hit. Dion himself stated in 2019 during an interview at "Crashing the Party" (a radio program related to Norton Records in Brooklyn, New York) that "The Chosen Few" hit the Top Ten locally in Boston and enabled him to perform this song on American Bandstand where the kids at the show started screaming during his performance, which gave him his first impression of being a record star. Writing about this experience later, in his autobiography, The Wanderer, Dion said that he had never met the Timberlanes and did not even know who they were. "The vocal group was so white bread, I went back to my neighborhood and I recruited a bunch of guys – three guys – and we called ourselves Dion and the Belmonts." Career Beginnings with the Belmonts: 1957–1960 Bob and Gene Schwartz signed Dion's friends, the Belmonts (Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo D'Aleo), a vocal group named for the Belmont, Bronx neighborhood, and teamed them up with Dion singing lead. The new group's breakthrough came in early 1958, when "I Wonder Why" (on their newly formed Laurie Records) made No. 22 on the U.S. charts. Dion said of the Belmonts; "I'd give 'em sounds. I'd give 'em parts and stuff. That's what 'I Wonder Why' was about. We kind of invented this percussive rhythmic sound. If you listen to that song, everybody was doing something different. There's four guys, one guy was doing bass, I was singing lead, one guy's going 'ooh wah ooh,' and another guy's doing tenor. It was totally amazing. When I listen to it today, oftentimes I think, 'man, those kids are talented.'" Their initial hit was followed by "No One Knows" and "Don't Pity Me", which also charted the Billboard Top 100. This success won a place for Dion and the Belmonts on the ill-fated "The Winter Dance Party" tour with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson), Frankie Sardo, and other performers. On February 3, 1959, after a concert stop in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly and others decided to charter a flight to the next venue rather than travel on the tour bus. Dion was invited to accompany the group but decided that he did not want to spend $36 for the flight, as it was the same monthly rent his parents paid for his childhood apartment and he could not justify the indulgence. The plane crashed, killing all on board: Holly, Valens, Richardson, and the pilot Roger Peterson. Dion and the Belmonts continued on the tour, along with Frankie Sardo, while Bobby Vee, then an unknown artist, performed in Holly's place at the very next concert. Later, Jimmy Clanton, Frankie Avalon, and Fabian were added to replace the other now-deceased headliners. Dion and the Belmonts' next single, "A Teenager in Love", was released in March 1959, eventually hitting No. 5 on the U.S. pop charts and No. 28 in the UK. The group's biggest hit, "Where or When", was released in November of that year, and reached No. 3 on the U.S. charts. However, in early 1960, Dion checked into hospital for heroin addiction, a problem he had had since his mid-teens. Further single releases for the group that year were less successful. There were musical, personal and financial differences between Dion and members of the Belmonts, and in October 1960, Dion decided to quit for a solo career. By the time of their breakup, all eight Laurie releases had charted on the Hot 100. Solo stardom and touring worldwide: 1960–1964 By the end of 1960, Dion produced his first solo album on Laurie Records, Alone with Dion, released in 1961. The single "Lonely Teenager" rose to No. 12 in the US charts. The name on his solo releases was simply "Dion". Follow-ups "Havin' Fun" and "Kissin' Game" had less success, and the signs were that Dion would drift onto the cabaret circuit. However, he then recorded an up-tempo number co-written with Ernie Maresca with a new vocal group, the Del-Satins. The record, "Runaround Sue", stormed up the U.S. charts, reaching No. 1 in October 1961, and No. 11 in the UK, where he also toured. "Runaround Sue" sold over a million copies, achieving gold disc status. For the next single, Laurie promoted the A-side, "The Majestic", but it was the B-side, Maresca's "The Wanderer", which received more radio play and climbed swiftly up the charts to reach No. 2 in the U.S. in February 1962 and No. 10 in the UK. The 1976 re-release made the UK Top 20. By the end of 1961, Dion had become a major star, touring worldwide and making an appearance in the Columbia Pictures musical film Twist Around the Clock. In 1962, he followed with a string of singles he wrote or co-wrote including "Lovers Who Wander" (No. 3), "Little Diane" (No. 8), "Love Came to Me" (No. 10). He also had successful albums with Runaround Sue and Lovers Who Wander. At the end of 1962, Dion moved from Laurie to Columbia Records. He was the first rock and roll artist signed to the label, which was an anomaly considering that its then-A&R director, Mitch Miller, loathed that particular genre of music. The first Columbia single, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller's "Ruby Baby" (originally a hit for the Drifters) reached No. 2, while "Donna the Prima Donna" and "Drip Drop" (another remake of a Drifters hit) both reached No. 6 in late 1963. (Dion also recorded an Italian version of "Donna the Prima Donna" using the identical backup vocals.) His other Columbia releases were less successful, and problems with his drug addiction and changing public tastes, especially the British Invasion, saw a period of commercial decline. Belmonts reunion and renewed contract: 1965–1968 Following a European tour, Dion returned to the U.S. and was introduced to classic blues by Columbia's John Hammond. To the consternation of his management, he began recording more blues-oriented material, including Willie Dixon's "Hoochie Coochie Man" and "Spoonful", but these releases – some produced by Tom Wilson, with Al Kooper on keyboards – were not commercially successful. In 1965, still with Columbia, Dion formed a new group to back him, The Wanderers, composed of John Falbo on guitar, Pete Baron (Pete Falciglia) on bass, and Carlo Mastrangelo of the Belmonts on drums. They made national appearances on Dick Clark's, Where The Action Is, and The Lloyd Thaxton Show. A number of self-penned tracks were recorded and released unsuccessfully as singles, and did not appear in album format until years later. In June 1965 he recorded fellow Columbia Records's contemporary Bob Dylan's composition "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" a half-year before Them (featuring Van Morrison)'s hit version. In 1966–67, Dion briefly reunited with the Belmonts, recording the LP Together Again for ABC Records. The album was unsuccessful, despite one classic self-penned song, "My Girl the Month of May". Two singles were released from the LP. While neither charted in the United States, they fared better in the UK. "My Girl The Month of May" entered the Radio London "Fab 40" at No. 9 the week of December 25, 1966. A 'turntable' hit at London underground clubs like Middle Earth, the disc received a lot of play from pirate radio DJ's John Peel and Kenny Everett. The follow up, "Movin' Man", reached No. 17 on the "Radio London" charts on Easter Sunday, March 26, 1967. "My Girl The Month of May" was later covered by English artists Alan Bown in 1967, and Island Records artists The Bunch (featuring Sandy Denny and other members of Fairport Convention) in April 1972. During their brief mid-60's reunion, Dion and the Belmonts appeared on the popular Clay Cole Show performing "Berimbau" and "My Girl The Month of May", and occasionally performed at local New York City clubs such as "The Mardi Gras" on Staten Island (April 29, 1967) before disbanding. While Dion's career appeared to be nearing an end, he still retained enough credibility to be, along with Bob Dylan, one of only two rock artists featured on the album cover of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. In April 1968, Dion experienced what he identified as a powerful religious transformation. After getting clean once again from heroin addiction, an experience he documented in his 1970 song "Your Own Backyard", he approached Laurie Records for a new contract. They agreed on the condition that he record the song "Abraham, Martin & John", written by Dick Holler (also the writer of the Royal Guardsmen's "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron") in response to the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, and those of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy during the spring of 1968. The success of this song (released by Dion in August 1968 and later recorded by many others including Marvin Gaye) which reached No. 4 in the US charts and No. 1 in Canada, resuscitated Dion's career. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc. Mature and Christian music period: 1969–1986 For the next few years, Dion's music became radically different, moving to more contemplative and mature material. He released several albums essentially as a singer-songwriter, to moderate sales, moving to the Warner Brothers label in 1969. There followed a live reunion show with the Belmonts at Madison Square Garden on June 2, 1972, which was recorded and released as a live album by Warner. A year later, in 1973, Dion and the original Belmonts performed once more, doing a sold-out concert at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, New York. However, no recording of the 1973 reunion was released. This was followed in 1975 by the album Born to Be with You produced by Phil Spector. The album was a commercial failure, but has been subsequently praised by such artists as Jason Pierce of Spiritualized and Pete Townshend of The Who with the track "Only You Know" being sampled by Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker for his single "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time" from his 2006 solo album Jarvis. In 1978, Dion released an album drawing on many of his teenage influences, Return of the Wanderer, another commercial failure. In December 1979, there was a radical spiritual change in Dion, who had become a born again Christian. Thereafter, his recordings for several years were in a contemporary Christian vein, in which he released five albums on the DaySpring Records label, a division of Word Records in Waco, Texas. These albums reflecting his evangelical Christian convictions were Inside Job (1980), Only Jesus (1981), I Put Away My Idols (1983) which charted at No. 37, Seasons (1984), Kingdom in the Streets (1985) and Velvet & Steel (1986). Several singles were successfully released to Christian radio, notably "Still in the Spirit" from Kingdom in the Streets. In 1984, Dion won the GMA Dove Award (Christian Music Award) for the album I Put Away My Idols. He was also nominated for Grammy Award for Best Gospel Vocal Performance, Male for the same album. On September 24, 1985, Dion was a guest on 100 Huntley Street. Return to secular music and RRHOF induction: 1987–1999 In 1987, Dion agreed to do a concert of his old hits at Radio City Music Hall in New York. The two disc CD of this concert was released in 2005, featuring concert photos by Dion's friend, Michael J. Friedman. This concert helped free him to celebrate both his past and his future, and led to a series of special appearances, including a fundraiser for homeless medical relief. There he shared the stage with fans such as Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon and Lou Reed, all of whom cited Dion as one of their prime influences. Dion's autobiography, The Wanderer: Dion's Story, co-authored by Davin Seay, was published in the late-1980s. In 1989, DiMucci returned to rock music with the contemporary album Yo Frankie, which included appearances by Paul Simon, Lou Reed, k.d. lang, Patty Smyth and Bryan Adams. Produced by Dave Edmunds (who also played guitar on the album), "Yo Frankie has a sharp sound while never losing sight of Dion's soulful, doo-wop voice." Overall, "the relevant and nostalgic statement from an artist who helped forge rock & roll's first wave" found his way back on radio and in music videos during this period (both on VH1 and MTV), as well as touring. Dion was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF) in 1989 (with an introduction by Lou Reed). Controversially, when Dion's solo induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame occurred, the other original members of the Belmonts (Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo D'Aleo) were not inducted. A January 3, 2012 Billboard magazine article stated: "There was strife between DiMucci and Belmonts members, who were not pleased when DiMucci was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame without them in 1989." DiMucci joined Scott Kempner and Frank Funaro of the Del-Lords and Mike Mesaros of the Smithereens in a short-lived band called Little Kings. A live album was later released, but not widely circulated or promoted. Grammy Hall of Fame and blues success: 2000–2019 Dion has released several albums with contemporary rock artists. His Déjà Nu album in 2000 found him covering Bruce Springsteen, a major follower over the years. He joined Springsteen onstage in Miami in 2002 for a performance of "If I Should Fall Behind" from Dream on Fire. In 2002, Dion was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for "Runaround Sue". He continues to perform songs from his albums live, including a concert in 2004 being recorded for release on DVD. In January 2006, Dion released Bronx in Blue, an album of blues and country standards, which was nominated for a Grammy Award. It peaked at No. 2 on the Top Blues Albums chart. In November 2007, Dion issued a follow-up album titled Son of Skip James, which peaked at No. 4 on the Top Blues Albums chart. In October 2008, DiMucci released Heroes: Giants of Early Guitar Rock, an album of his covers of early rock and roll songs he considers seminal to the genre. The album includes versions of songs originally recorded by Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Ricky Nelson, Johnny Cash, and many other early rock guitarists. In October 2009, Dion performed "The Wanderer" with Paul Simon at the 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert. An audiobook and paperback by Dion and Mike Aquilina, titled Dion: The Wanderer Talks Truth (Stories, Humor Music), was published in April 2011. DiMucci shares stories about The Bronx in the 1950s, how he ended up on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and his travels with Sam Cooke in the Jim Crow South. Dion released Tank Full of Blues on January 24, 2012. It peaked at No. 3 on the Top Blues Albums chart. While touring on April 5, 2015, Dion performed "Donna the Prima Donna" live in Las Vegas. On July 11, 2015, he held a concert in Westbury, New York. In 2015, Dion released the single "New York Is My Home" with Paul Simon. Dion had previously worked with Simon on his 1989 hit "Written on the Subway Wall". The single was followed by the album New York Is My Home, released February 12, 2016. The album peaked at No. 3 on the Top Blues Album chart. Dion planned four concerts in the U.S. during early 2016 and was invited as a keynote speaker for the 2016 SXSW in Texas. He spoke on the topic A Conversation with Dion: Rock's Enduring Voice on March 17, 2016. Dion appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on April 8, 2016. In May 2017, Dion released Kickin' Child: The Lost Album 1965 from Norton Records, containing songs recorded in 1965 when he was with Columbia Records but were not previously released. Also in May 2017, Richard Barone's Sorrows & Promises: Greenwich Village in the 1960s was released, which included Dion performing a duet of his 1964 song "The Road I'm On (Gloria)" with Barone. The album is a celebration of the New York City scene that Dion was part of during that pivotal era. Recent albums with KTBA Records: 2020–present In June 2020, Dion released Blues with Friends via Keeping the Blues Alive Records (KTBA), a new record label created by Joe Bonamassa and Roy Weisman for Dion and other blues musicians to showcase their talents. The album features Van Morrison, Jeff Beck, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, and others (including liner notes by Bob Dylan). A digital album (and a double vinyl record set), Dion released a music video for every song from the album on his website and social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. The album reached No. 1 on the Billboard Blues Albums chart (9 weeks at No. 1 and 59 weeks total). It also charted in United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Australia. American Songwriter magazine honored Dion's "Song for Sam Cooke (Here in America)" as the "Greatest of the Great 2020 Songs". Dion also released two Christmas songs in 2020: "Hello Christmas" (featuring Amy Grant) and "You Know It's Christmas" (featuring Bonamassa). Both songs were co-written with Mike Aquilina. Music videos were produced for both songs. Dion's song "Blues Comin' On" (with Bonamassa) from Blues with Friends was nominated for a 2021 Blues Music Award. In November 2021, Dion released Stomping Ground (with music videos), which includes extensive liner notes written by Pete Townshend. Except for a cover of "Red House", the songs were written by Dion and Aquilina. Multiple guest artists participate on the album. The album became Dion's second No. 1 blues album. The Wanderer musical On October 13, 2011, an industry-only reading of a new play about Dion's life was performed in New York City. In a December 9, 2011 article from The New York Times, Dion and his collaborator (writer/director Charles Messina) discussed details about the project – titled The Wanderer: The Life and Music of Dion – which will focus on the years between 1957 until the late-1960s, and will feature more than 20 songs from that era as well as new/original music. In the article, Dion gave his perspective on the story: "You know, I always saw my story as a young Sopranos with great music and a Rocky Graziano Somebody Up There Likes Me ending. It's a story of redemption. A rock and roll redemption story!" DiMucci revealed that Michael Wartella would be starring in The Wanderer on December 16, 2017. There was a reading of the musical on November 2, 2017 while working on it continued. On December 4, 2019, it was announced that former New Kids on the Block member Joey McIntyre would star as Johnny, Michael Wartella as Dion, and Christy Altomare as wife, Susan. The first performance was scheduled to start on May 28, 2020, at the Paper Mill Playhouse. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the opening performance was rescheduled to March 24, 2022. Personal life Dion lives in Boca Raton, Florida and New York City. In the late 1990s, Dion visited his old Bronx parish, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and returned to Catholicism. Sparking Dion's reversion to Catholicism was "a chance viewing of The Journey Home program on EWTN." As a practicing Roman Catholic and having struggled with a heroin addiction during his youth, Dion has been involved in prison religion, reaching out to men going through drug recovery. DiMucci was a member of the American board of directors for Renewal Ministries in 2004. Dion appeared on The Journey Home and discussed his wanderings from Catholicism to Protestantism and back again on May 1, 2006. Selective discography With the Belmonts Presenting Dion and the Belmonts (1959) Wish Upon a Star with Dion and the Belmonts (1960) Together Again (1966) Live at Madison Square Garden 1972 (1973) Solo albums Alone with Dion (1961) Runaround Sue (1961) Donna the Prima Donna (1963) Dion (1968) Suite for Late Summer (1972) Born to Be with You (1975) Streetheart (1976) I Put Away My Idols (1983) Yo Frankie (1989) Son of Skip James (2007) Blues with Friends (2020) Stomping Ground (2021) References External links Comprehensive Rolling Stone profile The Spiritual Journey of the Wanderer Who Came Home By Dion Dimucci Dion the Wanderer, Back In Blue (an article at NPR.com) 1939 births Living people American male singers American people of Italian descent American male pop singers American folk singers American rock singers Musicians from the Bronx American performers of Christian music Laurie Records artists Columbia Records artists Singers from New York City Dion and the Belmonts members Doo-wop musicians Catholics from New York (state)

C_57ef3079d2cb4481bdcc3f5beea88674_1

what was the groups most popular song?

what was the Belmonts most popular song?

Dion DiMucci

Bob and Gene Schwartz also signed Dion's friends, the Belmonts, (Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo D'Aleo), a vocal group named for nearby Belmont Avenue, and teamed them, with Dion singing lead. The new group's breakthrough came in early 1958, when "I Wonder Why" (on their newly formed "Laurie" label) made No. 22 on the U.S. charts. Dion said of the Belmonts; "I'd give 'em sounds. I'd give 'em parts and stuff. That's what 'I Wonder Why' was about. We kind of invented this percussive rhythmic sound. If you listen to that song, everybody was doing something different. There's four guys, one guy was doing bass, I was singing lead, one guy's going 'ooh wah ooh,' and another guy's doing tenor. It was totally amazing. When I listen to it today, oftentimes I think, 'man, those kids are talented.'" Their initial hit was followed by "No One Knows" and "Don't Pity Me," which also charted the Billboard Top 100. This success won a place for Dion and the Belmonts on the ill-fated "The Winter Dance Party" tour with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson), Frankie Sardo, and other performers. On February 3, 1959, after a concert stop in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly and others decided to charter a flight to the next venue rather than travel on the tour bus. Dion was invited to accompany the group but decided that he did not want to spend $36 for the flight, as it was the same monthly rent his parents paid for his childhood apartment and he couldn't justify the indulgence. The plane crashed, killing all on board; Holly, Valens, Richardson, and the pilot Roger Peterson. Dion and the Belmonts continued on the tour, along with Frankie Sardo, while Bobby Vee, then an unknown artist, performed in Holly's place at the very next concert. Later, Jimmy Clanton, Frankie Avalon, and Fabian were added to replace the other now-deceased headliners. Dion and the Belmonts' next single, "A Teenager in Love," was released in March 1959, eventually hitting No. 5 on the U.S. pop charts and No. 28 in the UK. The group's biggest hit, "Where or When," was released in November of that year, and reached No. 3 on the U.S. charts. However, in early 1960, Dion checked into hospital for heroin addiction, a problem he had had since his mid-teens. Further single releases for the group that year were less successful. There were musical, personal and financial differences between Dion and members of the Belmonts, and in October 1960, Dion decided to quit for a solo career. By the time of their breakup, all eight Laurie releases had charted on the Hot 100. CANNOTANSWER

I Wonder Why" (on their newly formed "Laurie" label) made No. 22 on the U.S. charts.

Dion Francis DiMucci (born July 18, 1939), better known simply as Dion, is an American singer and songwriter whose music has incorporated elements of doo-wop, rock, R&B and blues. Initially as lead singer of Dion and the Belmonts, and then in his solo career, he was one of the most popular American rock and roll performers of the pre-British Invasion era. He had 39 Top 40 hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a solo performer, with the Belmonts or with the Del-Satins. He is best remembered for the singles "Runaround Sue", "The Wanderer", "Ruby Baby" and "Lovers Who Wander", among other hits. Dion's popularity waned in the mid-1960s. Toward the end of the decade, he shifted his style and produced songs that were more mature and contemplative, such as "Abraham, Martin and John". He remained popular in the late 1960s until the mid-1970s, and continues making music. During the 1980s, Dion produced several Christian albums, winning a GMA Dove Award in 1984 for the album I Put Away My Idols. He returned to secular music in the late 1980s with Yo Frankie (1989). Between the mid-2000s and 2021, Dion released six chart-topping blues albums. Critics who had dismissed his early work, labeling him as a teen idol, praised his later work and noted the influence he has had on other musicians. A Grammy-nominated artist, Dion has released nearly 40 albums and scored eight Top 10 hits (ten including the Belmonts) on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. Early life Dion was born to an Italian-American family in the Bronx, New York. As a child, he accompanied his father, Pasquale DiMucci, a vaudeville entertainer, on tour, and developed a love of country music – particularly the work of Hank Williams. He also developed a fondness for the blues and doo-wop musicians he heard performing in local bars and on the radio. His singing was honed on the street corners and local clubs of the Bronx, where he and other neighborhood singers created a cappella riffs. In early 1957, he auditioned for Bob and Gene Schwartz for their short-lived Mohawk Records label. They asked Dion to sing a song which had been arranged by Hugo Montenegro and recorded featuring Vic Damone doing vocals. At first Dion refused, stating the song would sound like something his old fashioned parents would listen to, but the Schwartzes convinced him to give it a try. The backing vocals were by a group called "the Timberlanes", whom Dion had never met. The resulting single, "The Chosen Few", was released under the name "Dion and the Timberlanes", and became a minor regional hit. Dion himself stated in 2019 during an interview at "Crashing the Party" (a radio program related to Norton Records in Brooklyn, New York) that "The Chosen Few" hit the Top Ten locally in Boston and enabled him to perform this song on American Bandstand where the kids at the show started screaming during his performance, which gave him his first impression of being a record star. Writing about this experience later, in his autobiography, The Wanderer, Dion said that he had never met the Timberlanes and did not even know who they were. "The vocal group was so white bread, I went back to my neighborhood and I recruited a bunch of guys – three guys – and we called ourselves Dion and the Belmonts." Career Beginnings with the Belmonts: 1957–1960 Bob and Gene Schwartz signed Dion's friends, the Belmonts (Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo D'Aleo), a vocal group named for the Belmont, Bronx neighborhood, and teamed them up with Dion singing lead. The new group's breakthrough came in early 1958, when "I Wonder Why" (on their newly formed Laurie Records) made No. 22 on the U.S. charts. Dion said of the Belmonts; "I'd give 'em sounds. I'd give 'em parts and stuff. That's what 'I Wonder Why' was about. We kind of invented this percussive rhythmic sound. If you listen to that song, everybody was doing something different. There's four guys, one guy was doing bass, I was singing lead, one guy's going 'ooh wah ooh,' and another guy's doing tenor. It was totally amazing. When I listen to it today, oftentimes I think, 'man, those kids are talented.'" Their initial hit was followed by "No One Knows" and "Don't Pity Me", which also charted the Billboard Top 100. This success won a place for Dion and the Belmonts on the ill-fated "The Winter Dance Party" tour with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson), Frankie Sardo, and other performers. On February 3, 1959, after a concert stop in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly and others decided to charter a flight to the next venue rather than travel on the tour bus. Dion was invited to accompany the group but decided that he did not want to spend $36 for the flight, as it was the same monthly rent his parents paid for his childhood apartment and he could not justify the indulgence. The plane crashed, killing all on board: Holly, Valens, Richardson, and the pilot Roger Peterson. Dion and the Belmonts continued on the tour, along with Frankie Sardo, while Bobby Vee, then an unknown artist, performed in Holly's place at the very next concert. Later, Jimmy Clanton, Frankie Avalon, and Fabian were added to replace the other now-deceased headliners. Dion and the Belmonts' next single, "A Teenager in Love", was released in March 1959, eventually hitting No. 5 on the U.S. pop charts and No. 28 in the UK. The group's biggest hit, "Where or When", was released in November of that year, and reached No. 3 on the U.S. charts. However, in early 1960, Dion checked into hospital for heroin addiction, a problem he had had since his mid-teens. Further single releases for the group that year were less successful. There were musical, personal and financial differences between Dion and members of the Belmonts, and in October 1960, Dion decided to quit for a solo career. By the time of their breakup, all eight Laurie releases had charted on the Hot 100. Solo stardom and touring worldwide: 1960–1964 By the end of 1960, Dion produced his first solo album on Laurie Records, Alone with Dion, released in 1961. The single "Lonely Teenager" rose to No. 12 in the US charts. The name on his solo releases was simply "Dion". Follow-ups "Havin' Fun" and "Kissin' Game" had less success, and the signs were that Dion would drift onto the cabaret circuit. However, he then recorded an up-tempo number co-written with Ernie Maresca with a new vocal group, the Del-Satins. The record, "Runaround Sue", stormed up the U.S. charts, reaching No. 1 in October 1961, and No. 11 in the UK, where he also toured. "Runaround Sue" sold over a million copies, achieving gold disc status. For the next single, Laurie promoted the A-side, "The Majestic", but it was the B-side, Maresca's "The Wanderer", which received more radio play and climbed swiftly up the charts to reach No. 2 in the U.S. in February 1962 and No. 10 in the UK. The 1976 re-release made the UK Top 20. By the end of 1961, Dion had become a major star, touring worldwide and making an appearance in the Columbia Pictures musical film Twist Around the Clock. In 1962, he followed with a string of singles he wrote or co-wrote including "Lovers Who Wander" (No. 3), "Little Diane" (No. 8), "Love Came to Me" (No. 10). He also had successful albums with Runaround Sue and Lovers Who Wander. At the end of 1962, Dion moved from Laurie to Columbia Records. He was the first rock and roll artist signed to the label, which was an anomaly considering that its then-A&R director, Mitch Miller, loathed that particular genre of music. The first Columbia single, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller's "Ruby Baby" (originally a hit for the Drifters) reached No. 2, while "Donna the Prima Donna" and "Drip Drop" (another remake of a Drifters hit) both reached No. 6 in late 1963. (Dion also recorded an Italian version of "Donna the Prima Donna" using the identical backup vocals.) His other Columbia releases were less successful, and problems with his drug addiction and changing public tastes, especially the British Invasion, saw a period of commercial decline. Belmonts reunion and renewed contract: 1965–1968 Following a European tour, Dion returned to the U.S. and was introduced to classic blues by Columbia's John Hammond. To the consternation of his management, he began recording more blues-oriented material, including Willie Dixon's "Hoochie Coochie Man" and "Spoonful", but these releases – some produced by Tom Wilson, with Al Kooper on keyboards – were not commercially successful. In 1965, still with Columbia, Dion formed a new group to back him, The Wanderers, composed of John Falbo on guitar, Pete Baron (Pete Falciglia) on bass, and Carlo Mastrangelo of the Belmonts on drums. They made national appearances on Dick Clark's, Where The Action Is, and The Lloyd Thaxton Show. A number of self-penned tracks were recorded and released unsuccessfully as singles, and did not appear in album format until years later. In June 1965 he recorded fellow Columbia Records's contemporary Bob Dylan's composition "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" a half-year before Them (featuring Van Morrison)'s hit version. In 1966–67, Dion briefly reunited with the Belmonts, recording the LP Together Again for ABC Records. The album was unsuccessful, despite one classic self-penned song, "My Girl the Month of May". Two singles were released from the LP. While neither charted in the United States, they fared better in the UK. "My Girl The Month of May" entered the Radio London "Fab 40" at No. 9 the week of December 25, 1966. A 'turntable' hit at London underground clubs like Middle Earth, the disc received a lot of play from pirate radio DJ's John Peel and Kenny Everett. The follow up, "Movin' Man", reached No. 17 on the "Radio London" charts on Easter Sunday, March 26, 1967. "My Girl The Month of May" was later covered by English artists Alan Bown in 1967, and Island Records artists The Bunch (featuring Sandy Denny and other members of Fairport Convention) in April 1972. During their brief mid-60's reunion, Dion and the Belmonts appeared on the popular Clay Cole Show performing "Berimbau" and "My Girl The Month of May", and occasionally performed at local New York City clubs such as "The Mardi Gras" on Staten Island (April 29, 1967) before disbanding. While Dion's career appeared to be nearing an end, he still retained enough credibility to be, along with Bob Dylan, one of only two rock artists featured on the album cover of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. In April 1968, Dion experienced what he identified as a powerful religious transformation. After getting clean once again from heroin addiction, an experience he documented in his 1970 song "Your Own Backyard", he approached Laurie Records for a new contract. They agreed on the condition that he record the song "Abraham, Martin & John", written by Dick Holler (also the writer of the Royal Guardsmen's "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron") in response to the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, and those of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy during the spring of 1968. The success of this song (released by Dion in August 1968 and later recorded by many others including Marvin Gaye) which reached No. 4 in the US charts and No. 1 in Canada, resuscitated Dion's career. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc. Mature and Christian music period: 1969–1986 For the next few years, Dion's music became radically different, moving to more contemplative and mature material. He released several albums essentially as a singer-songwriter, to moderate sales, moving to the Warner Brothers label in 1969. There followed a live reunion show with the Belmonts at Madison Square Garden on June 2, 1972, which was recorded and released as a live album by Warner. A year later, in 1973, Dion and the original Belmonts performed once more, doing a sold-out concert at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, New York. However, no recording of the 1973 reunion was released. This was followed in 1975 by the album Born to Be with You produced by Phil Spector. The album was a commercial failure, but has been subsequently praised by such artists as Jason Pierce of Spiritualized and Pete Townshend of The Who with the track "Only You Know" being sampled by Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker for his single "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time" from his 2006 solo album Jarvis. In 1978, Dion released an album drawing on many of his teenage influences, Return of the Wanderer, another commercial failure. In December 1979, there was a radical spiritual change in Dion, who had become a born again Christian. Thereafter, his recordings for several years were in a contemporary Christian vein, in which he released five albums on the DaySpring Records label, a division of Word Records in Waco, Texas. These albums reflecting his evangelical Christian convictions were Inside Job (1980), Only Jesus (1981), I Put Away My Idols (1983) which charted at No. 37, Seasons (1984), Kingdom in the Streets (1985) and Velvet & Steel (1986). Several singles were successfully released to Christian radio, notably "Still in the Spirit" from Kingdom in the Streets. In 1984, Dion won the GMA Dove Award (Christian Music Award) for the album I Put Away My Idols. He was also nominated for Grammy Award for Best Gospel Vocal Performance, Male for the same album. On September 24, 1985, Dion was a guest on 100 Huntley Street. Return to secular music and RRHOF induction: 1987–1999 In 1987, Dion agreed to do a concert of his old hits at Radio City Music Hall in New York. The two disc CD of this concert was released in 2005, featuring concert photos by Dion's friend, Michael J. Friedman. This concert helped free him to celebrate both his past and his future, and led to a series of special appearances, including a fundraiser for homeless medical relief. There he shared the stage with fans such as Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon and Lou Reed, all of whom cited Dion as one of their prime influences. Dion's autobiography, The Wanderer: Dion's Story, co-authored by Davin Seay, was published in the late-1980s. In 1989, DiMucci returned to rock music with the contemporary album Yo Frankie, which included appearances by Paul Simon, Lou Reed, k.d. lang, Patty Smyth and Bryan Adams. Produced by Dave Edmunds (who also played guitar on the album), "Yo Frankie has a sharp sound while never losing sight of Dion's soulful, doo-wop voice." Overall, "the relevant and nostalgic statement from an artist who helped forge rock & roll's first wave" found his way back on radio and in music videos during this period (both on VH1 and MTV), as well as touring. Dion was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF) in 1989 (with an introduction by Lou Reed). Controversially, when Dion's solo induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame occurred, the other original members of the Belmonts (Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo D'Aleo) were not inducted. A January 3, 2012 Billboard magazine article stated: "There was strife between DiMucci and Belmonts members, who were not pleased when DiMucci was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame without them in 1989." DiMucci joined Scott Kempner and Frank Funaro of the Del-Lords and Mike Mesaros of the Smithereens in a short-lived band called Little Kings. A live album was later released, but not widely circulated or promoted. Grammy Hall of Fame and blues success: 2000–2019 Dion has released several albums with contemporary rock artists. His Déjà Nu album in 2000 found him covering Bruce Springsteen, a major follower over the years. He joined Springsteen onstage in Miami in 2002 for a performance of "If I Should Fall Behind" from Dream on Fire. In 2002, Dion was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for "Runaround Sue". He continues to perform songs from his albums live, including a concert in 2004 being recorded for release on DVD. In January 2006, Dion released Bronx in Blue, an album of blues and country standards, which was nominated for a Grammy Award. It peaked at No. 2 on the Top Blues Albums chart. In November 2007, Dion issued a follow-up album titled Son of Skip James, which peaked at No. 4 on the Top Blues Albums chart. In October 2008, DiMucci released Heroes: Giants of Early Guitar Rock, an album of his covers of early rock and roll songs he considers seminal to the genre. The album includes versions of songs originally recorded by Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Ricky Nelson, Johnny Cash, and many other early rock guitarists. In October 2009, Dion performed "The Wanderer" with Paul Simon at the 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert. An audiobook and paperback by Dion and Mike Aquilina, titled Dion: The Wanderer Talks Truth (Stories, Humor Music), was published in April 2011. DiMucci shares stories about The Bronx in the 1950s, how he ended up on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and his travels with Sam Cooke in the Jim Crow South. Dion released Tank Full of Blues on January 24, 2012. It peaked at No. 3 on the Top Blues Albums chart. While touring on April 5, 2015, Dion performed "Donna the Prima Donna" live in Las Vegas. On July 11, 2015, he held a concert in Westbury, New York. In 2015, Dion released the single "New York Is My Home" with Paul Simon. Dion had previously worked with Simon on his 1989 hit "Written on the Subway Wall". The single was followed by the album New York Is My Home, released February 12, 2016. The album peaked at No. 3 on the Top Blues Album chart. Dion planned four concerts in the U.S. during early 2016 and was invited as a keynote speaker for the 2016 SXSW in Texas. He spoke on the topic A Conversation with Dion: Rock's Enduring Voice on March 17, 2016. Dion appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on April 8, 2016. In May 2017, Dion released Kickin' Child: The Lost Album 1965 from Norton Records, containing songs recorded in 1965 when he was with Columbia Records but were not previously released. Also in May 2017, Richard Barone's Sorrows & Promises: Greenwich Village in the 1960s was released, which included Dion performing a duet of his 1964 song "The Road I'm On (Gloria)" with Barone. The album is a celebration of the New York City scene that Dion was part of during that pivotal era. Recent albums with KTBA Records: 2020–present In June 2020, Dion released Blues with Friends via Keeping the Blues Alive Records (KTBA), a new record label created by Joe Bonamassa and Roy Weisman for Dion and other blues musicians to showcase their talents. The album features Van Morrison, Jeff Beck, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, and others (including liner notes by Bob Dylan). A digital album (and a double vinyl record set), Dion released a music video for every song from the album on his website and social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. The album reached No. 1 on the Billboard Blues Albums chart (9 weeks at No. 1 and 59 weeks total). It also charted in United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Australia. American Songwriter magazine honored Dion's "Song for Sam Cooke (Here in America)" as the "Greatest of the Great 2020 Songs". Dion also released two Christmas songs in 2020: "Hello Christmas" (featuring Amy Grant) and "You Know It's Christmas" (featuring Bonamassa). Both songs were co-written with Mike Aquilina. Music videos were produced for both songs. Dion's song "Blues Comin' On" (with Bonamassa) from Blues with Friends was nominated for a 2021 Blues Music Award. In November 2021, Dion released Stomping Ground (with music videos), which includes extensive liner notes written by Pete Townshend. Except for a cover of "Red House", the songs were written by Dion and Aquilina. Multiple guest artists participate on the album. The album became Dion's second No. 1 blues album. The Wanderer musical On October 13, 2011, an industry-only reading of a new play about Dion's life was performed in New York City. In a December 9, 2011 article from The New York Times, Dion and his collaborator (writer/director Charles Messina) discussed details about the project – titled The Wanderer: The Life and Music of Dion – which will focus on the years between 1957 until the late-1960s, and will feature more than 20 songs from that era as well as new/original music. In the article, Dion gave his perspective on the story: "You know, I always saw my story as a young Sopranos with great music and a Rocky Graziano Somebody Up There Likes Me ending. It's a story of redemption. A rock and roll redemption story!" DiMucci revealed that Michael Wartella would be starring in The Wanderer on December 16, 2017. There was a reading of the musical on November 2, 2017 while working on it continued. On December 4, 2019, it was announced that former New Kids on the Block member Joey McIntyre would star as Johnny, Michael Wartella as Dion, and Christy Altomare as wife, Susan. The first performance was scheduled to start on May 28, 2020, at the Paper Mill Playhouse. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the opening performance was rescheduled to March 24, 2022. Personal life Dion lives in Boca Raton, Florida and New York City. In the late 1990s, Dion visited his old Bronx parish, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and returned to Catholicism. Sparking Dion's reversion to Catholicism was "a chance viewing of The Journey Home program on EWTN." As a practicing Roman Catholic and having struggled with a heroin addiction during his youth, Dion has been involved in prison religion, reaching out to men going through drug recovery. DiMucci was a member of the American board of directors for Renewal Ministries in 2004. Dion appeared on The Journey Home and discussed his wanderings from Catholicism to Protestantism and back again on May 1, 2006. Selective discography With the Belmonts Presenting Dion and the Belmonts (1959) Wish Upon a Star with Dion and the Belmonts (1960) Together Again (1966) Live at Madison Square Garden 1972 (1973) Solo albums Alone with Dion (1961) Runaround Sue (1961) Donna the Prima Donna (1963) Dion (1968) Suite for Late Summer (1972) Born to Be with You (1975) Streetheart (1976) I Put Away My Idols (1983) Yo Frankie (1989) Son of Skip James (2007) Blues with Friends (2020) Stomping Ground (2021) References External links Comprehensive Rolling Stone profile The Spiritual Journey of the Wanderer Who Came Home By Dion Dimucci Dion the Wanderer, Back In Blue (an article at NPR.com) 1939 births Living people American male singers American people of Italian descent American male pop singers American folk singers American rock singers Musicians from the Bronx American performers of Christian music Laurie Records artists Columbia Records artists Singers from New York City Dion and the Belmonts members Doo-wop musicians Catholics from New York (state)

C_57ef3079d2cb4481bdcc3f5beea88674_1

when did the group split up?

when did the Belmonts split up?

Dion DiMucci

Bob and Gene Schwartz also signed Dion's friends, the Belmonts, (Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo D'Aleo), a vocal group named for nearby Belmont Avenue, and teamed them, with Dion singing lead. The new group's breakthrough came in early 1958, when "I Wonder Why" (on their newly formed "Laurie" label) made No. 22 on the U.S. charts. Dion said of the Belmonts; "I'd give 'em sounds. I'd give 'em parts and stuff. That's what 'I Wonder Why' was about. We kind of invented this percussive rhythmic sound. If you listen to that song, everybody was doing something different. There's four guys, one guy was doing bass, I was singing lead, one guy's going 'ooh wah ooh,' and another guy's doing tenor. It was totally amazing. When I listen to it today, oftentimes I think, 'man, those kids are talented.'" Their initial hit was followed by "No One Knows" and "Don't Pity Me," which also charted the Billboard Top 100. This success won a place for Dion and the Belmonts on the ill-fated "The Winter Dance Party" tour with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson), Frankie Sardo, and other performers. On February 3, 1959, after a concert stop in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly and others decided to charter a flight to the next venue rather than travel on the tour bus. Dion was invited to accompany the group but decided that he did not want to spend $36 for the flight, as it was the same monthly rent his parents paid for his childhood apartment and he couldn't justify the indulgence. The plane crashed, killing all on board; Holly, Valens, Richardson, and the pilot Roger Peterson. Dion and the Belmonts continued on the tour, along with Frankie Sardo, while Bobby Vee, then an unknown artist, performed in Holly's place at the very next concert. Later, Jimmy Clanton, Frankie Avalon, and Fabian were added to replace the other now-deceased headliners. Dion and the Belmonts' next single, "A Teenager in Love," was released in March 1959, eventually hitting No. 5 on the U.S. pop charts and No. 28 in the UK. The group's biggest hit, "Where or When," was released in November of that year, and reached No. 3 on the U.S. charts. However, in early 1960, Dion checked into hospital for heroin addiction, a problem he had had since his mid-teens. Further single releases for the group that year were less successful. There were musical, personal and financial differences between Dion and members of the Belmonts, and in October 1960, Dion decided to quit for a solo career. By the time of their breakup, all eight Laurie releases had charted on the Hot 100. CANNOTANSWER

in October 1960, Dion decided to quit for a solo career.

Dion Francis DiMucci (born July 18, 1939), better known simply as Dion, is an American singer and songwriter whose music has incorporated elements of doo-wop, rock, R&B and blues. Initially as lead singer of Dion and the Belmonts, and then in his solo career, he was one of the most popular American rock and roll performers of the pre-British Invasion era. He had 39 Top 40 hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a solo performer, with the Belmonts or with the Del-Satins. He is best remembered for the singles "Runaround Sue", "The Wanderer", "Ruby Baby" and "Lovers Who Wander", among other hits. Dion's popularity waned in the mid-1960s. Toward the end of the decade, he shifted his style and produced songs that were more mature and contemplative, such as "Abraham, Martin and John". He remained popular in the late 1960s until the mid-1970s, and continues making music. During the 1980s, Dion produced several Christian albums, winning a GMA Dove Award in 1984 for the album I Put Away My Idols. He returned to secular music in the late 1980s with Yo Frankie (1989). Between the mid-2000s and 2021, Dion released six chart-topping blues albums. Critics who had dismissed his early work, labeling him as a teen idol, praised his later work and noted the influence he has had on other musicians. A Grammy-nominated artist, Dion has released nearly 40 albums and scored eight Top 10 hits (ten including the Belmonts) on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. Early life Dion was born to an Italian-American family in the Bronx, New York. As a child, he accompanied his father, Pasquale DiMucci, a vaudeville entertainer, on tour, and developed a love of country music – particularly the work of Hank Williams. He also developed a fondness for the blues and doo-wop musicians he heard performing in local bars and on the radio. His singing was honed on the street corners and local clubs of the Bronx, where he and other neighborhood singers created a cappella riffs. In early 1957, he auditioned for Bob and Gene Schwartz for their short-lived Mohawk Records label. They asked Dion to sing a song which had been arranged by Hugo Montenegro and recorded featuring Vic Damone doing vocals. At first Dion refused, stating the song would sound like something his old fashioned parents would listen to, but the Schwartzes convinced him to give it a try. The backing vocals were by a group called "the Timberlanes", whom Dion had never met. The resulting single, "The Chosen Few", was released under the name "Dion and the Timberlanes", and became a minor regional hit. Dion himself stated in 2019 during an interview at "Crashing the Party" (a radio program related to Norton Records in Brooklyn, New York) that "The Chosen Few" hit the Top Ten locally in Boston and enabled him to perform this song on American Bandstand where the kids at the show started screaming during his performance, which gave him his first impression of being a record star. Writing about this experience later, in his autobiography, The Wanderer, Dion said that he had never met the Timberlanes and did not even know who they were. "The vocal group was so white bread, I went back to my neighborhood and I recruited a bunch of guys – three guys – and we called ourselves Dion and the Belmonts." Career Beginnings with the Belmonts: 1957–1960 Bob and Gene Schwartz signed Dion's friends, the Belmonts (Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo D'Aleo), a vocal group named for the Belmont, Bronx neighborhood, and teamed them up with Dion singing lead. The new group's breakthrough came in early 1958, when "I Wonder Why" (on their newly formed Laurie Records) made No. 22 on the U.S. charts. Dion said of the Belmonts; "I'd give 'em sounds. I'd give 'em parts and stuff. That's what 'I Wonder Why' was about. We kind of invented this percussive rhythmic sound. If you listen to that song, everybody was doing something different. There's four guys, one guy was doing bass, I was singing lead, one guy's going 'ooh wah ooh,' and another guy's doing tenor. It was totally amazing. When I listen to it today, oftentimes I think, 'man, those kids are talented.'" Their initial hit was followed by "No One Knows" and "Don't Pity Me", which also charted the Billboard Top 100. This success won a place for Dion and the Belmonts on the ill-fated "The Winter Dance Party" tour with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson), Frankie Sardo, and other performers. On February 3, 1959, after a concert stop in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly and others decided to charter a flight to the next venue rather than travel on the tour bus. Dion was invited to accompany the group but decided that he did not want to spend $36 for the flight, as it was the same monthly rent his parents paid for his childhood apartment and he could not justify the indulgence. The plane crashed, killing all on board: Holly, Valens, Richardson, and the pilot Roger Peterson. Dion and the Belmonts continued on the tour, along with Frankie Sardo, while Bobby Vee, then an unknown artist, performed in Holly's place at the very next concert. Later, Jimmy Clanton, Frankie Avalon, and Fabian were added to replace the other now-deceased headliners. Dion and the Belmonts' next single, "A Teenager in Love", was released in March 1959, eventually hitting No. 5 on the U.S. pop charts and No. 28 in the UK. The group's biggest hit, "Where or When", was released in November of that year, and reached No. 3 on the U.S. charts. However, in early 1960, Dion checked into hospital for heroin addiction, a problem he had had since his mid-teens. Further single releases for the group that year were less successful. There were musical, personal and financial differences between Dion and members of the Belmonts, and in October 1960, Dion decided to quit for a solo career. By the time of their breakup, all eight Laurie releases had charted on the Hot 100. Solo stardom and touring worldwide: 1960–1964 By the end of 1960, Dion produced his first solo album on Laurie Records, Alone with Dion, released in 1961. The single "Lonely Teenager" rose to No. 12 in the US charts. The name on his solo releases was simply "Dion". Follow-ups "Havin' Fun" and "Kissin' Game" had less success, and the signs were that Dion would drift onto the cabaret circuit. However, he then recorded an up-tempo number co-written with Ernie Maresca with a new vocal group, the Del-Satins. The record, "Runaround Sue", stormed up the U.S. charts, reaching No. 1 in October 1961, and No. 11 in the UK, where he also toured. "Runaround Sue" sold over a million copies, achieving gold disc status. For the next single, Laurie promoted the A-side, "The Majestic", but it was the B-side, Maresca's "The Wanderer", which received more radio play and climbed swiftly up the charts to reach No. 2 in the U.S. in February 1962 and No. 10 in the UK. The 1976 re-release made the UK Top 20. By the end of 1961, Dion had become a major star, touring worldwide and making an appearance in the Columbia Pictures musical film Twist Around the Clock. In 1962, he followed with a string of singles he wrote or co-wrote including "Lovers Who Wander" (No. 3), "Little Diane" (No. 8), "Love Came to Me" (No. 10). He also had successful albums with Runaround Sue and Lovers Who Wander. At the end of 1962, Dion moved from Laurie to Columbia Records. He was the first rock and roll artist signed to the label, which was an anomaly considering that its then-A&R director, Mitch Miller, loathed that particular genre of music. The first Columbia single, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller's "Ruby Baby" (originally a hit for the Drifters) reached No. 2, while "Donna the Prima Donna" and "Drip Drop" (another remake of a Drifters hit) both reached No. 6 in late 1963. (Dion also recorded an Italian version of "Donna the Prima Donna" using the identical backup vocals.) His other Columbia releases were less successful, and problems with his drug addiction and changing public tastes, especially the British Invasion, saw a period of commercial decline. Belmonts reunion and renewed contract: 1965–1968 Following a European tour, Dion returned to the U.S. and was introduced to classic blues by Columbia's John Hammond. To the consternation of his management, he began recording more blues-oriented material, including Willie Dixon's "Hoochie Coochie Man" and "Spoonful", but these releases – some produced by Tom Wilson, with Al Kooper on keyboards – were not commercially successful. In 1965, still with Columbia, Dion formed a new group to back him, The Wanderers, composed of John Falbo on guitar, Pete Baron (Pete Falciglia) on bass, and Carlo Mastrangelo of the Belmonts on drums. They made national appearances on Dick Clark's, Where The Action Is, and The Lloyd Thaxton Show. A number of self-penned tracks were recorded and released unsuccessfully as singles, and did not appear in album format until years later. In June 1965 he recorded fellow Columbia Records's contemporary Bob Dylan's composition "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" a half-year before Them (featuring Van Morrison)'s hit version. In 1966–67, Dion briefly reunited with the Belmonts, recording the LP Together Again for ABC Records. The album was unsuccessful, despite one classic self-penned song, "My Girl the Month of May". Two singles were released from the LP. While neither charted in the United States, they fared better in the UK. "My Girl The Month of May" entered the Radio London "Fab 40" at No. 9 the week of December 25, 1966. A 'turntable' hit at London underground clubs like Middle Earth, the disc received a lot of play from pirate radio DJ's John Peel and Kenny Everett. The follow up, "Movin' Man", reached No. 17 on the "Radio London" charts on Easter Sunday, March 26, 1967. "My Girl The Month of May" was later covered by English artists Alan Bown in 1967, and Island Records artists The Bunch (featuring Sandy Denny and other members of Fairport Convention) in April 1972. During their brief mid-60's reunion, Dion and the Belmonts appeared on the popular Clay Cole Show performing "Berimbau" and "My Girl The Month of May", and occasionally performed at local New York City clubs such as "The Mardi Gras" on Staten Island (April 29, 1967) before disbanding. While Dion's career appeared to be nearing an end, he still retained enough credibility to be, along with Bob Dylan, one of only two rock artists featured on the album cover of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. In April 1968, Dion experienced what he identified as a powerful religious transformation. After getting clean once again from heroin addiction, an experience he documented in his 1970 song "Your Own Backyard", he approached Laurie Records for a new contract. They agreed on the condition that he record the song "Abraham, Martin & John", written by Dick Holler (also the writer of the Royal Guardsmen's "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron") in response to the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, and those of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy during the spring of 1968. The success of this song (released by Dion in August 1968 and later recorded by many others including Marvin Gaye) which reached No. 4 in the US charts and No. 1 in Canada, resuscitated Dion's career. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc. Mature and Christian music period: 1969–1986 For the next few years, Dion's music became radically different, moving to more contemplative and mature material. He released several albums essentially as a singer-songwriter, to moderate sales, moving to the Warner Brothers label in 1969. There followed a live reunion show with the Belmonts at Madison Square Garden on June 2, 1972, which was recorded and released as a live album by Warner. A year later, in 1973, Dion and the original Belmonts performed once more, doing a sold-out concert at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, New York. However, no recording of the 1973 reunion was released. This was followed in 1975 by the album Born to Be with You produced by Phil Spector. The album was a commercial failure, but has been subsequently praised by such artists as Jason Pierce of Spiritualized and Pete Townshend of The Who with the track "Only You Know" being sampled by Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker for his single "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time" from his 2006 solo album Jarvis. In 1978, Dion released an album drawing on many of his teenage influences, Return of the Wanderer, another commercial failure. In December 1979, there was a radical spiritual change in Dion, who had become a born again Christian. Thereafter, his recordings for several years were in a contemporary Christian vein, in which he released five albums on the DaySpring Records label, a division of Word Records in Waco, Texas. These albums reflecting his evangelical Christian convictions were Inside Job (1980), Only Jesus (1981), I Put Away My Idols (1983) which charted at No. 37, Seasons (1984), Kingdom in the Streets (1985) and Velvet & Steel (1986). Several singles were successfully released to Christian radio, notably "Still in the Spirit" from Kingdom in the Streets. In 1984, Dion won the GMA Dove Award (Christian Music Award) for the album I Put Away My Idols. He was also nominated for Grammy Award for Best Gospel Vocal Performance, Male for the same album. On September 24, 1985, Dion was a guest on 100 Huntley Street. Return to secular music and RRHOF induction: 1987–1999 In 1987, Dion agreed to do a concert of his old hits at Radio City Music Hall in New York. The two disc CD of this concert was released in 2005, featuring concert photos by Dion's friend, Michael J. Friedman. This concert helped free him to celebrate both his past and his future, and led to a series of special appearances, including a fundraiser for homeless medical relief. There he shared the stage with fans such as Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon and Lou Reed, all of whom cited Dion as one of their prime influences. Dion's autobiography, The Wanderer: Dion's Story, co-authored by Davin Seay, was published in the late-1980s. In 1989, DiMucci returned to rock music with the contemporary album Yo Frankie, which included appearances by Paul Simon, Lou Reed, k.d. lang, Patty Smyth and Bryan Adams. Produced by Dave Edmunds (who also played guitar on the album), "Yo Frankie has a sharp sound while never losing sight of Dion's soulful, doo-wop voice." Overall, "the relevant and nostalgic statement from an artist who helped forge rock & roll's first wave" found his way back on radio and in music videos during this period (both on VH1 and MTV), as well as touring. Dion was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF) in 1989 (with an introduction by Lou Reed). Controversially, when Dion's solo induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame occurred, the other original members of the Belmonts (Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo D'Aleo) were not inducted. A January 3, 2012 Billboard magazine article stated: "There was strife between DiMucci and Belmonts members, who were not pleased when DiMucci was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame without them in 1989." DiMucci joined Scott Kempner and Frank Funaro of the Del-Lords and Mike Mesaros of the Smithereens in a short-lived band called Little Kings. A live album was later released, but not widely circulated or promoted. Grammy Hall of Fame and blues success: 2000–2019 Dion has released several albums with contemporary rock artists. His Déjà Nu album in 2000 found him covering Bruce Springsteen, a major follower over the years. He joined Springsteen onstage in Miami in 2002 for a performance of "If I Should Fall Behind" from Dream on Fire. In 2002, Dion was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for "Runaround Sue". He continues to perform songs from his albums live, including a concert in 2004 being recorded for release on DVD. In January 2006, Dion released Bronx in Blue, an album of blues and country standards, which was nominated for a Grammy Award. It peaked at No. 2 on the Top Blues Albums chart. In November 2007, Dion issued a follow-up album titled Son of Skip James, which peaked at No. 4 on the Top Blues Albums chart. In October 2008, DiMucci released Heroes: Giants of Early Guitar Rock, an album of his covers of early rock and roll songs he considers seminal to the genre. The album includes versions of songs originally recorded by Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Ricky Nelson, Johnny Cash, and many other early rock guitarists. In October 2009, Dion performed "The Wanderer" with Paul Simon at the 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert. An audiobook and paperback by Dion and Mike Aquilina, titled Dion: The Wanderer Talks Truth (Stories, Humor Music), was published in April 2011. DiMucci shares stories about The Bronx in the 1950s, how he ended up on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and his travels with Sam Cooke in the Jim Crow South. Dion released Tank Full of Blues on January 24, 2012. It peaked at No. 3 on the Top Blues Albums chart. While touring on April 5, 2015, Dion performed "Donna the Prima Donna" live in Las Vegas. On July 11, 2015, he held a concert in Westbury, New York. In 2015, Dion released the single "New York Is My Home" with Paul Simon. Dion had previously worked with Simon on his 1989 hit "Written on the Subway Wall". The single was followed by the album New York Is My Home, released February 12, 2016. The album peaked at No. 3 on the Top Blues Album chart. Dion planned four concerts in the U.S. during early 2016 and was invited as a keynote speaker for the 2016 SXSW in Texas. He spoke on the topic A Conversation with Dion: Rock's Enduring Voice on March 17, 2016. Dion appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on April 8, 2016. In May 2017, Dion released Kickin' Child: The Lost Album 1965 from Norton Records, containing songs recorded in 1965 when he was with Columbia Records but were not previously released. Also in May 2017, Richard Barone's Sorrows & Promises: Greenwich Village in the 1960s was released, which included Dion performing a duet of his 1964 song "The Road I'm On (Gloria)" with Barone. The album is a celebration of the New York City scene that Dion was part of during that pivotal era. Recent albums with KTBA Records: 2020–present In June 2020, Dion released Blues with Friends via Keeping the Blues Alive Records (KTBA), a new record label created by Joe Bonamassa and Roy Weisman for Dion and other blues musicians to showcase their talents. The album features Van Morrison, Jeff Beck, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, and others (including liner notes by Bob Dylan). A digital album (and a double vinyl record set), Dion released a music video for every song from the album on his website and social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. The album reached No. 1 on the Billboard Blues Albums chart (9 weeks at No. 1 and 59 weeks total). It also charted in United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Australia. American Songwriter magazine honored Dion's "Song for Sam Cooke (Here in America)" as the "Greatest of the Great 2020 Songs". Dion also released two Christmas songs in 2020: "Hello Christmas" (featuring Amy Grant) and "You Know It's Christmas" (featuring Bonamassa). Both songs were co-written with Mike Aquilina. Music videos were produced for both songs. Dion's song "Blues Comin' On" (with Bonamassa) from Blues with Friends was nominated for a 2021 Blues Music Award. In November 2021, Dion released Stomping Ground (with music videos), which includes extensive liner notes written by Pete Townshend. Except for a cover of "Red House", the songs were written by Dion and Aquilina. Multiple guest artists participate on the album. The album became Dion's second No. 1 blues album. The Wanderer musical On October 13, 2011, an industry-only reading of a new play about Dion's life was performed in New York City. In a December 9, 2011 article from The New York Times, Dion and his collaborator (writer/director Charles Messina) discussed details about the project – titled The Wanderer: The Life and Music of Dion – which will focus on the years between 1957 until the late-1960s, and will feature more than 20 songs from that era as well as new/original music. In the article, Dion gave his perspective on the story: "You know, I always saw my story as a young Sopranos with great music and a Rocky Graziano Somebody Up There Likes Me ending. It's a story of redemption. A rock and roll redemption story!" DiMucci revealed that Michael Wartella would be starring in The Wanderer on December 16, 2017. There was a reading of the musical on November 2, 2017 while working on it continued. On December 4, 2019, it was announced that former New Kids on the Block member Joey McIntyre would star as Johnny, Michael Wartella as Dion, and Christy Altomare as wife, Susan. The first performance was scheduled to start on May 28, 2020, at the Paper Mill Playhouse. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the opening performance was rescheduled to March 24, 2022. Personal life Dion lives in Boca Raton, Florida and New York City. In the late 1990s, Dion visited his old Bronx parish, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and returned to Catholicism. Sparking Dion's reversion to Catholicism was "a chance viewing of The Journey Home program on EWTN." As a practicing Roman Catholic and having struggled with a heroin addiction during his youth, Dion has been involved in prison religion, reaching out to men going through drug recovery. DiMucci was a member of the American board of directors for Renewal Ministries in 2004. Dion appeared on The Journey Home and discussed his wanderings from Catholicism to Protestantism and back again on May 1, 2006. Selective discography With the Belmonts Presenting Dion and the Belmonts (1959) Wish Upon a Star with Dion and the Belmonts (1960) Together Again (1966) Live at Madison Square Garden 1972 (1973) Solo albums Alone with Dion (1961) Runaround Sue (1961) Donna the Prima Donna (1963) Dion (1968) Suite for Late Summer (1972) Born to Be with You (1975) Streetheart (1976) I Put Away My Idols (1983) Yo Frankie (1989) Son of Skip James (2007) Blues with Friends (2020) Stomping Ground (2021) References External links Comprehensive Rolling Stone profile The Spiritual Journey of the Wanderer Who Came Home By Dion Dimucci Dion the Wanderer, Back In Blue (an article at NPR.com) 1939 births Living people American male singers American people of Italian descent American male pop singers American folk singers American rock singers Musicians from the Bronx American performers of Christian music Laurie Records artists Columbia Records artists Singers from New York City Dion and the Belmonts members Doo-wop musicians Catholics from New York (state)

C_57ef3079d2cb4481bdcc3f5beea88674_1

was the group liked worldwide?

were the Belmontss liked worldwide?

Dion DiMucci

Bob and Gene Schwartz also signed Dion's friends, the Belmonts, (Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo D'Aleo), a vocal group named for nearby Belmont Avenue, and teamed them, with Dion singing lead. The new group's breakthrough came in early 1958, when "I Wonder Why" (on their newly formed "Laurie" label) made No. 22 on the U.S. charts. Dion said of the Belmonts; "I'd give 'em sounds. I'd give 'em parts and stuff. That's what 'I Wonder Why' was about. We kind of invented this percussive rhythmic sound. If you listen to that song, everybody was doing something different. There's four guys, one guy was doing bass, I was singing lead, one guy's going 'ooh wah ooh,' and another guy's doing tenor. It was totally amazing. When I listen to it today, oftentimes I think, 'man, those kids are talented.'" Their initial hit was followed by "No One Knows" and "Don't Pity Me," which also charted the Billboard Top 100. This success won a place for Dion and the Belmonts on the ill-fated "The Winter Dance Party" tour with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson), Frankie Sardo, and other performers. On February 3, 1959, after a concert stop in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly and others decided to charter a flight to the next venue rather than travel on the tour bus. Dion was invited to accompany the group but decided that he did not want to spend $36 for the flight, as it was the same monthly rent his parents paid for his childhood apartment and he couldn't justify the indulgence. The plane crashed, killing all on board; Holly, Valens, Richardson, and the pilot Roger Peterson. Dion and the Belmonts continued on the tour, along with Frankie Sardo, while Bobby Vee, then an unknown artist, performed in Holly's place at the very next concert. Later, Jimmy Clanton, Frankie Avalon, and Fabian were added to replace the other now-deceased headliners. Dion and the Belmonts' next single, "A Teenager in Love," was released in March 1959, eventually hitting No. 5 on the U.S. pop charts and No. 28 in the UK. The group's biggest hit, "Where or When," was released in November of that year, and reached No. 3 on the U.S. charts. However, in early 1960, Dion checked into hospital for heroin addiction, a problem he had had since his mid-teens. Further single releases for the group that year were less successful. There were musical, personal and financial differences between Dion and members of the Belmonts, and in October 1960, Dion decided to quit for a solo career. By the time of their breakup, all eight Laurie releases had charted on the Hot 100. CANNOTANSWER

CANNOTANSWER

Dion Francis DiMucci (born July 18, 1939), better known simply as Dion, is an American singer and songwriter whose music has incorporated elements of doo-wop, rock, R&B and blues. Initially as lead singer of Dion and the Belmonts, and then in his solo career, he was one of the most popular American rock and roll performers of the pre-British Invasion era. He had 39 Top 40 hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a solo performer, with the Belmonts or with the Del-Satins. He is best remembered for the singles "Runaround Sue", "The Wanderer", "Ruby Baby" and "Lovers Who Wander", among other hits. Dion's popularity waned in the mid-1960s. Toward the end of the decade, he shifted his style and produced songs that were more mature and contemplative, such as "Abraham, Martin and John". He remained popular in the late 1960s until the mid-1970s, and continues making music. During the 1980s, Dion produced several Christian albums, winning a GMA Dove Award in 1984 for the album I Put Away My Idols. He returned to secular music in the late 1980s with Yo Frankie (1989). Between the mid-2000s and 2021, Dion released six chart-topping blues albums. Critics who had dismissed his early work, labeling him as a teen idol, praised his later work and noted the influence he has had on other musicians. A Grammy-nominated artist, Dion has released nearly 40 albums and scored eight Top 10 hits (ten including the Belmonts) on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. Early life Dion was born to an Italian-American family in the Bronx, New York. As a child, he accompanied his father, Pasquale DiMucci, a vaudeville entertainer, on tour, and developed a love of country music – particularly the work of Hank Williams. He also developed a fondness for the blues and doo-wop musicians he heard performing in local bars and on the radio. His singing was honed on the street corners and local clubs of the Bronx, where he and other neighborhood singers created a cappella riffs. In early 1957, he auditioned for Bob and Gene Schwartz for their short-lived Mohawk Records label. They asked Dion to sing a song which had been arranged by Hugo Montenegro and recorded featuring Vic Damone doing vocals. At first Dion refused, stating the song would sound like something his old fashioned parents would listen to, but the Schwartzes convinced him to give it a try. The backing vocals were by a group called "the Timberlanes", whom Dion had never met. The resulting single, "The Chosen Few", was released under the name "Dion and the Timberlanes", and became a minor regional hit. Dion himself stated in 2019 during an interview at "Crashing the Party" (a radio program related to Norton Records in Brooklyn, New York) that "The Chosen Few" hit the Top Ten locally in Boston and enabled him to perform this song on American Bandstand where the kids at the show started screaming during his performance, which gave him his first impression of being a record star. Writing about this experience later, in his autobiography, The Wanderer, Dion said that he had never met the Timberlanes and did not even know who they were. "The vocal group was so white bread, I went back to my neighborhood and I recruited a bunch of guys – three guys – and we called ourselves Dion and the Belmonts." Career Beginnings with the Belmonts: 1957–1960 Bob and Gene Schwartz signed Dion's friends, the Belmonts (Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo D'Aleo), a vocal group named for the Belmont, Bronx neighborhood, and teamed them up with Dion singing lead. The new group's breakthrough came in early 1958, when "I Wonder Why" (on their newly formed Laurie Records) made No. 22 on the U.S. charts. Dion said of the Belmonts; "I'd give 'em sounds. I'd give 'em parts and stuff. That's what 'I Wonder Why' was about. We kind of invented this percussive rhythmic sound. If you listen to that song, everybody was doing something different. There's four guys, one guy was doing bass, I was singing lead, one guy's going 'ooh wah ooh,' and another guy's doing tenor. It was totally amazing. When I listen to it today, oftentimes I think, 'man, those kids are talented.'" Their initial hit was followed by "No One Knows" and "Don't Pity Me", which also charted the Billboard Top 100. This success won a place for Dion and the Belmonts on the ill-fated "The Winter Dance Party" tour with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson), Frankie Sardo, and other performers. On February 3, 1959, after a concert stop in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly and others decided to charter a flight to the next venue rather than travel on the tour bus. Dion was invited to accompany the group but decided that he did not want to spend $36 for the flight, as it was the same monthly rent his parents paid for his childhood apartment and he could not justify the indulgence. The plane crashed, killing all on board: Holly, Valens, Richardson, and the pilot Roger Peterson. Dion and the Belmonts continued on the tour, along with Frankie Sardo, while Bobby Vee, then an unknown artist, performed in Holly's place at the very next concert. Later, Jimmy Clanton, Frankie Avalon, and Fabian were added to replace the other now-deceased headliners. Dion and the Belmonts' next single, "A Teenager in Love", was released in March 1959, eventually hitting No. 5 on the U.S. pop charts and No. 28 in the UK. The group's biggest hit, "Where or When", was released in November of that year, and reached No. 3 on the U.S. charts. However, in early 1960, Dion checked into hospital for heroin addiction, a problem he had had since his mid-teens. Further single releases for the group that year were less successful. There were musical, personal and financial differences between Dion and members of the Belmonts, and in October 1960, Dion decided to quit for a solo career. By the time of their breakup, all eight Laurie releases had charted on the Hot 100. Solo stardom and touring worldwide: 1960–1964 By the end of 1960, Dion produced his first solo album on Laurie Records, Alone with Dion, released in 1961. The single "Lonely Teenager" rose to No. 12 in the US charts. The name on his solo releases was simply "Dion". Follow-ups "Havin' Fun" and "Kissin' Game" had less success, and the signs were that Dion would drift onto the cabaret circuit. However, he then recorded an up-tempo number co-written with Ernie Maresca with a new vocal group, the Del-Satins. The record, "Runaround Sue", stormed up the U.S. charts, reaching No. 1 in October 1961, and No. 11 in the UK, where he also toured. "Runaround Sue" sold over a million copies, achieving gold disc status. For the next single, Laurie promoted the A-side, "The Majestic", but it was the B-side, Maresca's "The Wanderer", which received more radio play and climbed swiftly up the charts to reach No. 2 in the U.S. in February 1962 and No. 10 in the UK. The 1976 re-release made the UK Top 20. By the end of 1961, Dion had become a major star, touring worldwide and making an appearance in the Columbia Pictures musical film Twist Around the Clock. In 1962, he followed with a string of singles he wrote or co-wrote including "Lovers Who Wander" (No. 3), "Little Diane" (No. 8), "Love Came to Me" (No. 10). He also had successful albums with Runaround Sue and Lovers Who Wander. At the end of 1962, Dion moved from Laurie to Columbia Records. He was the first rock and roll artist signed to the label, which was an anomaly considering that its then-A&R director, Mitch Miller, loathed that particular genre of music. The first Columbia single, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller's "Ruby Baby" (originally a hit for the Drifters) reached No. 2, while "Donna the Prima Donna" and "Drip Drop" (another remake of a Drifters hit) both reached No. 6 in late 1963. (Dion also recorded an Italian version of "Donna the Prima Donna" using the identical backup vocals.) His other Columbia releases were less successful, and problems with his drug addiction and changing public tastes, especially the British Invasion, saw a period of commercial decline. Belmonts reunion and renewed contract: 1965–1968 Following a European tour, Dion returned to the U.S. and was introduced to classic blues by Columbia's John Hammond. To the consternation of his management, he began recording more blues-oriented material, including Willie Dixon's "Hoochie Coochie Man" and "Spoonful", but these releases – some produced by Tom Wilson, with Al Kooper on keyboards – were not commercially successful. In 1965, still with Columbia, Dion formed a new group to back him, The Wanderers, composed of John Falbo on guitar, Pete Baron (Pete Falciglia) on bass, and Carlo Mastrangelo of the Belmonts on drums. They made national appearances on Dick Clark's, Where The Action Is, and The Lloyd Thaxton Show. A number of self-penned tracks were recorded and released unsuccessfully as singles, and did not appear in album format until years later. In June 1965 he recorded fellow Columbia Records's contemporary Bob Dylan's composition "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" a half-year before Them (featuring Van Morrison)'s hit version. In 1966–67, Dion briefly reunited with the Belmonts, recording the LP Together Again for ABC Records. The album was unsuccessful, despite one classic self-penned song, "My Girl the Month of May". Two singles were released from the LP. While neither charted in the United States, they fared better in the UK. "My Girl The Month of May" entered the Radio London "Fab 40" at No. 9 the week of December 25, 1966. A 'turntable' hit at London underground clubs like Middle Earth, the disc received a lot of play from pirate radio DJ's John Peel and Kenny Everett. The follow up, "Movin' Man", reached No. 17 on the "Radio London" charts on Easter Sunday, March 26, 1967. "My Girl The Month of May" was later covered by English artists Alan Bown in 1967, and Island Records artists The Bunch (featuring Sandy Denny and other members of Fairport Convention) in April 1972. During their brief mid-60's reunion, Dion and the Belmonts appeared on the popular Clay Cole Show performing "Berimbau" and "My Girl The Month of May", and occasionally performed at local New York City clubs such as "The Mardi Gras" on Staten Island (April 29, 1967) before disbanding. While Dion's career appeared to be nearing an end, he still retained enough credibility to be, along with Bob Dylan, one of only two rock artists featured on the album cover of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. In April 1968, Dion experienced what he identified as a powerful religious transformation. After getting clean once again from heroin addiction, an experience he documented in his 1970 song "Your Own Backyard", he approached Laurie Records for a new contract. They agreed on the condition that he record the song "Abraham, Martin & John", written by Dick Holler (also the writer of the Royal Guardsmen's "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron") in response to the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, and those of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy during the spring of 1968. The success of this song (released by Dion in August 1968 and later recorded by many others including Marvin Gaye) which reached No. 4 in the US charts and No. 1 in Canada, resuscitated Dion's career. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc. Mature and Christian music period: 1969–1986 For the next few years, Dion's music became radically different, moving to more contemplative and mature material. He released several albums essentially as a singer-songwriter, to moderate sales, moving to the Warner Brothers label in 1969. There followed a live reunion show with the Belmonts at Madison Square Garden on June 2, 1972, which was recorded and released as a live album by Warner. A year later, in 1973, Dion and the original Belmonts performed once more, doing a sold-out concert at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, New York. However, no recording of the 1973 reunion was released. This was followed in 1975 by the album Born to Be with You produced by Phil Spector. The album was a commercial failure, but has been subsequently praised by such artists as Jason Pierce of Spiritualized and Pete Townshend of The Who with the track "Only You Know" being sampled by Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker for his single "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time" from his 2006 solo album Jarvis. In 1978, Dion released an album drawing on many of his teenage influences, Return of the Wanderer, another commercial failure. In December 1979, there was a radical spiritual change in Dion, who had become a born again Christian. Thereafter, his recordings for several years were in a contemporary Christian vein, in which he released five albums on the DaySpring Records label, a division of Word Records in Waco, Texas. These albums reflecting his evangelical Christian convictions were Inside Job (1980), Only Jesus (1981), I Put Away My Idols (1983) which charted at No. 37, Seasons (1984), Kingdom in the Streets (1985) and Velvet & Steel (1986). Several singles were successfully released to Christian radio, notably "Still in the Spirit" from Kingdom in the Streets. In 1984, Dion won the GMA Dove Award (Christian Music Award) for the album I Put Away My Idols. He was also nominated for Grammy Award for Best Gospel Vocal Performance, Male for the same album. On September 24, 1985, Dion was a guest on 100 Huntley Street. Return to secular music and RRHOF induction: 1987–1999 In 1987, Dion agreed to do a concert of his old hits at Radio City Music Hall in New York. The two disc CD of this concert was released in 2005, featuring concert photos by Dion's friend, Michael J. Friedman. This concert helped free him to celebrate both his past and his future, and led to a series of special appearances, including a fundraiser for homeless medical relief. There he shared the stage with fans such as Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon and Lou Reed, all of whom cited Dion as one of their prime influences. Dion's autobiography, The Wanderer: Dion's Story, co-authored by Davin Seay, was published in the late-1980s. In 1989, DiMucci returned to rock music with the contemporary album Yo Frankie, which included appearances by Paul Simon, Lou Reed, k.d. lang, Patty Smyth and Bryan Adams. Produced by Dave Edmunds (who also played guitar on the album), "Yo Frankie has a sharp sound while never losing sight of Dion's soulful, doo-wop voice." Overall, "the relevant and nostalgic statement from an artist who helped forge rock & roll's first wave" found his way back on radio and in music videos during this period (both on VH1 and MTV), as well as touring. Dion was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF) in 1989 (with an introduction by Lou Reed). Controversially, when Dion's solo induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame occurred, the other original members of the Belmonts (Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo D'Aleo) were not inducted. A January 3, 2012 Billboard magazine article stated: "There was strife between DiMucci and Belmonts members, who were not pleased when DiMucci was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame without them in 1989." DiMucci joined Scott Kempner and Frank Funaro of the Del-Lords and Mike Mesaros of the Smithereens in a short-lived band called Little Kings. A live album was later released, but not widely circulated or promoted. Grammy Hall of Fame and blues success: 2000–2019 Dion has released several albums with contemporary rock artists. His Déjà Nu album in 2000 found him covering Bruce Springsteen, a major follower over the years. He joined Springsteen onstage in Miami in 2002 for a performance of "If I Should Fall Behind" from Dream on Fire. In 2002, Dion was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for "Runaround Sue". He continues to perform songs from his albums live, including a concert in 2004 being recorded for release on DVD. In January 2006, Dion released Bronx in Blue, an album of blues and country standards, which was nominated for a Grammy Award. It peaked at No. 2 on the Top Blues Albums chart. In November 2007, Dion issued a follow-up album titled Son of Skip James, which peaked at No. 4 on the Top Blues Albums chart. In October 2008, DiMucci released Heroes: Giants of Early Guitar Rock, an album of his covers of early rock and roll songs he considers seminal to the genre. The album includes versions of songs originally recorded by Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Ricky Nelson, Johnny Cash, and many other early rock guitarists. In October 2009, Dion performed "The Wanderer" with Paul Simon at the 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert. An audiobook and paperback by Dion and Mike Aquilina, titled Dion: The Wanderer Talks Truth (Stories, Humor Music), was published in April 2011. DiMucci shares stories about The Bronx in the 1950s, how he ended up on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and his travels with Sam Cooke in the Jim Crow South. Dion released Tank Full of Blues on January 24, 2012. It peaked at No. 3 on the Top Blues Albums chart. While touring on April 5, 2015, Dion performed "Donna the Prima Donna" live in Las Vegas. On July 11, 2015, he held a concert in Westbury, New York. In 2015, Dion released the single "New York Is My Home" with Paul Simon. Dion had previously worked with Simon on his 1989 hit "Written on the Subway Wall". The single was followed by the album New York Is My Home, released February 12, 2016. The album peaked at No. 3 on the Top Blues Album chart. Dion planned four concerts in the U.S. during early 2016 and was invited as a keynote speaker for the 2016 SXSW in Texas. He spoke on the topic A Conversation with Dion: Rock's Enduring Voice on March 17, 2016. Dion appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on April 8, 2016. In May 2017, Dion released Kickin' Child: The Lost Album 1965 from Norton Records, containing songs recorded in 1965 when he was with Columbia Records but were not previously released. Also in May 2017, Richard Barone's Sorrows & Promises: Greenwich Village in the 1960s was released, which included Dion performing a duet of his 1964 song "The Road I'm On (Gloria)" with Barone. The album is a celebration of the New York City scene that Dion was part of during that pivotal era. Recent albums with KTBA Records: 2020–present In June 2020, Dion released Blues with Friends via Keeping the Blues Alive Records (KTBA), a new record label created by Joe Bonamassa and Roy Weisman for Dion and other blues musicians to showcase their talents. The album features Van Morrison, Jeff Beck, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, and others (including liner notes by Bob Dylan). A digital album (and a double vinyl record set), Dion released a music video for every song from the album on his website and social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. The album reached No. 1 on the Billboard Blues Albums chart (9 weeks at No. 1 and 59 weeks total). It also charted in United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Australia. American Songwriter magazine honored Dion's "Song for Sam Cooke (Here in America)" as the "Greatest of the Great 2020 Songs". Dion also released two Christmas songs in 2020: "Hello Christmas" (featuring Amy Grant) and "You Know It's Christmas" (featuring Bonamassa). Both songs were co-written with Mike Aquilina. Music videos were produced for both songs. Dion's song "Blues Comin' On" (with Bonamassa) from Blues with Friends was nominated for a 2021 Blues Music Award. In November 2021, Dion released Stomping Ground (with music videos), which includes extensive liner notes written by Pete Townshend. Except for a cover of "Red House", the songs were written by Dion and Aquilina. Multiple guest artists participate on the album. The album became Dion's second No. 1 blues album. The Wanderer musical On October 13, 2011, an industry-only reading of a new play about Dion's life was performed in New York City. In a December 9, 2011 article from The New York Times, Dion and his collaborator (writer/director Charles Messina) discussed details about the project – titled The Wanderer: The Life and Music of Dion – which will focus on the years between 1957 until the late-1960s, and will feature more than 20 songs from that era as well as new/original music. In the article, Dion gave his perspective on the story: "You know, I always saw my story as a young Sopranos with great music and a Rocky Graziano Somebody Up There Likes Me ending. It's a story of redemption. A rock and roll redemption story!" DiMucci revealed that Michael Wartella would be starring in The Wanderer on December 16, 2017. There was a reading of the musical on November 2, 2017 while working on it continued. On December 4, 2019, it was announced that former New Kids on the Block member Joey McIntyre would star as Johnny, Michael Wartella as Dion, and Christy Altomare as wife, Susan. The first performance was scheduled to start on May 28, 2020, at the Paper Mill Playhouse. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the opening performance was rescheduled to March 24, 2022. Personal life Dion lives in Boca Raton, Florida and New York City. In the late 1990s, Dion visited his old Bronx parish, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and returned to Catholicism. Sparking Dion's reversion to Catholicism was "a chance viewing of The Journey Home program on EWTN." As a practicing Roman Catholic and having struggled with a heroin addiction during his youth, Dion has been involved in prison religion, reaching out to men going through drug recovery. DiMucci was a member of the American board of directors for Renewal Ministries in 2004. Dion appeared on The Journey Home and discussed his wanderings from Catholicism to Protestantism and back again on May 1, 2006. Selective discography With the Belmonts Presenting Dion and the Belmonts (1959) Wish Upon a Star with Dion and the Belmonts (1960) Together Again (1966) Live at Madison Square Garden 1972 (1973) Solo albums Alone with Dion (1961) Runaround Sue (1961) Donna the Prima Donna (1963) Dion (1968) Suite for Late Summer (1972) Born to Be with You (1975) Streetheart (1976) I Put Away My Idols (1983) Yo Frankie (1989) Son of Skip James (2007) Blues with Friends (2020) Stomping Ground (2021) References External links Comprehensive Rolling Stone profile The Spiritual Journey of the Wanderer Who Came Home By Dion Dimucci Dion the Wanderer, Back In Blue (an article at NPR.com) 1939 births Living people American male singers American people of Italian descent American male pop singers American folk singers American rock singers Musicians from the Bronx American performers of Christian music Laurie Records artists Columbia Records artists Singers from New York City Dion and the Belmonts members Doo-wop musicians Catholics from New York (state)

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what is the most interesting thing about the group?

what is the most interesting thing about the Belmonts?

Dion DiMucci

Bob and Gene Schwartz also signed Dion's friends, the Belmonts, (Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo D'Aleo), a vocal group named for nearby Belmont Avenue, and teamed them, with Dion singing lead. The new group's breakthrough came in early 1958, when "I Wonder Why" (on their newly formed "Laurie" label) made No. 22 on the U.S. charts. Dion said of the Belmonts; "I'd give 'em sounds. I'd give 'em parts and stuff. That's what 'I Wonder Why' was about. We kind of invented this percussive rhythmic sound. If you listen to that song, everybody was doing something different. There's four guys, one guy was doing bass, I was singing lead, one guy's going 'ooh wah ooh,' and another guy's doing tenor. It was totally amazing. When I listen to it today, oftentimes I think, 'man, those kids are talented.'" Their initial hit was followed by "No One Knows" and "Don't Pity Me," which also charted the Billboard Top 100. This success won a place for Dion and the Belmonts on the ill-fated "The Winter Dance Party" tour with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson), Frankie Sardo, and other performers. On February 3, 1959, after a concert stop in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly and others decided to charter a flight to the next venue rather than travel on the tour bus. Dion was invited to accompany the group but decided that he did not want to spend $36 for the flight, as it was the same monthly rent his parents paid for his childhood apartment and he couldn't justify the indulgence. The plane crashed, killing all on board; Holly, Valens, Richardson, and the pilot Roger Peterson. Dion and the Belmonts continued on the tour, along with Frankie Sardo, while Bobby Vee, then an unknown artist, performed in Holly's place at the very next concert. Later, Jimmy Clanton, Frankie Avalon, and Fabian were added to replace the other now-deceased headliners. Dion and the Belmonts' next single, "A Teenager in Love," was released in March 1959, eventually hitting No. 5 on the U.S. pop charts and No. 28 in the UK. The group's biggest hit, "Where or When," was released in November of that year, and reached No. 3 on the U.S. charts. However, in early 1960, Dion checked into hospital for heroin addiction, a problem he had had since his mid-teens. Further single releases for the group that year were less successful. There were musical, personal and financial differences between Dion and members of the Belmonts, and in October 1960, Dion decided to quit for a solo career. By the time of their breakup, all eight Laurie releases had charted on the Hot 100. CANNOTANSWER

Holly and others decided to charter a flight to the next venue rather than travel on the tour bus.

Dion Francis DiMucci (born July 18, 1939), better known simply as Dion, is an American singer and songwriter whose music has incorporated elements of doo-wop, rock, R&B and blues. Initially as lead singer of Dion and the Belmonts, and then in his solo career, he was one of the most popular American rock and roll performers of the pre-British Invasion era. He had 39 Top 40 hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a solo performer, with the Belmonts or with the Del-Satins. He is best remembered for the singles "Runaround Sue", "The Wanderer", "Ruby Baby" and "Lovers Who Wander", among other hits. Dion's popularity waned in the mid-1960s. Toward the end of the decade, he shifted his style and produced songs that were more mature and contemplative, such as "Abraham, Martin and John". He remained popular in the late 1960s until the mid-1970s, and continues making music. During the 1980s, Dion produced several Christian albums, winning a GMA Dove Award in 1984 for the album I Put Away My Idols. He returned to secular music in the late 1980s with Yo Frankie (1989). Between the mid-2000s and 2021, Dion released six chart-topping blues albums. Critics who had dismissed his early work, labeling him as a teen idol, praised his later work and noted the influence he has had on other musicians. A Grammy-nominated artist, Dion has released nearly 40 albums and scored eight Top 10 hits (ten including the Belmonts) on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. Early life Dion was born to an Italian-American family in the Bronx, New York. As a child, he accompanied his father, Pasquale DiMucci, a vaudeville entertainer, on tour, and developed a love of country music – particularly the work of Hank Williams. He also developed a fondness for the blues and doo-wop musicians he heard performing in local bars and on the radio. His singing was honed on the street corners and local clubs of the Bronx, where he and other neighborhood singers created a cappella riffs. In early 1957, he auditioned for Bob and Gene Schwartz for their short-lived Mohawk Records label. They asked Dion to sing a song which had been arranged by Hugo Montenegro and recorded featuring Vic Damone doing vocals. At first Dion refused, stating the song would sound like something his old fashioned parents would listen to, but the Schwartzes convinced him to give it a try. The backing vocals were by a group called "the Timberlanes", whom Dion had never met. The resulting single, "The Chosen Few", was released under the name "Dion and the Timberlanes", and became a minor regional hit. Dion himself stated in 2019 during an interview at "Crashing the Party" (a radio program related to Norton Records in Brooklyn, New York) that "The Chosen Few" hit the Top Ten locally in Boston and enabled him to perform this song on American Bandstand where the kids at the show started screaming during his performance, which gave him his first impression of being a record star. Writing about this experience later, in his autobiography, The Wanderer, Dion said that he had never met the Timberlanes and did not even know who they were. "The vocal group was so white bread, I went back to my neighborhood and I recruited a bunch of guys – three guys – and we called ourselves Dion and the Belmonts." Career Beginnings with the Belmonts: 1957–1960 Bob and Gene Schwartz signed Dion's friends, the Belmonts (Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo D'Aleo), a vocal group named for the Belmont, Bronx neighborhood, and teamed them up with Dion singing lead. The new group's breakthrough came in early 1958, when "I Wonder Why" (on their newly formed Laurie Records) made No. 22 on the U.S. charts. Dion said of the Belmonts; "I'd give 'em sounds. I'd give 'em parts and stuff. That's what 'I Wonder Why' was about. We kind of invented this percussive rhythmic sound. If you listen to that song, everybody was doing something different. There's four guys, one guy was doing bass, I was singing lead, one guy's going 'ooh wah ooh,' and another guy's doing tenor. It was totally amazing. When I listen to it today, oftentimes I think, 'man, those kids are talented.'" Their initial hit was followed by "No One Knows" and "Don't Pity Me", which also charted the Billboard Top 100. This success won a place for Dion and the Belmonts on the ill-fated "The Winter Dance Party" tour with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson), Frankie Sardo, and other performers. On February 3, 1959, after a concert stop in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly and others decided to charter a flight to the next venue rather than travel on the tour bus. Dion was invited to accompany the group but decided that he did not want to spend $36 for the flight, as it was the same monthly rent his parents paid for his childhood apartment and he could not justify the indulgence. The plane crashed, killing all on board: Holly, Valens, Richardson, and the pilot Roger Peterson. Dion and the Belmonts continued on the tour, along with Frankie Sardo, while Bobby Vee, then an unknown artist, performed in Holly's place at the very next concert. Later, Jimmy Clanton, Frankie Avalon, and Fabian were added to replace the other now-deceased headliners. Dion and the Belmonts' next single, "A Teenager in Love", was released in March 1959, eventually hitting No. 5 on the U.S. pop charts and No. 28 in the UK. The group's biggest hit, "Where or When", was released in November of that year, and reached No. 3 on the U.S. charts. However, in early 1960, Dion checked into hospital for heroin addiction, a problem he had had since his mid-teens. Further single releases for the group that year were less successful. There were musical, personal and financial differences between Dion and members of the Belmonts, and in October 1960, Dion decided to quit for a solo career. By the time of their breakup, all eight Laurie releases had charted on the Hot 100. Solo stardom and touring worldwide: 1960–1964 By the end of 1960, Dion produced his first solo album on Laurie Records, Alone with Dion, released in 1961. The single "Lonely Teenager" rose to No. 12 in the US charts. The name on his solo releases was simply "Dion". Follow-ups "Havin' Fun" and "Kissin' Game" had less success, and the signs were that Dion would drift onto the cabaret circuit. However, he then recorded an up-tempo number co-written with Ernie Maresca with a new vocal group, the Del-Satins. The record, "Runaround Sue", stormed up the U.S. charts, reaching No. 1 in October 1961, and No. 11 in the UK, where he also toured. "Runaround Sue" sold over a million copies, achieving gold disc status. For the next single, Laurie promoted the A-side, "The Majestic", but it was the B-side, Maresca's "The Wanderer", which received more radio play and climbed swiftly up the charts to reach No. 2 in the U.S. in February 1962 and No. 10 in the UK. The 1976 re-release made the UK Top 20. By the end of 1961, Dion had become a major star, touring worldwide and making an appearance in the Columbia Pictures musical film Twist Around the Clock. In 1962, he followed with a string of singles he wrote or co-wrote including "Lovers Who Wander" (No. 3), "Little Diane" (No. 8), "Love Came to Me" (No. 10). He also had successful albums with Runaround Sue and Lovers Who Wander. At the end of 1962, Dion moved from Laurie to Columbia Records. He was the first rock and roll artist signed to the label, which was an anomaly considering that its then-A&R director, Mitch Miller, loathed that particular genre of music. The first Columbia single, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller's "Ruby Baby" (originally a hit for the Drifters) reached No. 2, while "Donna the Prima Donna" and "Drip Drop" (another remake of a Drifters hit) both reached No. 6 in late 1963. (Dion also recorded an Italian version of "Donna the Prima Donna" using the identical backup vocals.) His other Columbia releases were less successful, and problems with his drug addiction and changing public tastes, especially the British Invasion, saw a period of commercial decline. Belmonts reunion and renewed contract: 1965–1968 Following a European tour, Dion returned to the U.S. and was introduced to classic blues by Columbia's John Hammond. To the consternation of his management, he began recording more blues-oriented material, including Willie Dixon's "Hoochie Coochie Man" and "Spoonful", but these releases – some produced by Tom Wilson, with Al Kooper on keyboards – were not commercially successful. In 1965, still with Columbia, Dion formed a new group to back him, The Wanderers, composed of John Falbo on guitar, Pete Baron (Pete Falciglia) on bass, and Carlo Mastrangelo of the Belmonts on drums. They made national appearances on Dick Clark's, Where The Action Is, and The Lloyd Thaxton Show. A number of self-penned tracks were recorded and released unsuccessfully as singles, and did not appear in album format until years later. In June 1965 he recorded fellow Columbia Records's contemporary Bob Dylan's composition "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" a half-year before Them (featuring Van Morrison)'s hit version. In 1966–67, Dion briefly reunited with the Belmonts, recording the LP Together Again for ABC Records. The album was unsuccessful, despite one classic self-penned song, "My Girl the Month of May". Two singles were released from the LP. While neither charted in the United States, they fared better in the UK. "My Girl The Month of May" entered the Radio London "Fab 40" at No. 9 the week of December 25, 1966. A 'turntable' hit at London underground clubs like Middle Earth, the disc received a lot of play from pirate radio DJ's John Peel and Kenny Everett. The follow up, "Movin' Man", reached No. 17 on the "Radio London" charts on Easter Sunday, March 26, 1967. "My Girl The Month of May" was later covered by English artists Alan Bown in 1967, and Island Records artists The Bunch (featuring Sandy Denny and other members of Fairport Convention) in April 1972. During their brief mid-60's reunion, Dion and the Belmonts appeared on the popular Clay Cole Show performing "Berimbau" and "My Girl The Month of May", and occasionally performed at local New York City clubs such as "The Mardi Gras" on Staten Island (April 29, 1967) before disbanding. While Dion's career appeared to be nearing an end, he still retained enough credibility to be, along with Bob Dylan, one of only two rock artists featured on the album cover of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. In April 1968, Dion experienced what he identified as a powerful religious transformation. After getting clean once again from heroin addiction, an experience he documented in his 1970 song "Your Own Backyard", he approached Laurie Records for a new contract. They agreed on the condition that he record the song "Abraham, Martin & John", written by Dick Holler (also the writer of the Royal Guardsmen's "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron") in response to the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, and those of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy during the spring of 1968. The success of this song (released by Dion in August 1968 and later recorded by many others including Marvin Gaye) which reached No. 4 in the US charts and No. 1 in Canada, resuscitated Dion's career. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc. Mature and Christian music period: 1969–1986 For the next few years, Dion's music became radically different, moving to more contemplative and mature material. He released several albums essentially as a singer-songwriter, to moderate sales, moving to the Warner Brothers label in 1969. There followed a live reunion show with the Belmonts at Madison Square Garden on June 2, 1972, which was recorded and released as a live album by Warner. A year later, in 1973, Dion and the original Belmonts performed once more, doing a sold-out concert at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, New York. However, no recording of the 1973 reunion was released. This was followed in 1975 by the album Born to Be with You produced by Phil Spector. The album was a commercial failure, but has been subsequently praised by such artists as Jason Pierce of Spiritualized and Pete Townshend of The Who with the track "Only You Know" being sampled by Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker for his single "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time" from his 2006 solo album Jarvis. In 1978, Dion released an album drawing on many of his teenage influences, Return of the Wanderer, another commercial failure. In December 1979, there was a radical spiritual change in Dion, who had become a born again Christian. Thereafter, his recordings for several years were in a contemporary Christian vein, in which he released five albums on the DaySpring Records label, a division of Word Records in Waco, Texas. These albums reflecting his evangelical Christian convictions were Inside Job (1980), Only Jesus (1981), I Put Away My Idols (1983) which charted at No. 37, Seasons (1984), Kingdom in the Streets (1985) and Velvet & Steel (1986). Several singles were successfully released to Christian radio, notably "Still in the Spirit" from Kingdom in the Streets. In 1984, Dion won the GMA Dove Award (Christian Music Award) for the album I Put Away My Idols. He was also nominated for Grammy Award for Best Gospel Vocal Performance, Male for the same album. On September 24, 1985, Dion was a guest on 100 Huntley Street. Return to secular music and RRHOF induction: 1987–1999 In 1987, Dion agreed to do a concert of his old hits at Radio City Music Hall in New York. The two disc CD of this concert was released in 2005, featuring concert photos by Dion's friend, Michael J. Friedman. This concert helped free him to celebrate both his past and his future, and led to a series of special appearances, including a fundraiser for homeless medical relief. There he shared the stage with fans such as Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon and Lou Reed, all of whom cited Dion as one of their prime influences. Dion's autobiography, The Wanderer: Dion's Story, co-authored by Davin Seay, was published in the late-1980s. In 1989, DiMucci returned to rock music with the contemporary album Yo Frankie, which included appearances by Paul Simon, Lou Reed, k.d. lang, Patty Smyth and Bryan Adams. Produced by Dave Edmunds (who also played guitar on the album), "Yo Frankie has a sharp sound while never losing sight of Dion's soulful, doo-wop voice." Overall, "the relevant and nostalgic statement from an artist who helped forge rock & roll's first wave" found his way back on radio and in music videos during this period (both on VH1 and MTV), as well as touring. Dion was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF) in 1989 (with an introduction by Lou Reed). Controversially, when Dion's solo induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame occurred, the other original members of the Belmonts (Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo D'Aleo) were not inducted. A January 3, 2012 Billboard magazine article stated: "There was strife between DiMucci and Belmonts members, who were not pleased when DiMucci was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame without them in 1989." DiMucci joined Scott Kempner and Frank Funaro of the Del-Lords and Mike Mesaros of the Smithereens in a short-lived band called Little Kings. A live album was later released, but not widely circulated or promoted. Grammy Hall of Fame and blues success: 2000–2019 Dion has released several albums with contemporary rock artists. His Déjà Nu album in 2000 found him covering Bruce Springsteen, a major follower over the years. He joined Springsteen onstage in Miami in 2002 for a performance of "If I Should Fall Behind" from Dream on Fire. In 2002, Dion was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for "Runaround Sue". He continues to perform songs from his albums live, including a concert in 2004 being recorded for release on DVD. In January 2006, Dion released Bronx in Blue, an album of blues and country standards, which was nominated for a Grammy Award. It peaked at No. 2 on the Top Blues Albums chart. In November 2007, Dion issued a follow-up album titled Son of Skip James, which peaked at No. 4 on the Top Blues Albums chart. In October 2008, DiMucci released Heroes: Giants of Early Guitar Rock, an album of his covers of early rock and roll songs he considers seminal to the genre. The album includes versions of songs originally recorded by Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Ricky Nelson, Johnny Cash, and many other early rock guitarists. In October 2009, Dion performed "The Wanderer" with Paul Simon at the 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert. An audiobook and paperback by Dion and Mike Aquilina, titled Dion: The Wanderer Talks Truth (Stories, Humor Music), was published in April 2011. DiMucci shares stories about The Bronx in the 1950s, how he ended up on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and his travels with Sam Cooke in the Jim Crow South. Dion released Tank Full of Blues on January 24, 2012. It peaked at No. 3 on the Top Blues Albums chart. While touring on April 5, 2015, Dion performed "Donna the Prima Donna" live in Las Vegas. On July 11, 2015, he held a concert in Westbury, New York. In 2015, Dion released the single "New York Is My Home" with Paul Simon. Dion had previously worked with Simon on his 1989 hit "Written on the Subway Wall". The single was followed by the album New York Is My Home, released February 12, 2016. The album peaked at No. 3 on the Top Blues Album chart. Dion planned four concerts in the U.S. during early 2016 and was invited as a keynote speaker for the 2016 SXSW in Texas. He spoke on the topic A Conversation with Dion: Rock's Enduring Voice on March 17, 2016. Dion appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on April 8, 2016. In May 2017, Dion released Kickin' Child: The Lost Album 1965 from Norton Records, containing songs recorded in 1965 when he was with Columbia Records but were not previously released. Also in May 2017, Richard Barone's Sorrows & Promises: Greenwich Village in the 1960s was released, which included Dion performing a duet of his 1964 song "The Road I'm On (Gloria)" with Barone. The album is a celebration of the New York City scene that Dion was part of during that pivotal era. Recent albums with KTBA Records: 2020–present In June 2020, Dion released Blues with Friends via Keeping the Blues Alive Records (KTBA), a new record label created by Joe Bonamassa and Roy Weisman for Dion and other blues musicians to showcase their talents. The album features Van Morrison, Jeff Beck, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, and others (including liner notes by Bob Dylan). A digital album (and a double vinyl record set), Dion released a music video for every song from the album on his website and social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. The album reached No. 1 on the Billboard Blues Albums chart (9 weeks at No. 1 and 59 weeks total). It also charted in United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Australia. American Songwriter magazine honored Dion's "Song for Sam Cooke (Here in America)" as the "Greatest of the Great 2020 Songs". Dion also released two Christmas songs in 2020: "Hello Christmas" (featuring Amy Grant) and "You Know It's Christmas" (featuring Bonamassa). Both songs were co-written with Mike Aquilina. Music videos were produced for both songs. Dion's song "Blues Comin' On" (with Bonamassa) from Blues with Friends was nominated for a 2021 Blues Music Award. In November 2021, Dion released Stomping Ground (with music videos), which includes extensive liner notes written by Pete Townshend. Except for a cover of "Red House", the songs were written by Dion and Aquilina. Multiple guest artists participate on the album. The album became Dion's second No. 1 blues album. The Wanderer musical On October 13, 2011, an industry-only reading of a new play about Dion's life was performed in New York City. In a December 9, 2011 article from The New York Times, Dion and his collaborator (writer/director Charles Messina) discussed details about the project – titled The Wanderer: The Life and Music of Dion – which will focus on the years between 1957 until the late-1960s, and will feature more than 20 songs from that era as well as new/original music. In the article, Dion gave his perspective on the story: "You know, I always saw my story as a young Sopranos with great music and a Rocky Graziano Somebody Up There Likes Me ending. It's a story of redemption. A rock and roll redemption story!" DiMucci revealed that Michael Wartella would be starring in The Wanderer on December 16, 2017. There was a reading of the musical on November 2, 2017 while working on it continued. On December 4, 2019, it was announced that former New Kids on the Block member Joey McIntyre would star as Johnny, Michael Wartella as Dion, and Christy Altomare as wife, Susan. The first performance was scheduled to start on May 28, 2020, at the Paper Mill Playhouse. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the opening performance was rescheduled to March 24, 2022. Personal life Dion lives in Boca Raton, Florida and New York City. In the late 1990s, Dion visited his old Bronx parish, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and returned to Catholicism. Sparking Dion's reversion to Catholicism was "a chance viewing of The Journey Home program on EWTN." As a practicing Roman Catholic and having struggled with a heroin addiction during his youth, Dion has been involved in prison religion, reaching out to men going through drug recovery. DiMucci was a member of the American board of directors for Renewal Ministries in 2004. Dion appeared on The Journey Home and discussed his wanderings from Catholicism to Protestantism and back again on May 1, 2006. Selective discography With the Belmonts Presenting Dion and the Belmonts (1959) Wish Upon a Star with Dion and the Belmonts (1960) Together Again (1966) Live at Madison Square Garden 1972 (1973) Solo albums Alone with Dion (1961) Runaround Sue (1961) Donna the Prima Donna (1963) Dion (1968) Suite for Late Summer (1972) Born to Be with You (1975) Streetheart (1976) I Put Away My Idols (1983) Yo Frankie (1989) Son of Skip James (2007) Blues with Friends (2020) Stomping Ground (2021) References External links Comprehensive Rolling Stone profile The Spiritual Journey of the Wanderer Who Came Home By Dion Dimucci Dion the Wanderer, Back In Blue (an article at NPR.com) 1939 births Living people American male singers American people of Italian descent American male pop singers American folk singers American rock singers Musicians from the Bronx American performers of Christian music Laurie Records artists Columbia Records artists Singers from New York City Dion and the Belmonts members Doo-wop musicians Catholics from New York (state)

C_57ef3079d2cb4481bdcc3f5beea88674_1

What else was intersting about the group?

Besides "I Wonder Why" being the Belmonts most popular song, What else was interesting about the group?

Dion DiMucci

Bob and Gene Schwartz also signed Dion's friends, the Belmonts, (Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo D'Aleo), a vocal group named for nearby Belmont Avenue, and teamed them, with Dion singing lead. The new group's breakthrough came in early 1958, when "I Wonder Why" (on their newly formed "Laurie" label) made No. 22 on the U.S. charts. Dion said of the Belmonts; "I'd give 'em sounds. I'd give 'em parts and stuff. That's what 'I Wonder Why' was about. We kind of invented this percussive rhythmic sound. If you listen to that song, everybody was doing something different. There's four guys, one guy was doing bass, I was singing lead, one guy's going 'ooh wah ooh,' and another guy's doing tenor. It was totally amazing. When I listen to it today, oftentimes I think, 'man, those kids are talented.'" Their initial hit was followed by "No One Knows" and "Don't Pity Me," which also charted the Billboard Top 100. This success won a place for Dion and the Belmonts on the ill-fated "The Winter Dance Party" tour with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson), Frankie Sardo, and other performers. On February 3, 1959, after a concert stop in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly and others decided to charter a flight to the next venue rather than travel on the tour bus. Dion was invited to accompany the group but decided that he did not want to spend $36 for the flight, as it was the same monthly rent his parents paid for his childhood apartment and he couldn't justify the indulgence. The plane crashed, killing all on board; Holly, Valens, Richardson, and the pilot Roger Peterson. Dion and the Belmonts continued on the tour, along with Frankie Sardo, while Bobby Vee, then an unknown artist, performed in Holly's place at the very next concert. Later, Jimmy Clanton, Frankie Avalon, and Fabian were added to replace the other now-deceased headliners. Dion and the Belmonts' next single, "A Teenager in Love," was released in March 1959, eventually hitting No. 5 on the U.S. pop charts and No. 28 in the UK. The group's biggest hit, "Where or When," was released in November of that year, and reached No. 3 on the U.S. charts. However, in early 1960, Dion checked into hospital for heroin addiction, a problem he had had since his mid-teens. Further single releases for the group that year were less successful. There were musical, personal and financial differences between Dion and members of the Belmonts, and in October 1960, Dion decided to quit for a solo career. By the time of their breakup, all eight Laurie releases had charted on the Hot 100. CANNOTANSWER

Dion was invited to accompany the group but decided that he did not want to spend $36 for the flight,

Dion Francis DiMucci (born July 18, 1939), better known simply as Dion, is an American singer and songwriter whose music has incorporated elements of doo-wop, rock, R&B and blues. Initially as lead singer of Dion and the Belmonts, and then in his solo career, he was one of the most popular American rock and roll performers of the pre-British Invasion era. He had 39 Top 40 hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a solo performer, with the Belmonts or with the Del-Satins. He is best remembered for the singles "Runaround Sue", "The Wanderer", "Ruby Baby" and "Lovers Who Wander", among other hits. Dion's popularity waned in the mid-1960s. Toward the end of the decade, he shifted his style and produced songs that were more mature and contemplative, such as "Abraham, Martin and John". He remained popular in the late 1960s until the mid-1970s, and continues making music. During the 1980s, Dion produced several Christian albums, winning a GMA Dove Award in 1984 for the album I Put Away My Idols. He returned to secular music in the late 1980s with Yo Frankie (1989). Between the mid-2000s and 2021, Dion released six chart-topping blues albums. Critics who had dismissed his early work, labeling him as a teen idol, praised his later work and noted the influence he has had on other musicians. A Grammy-nominated artist, Dion has released nearly 40 albums and scored eight Top 10 hits (ten including the Belmonts) on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. Early life Dion was born to an Italian-American family in the Bronx, New York. As a child, he accompanied his father, Pasquale DiMucci, a vaudeville entertainer, on tour, and developed a love of country music – particularly the work of Hank Williams. He also developed a fondness for the blues and doo-wop musicians he heard performing in local bars and on the radio. His singing was honed on the street corners and local clubs of the Bronx, where he and other neighborhood singers created a cappella riffs. In early 1957, he auditioned for Bob and Gene Schwartz for their short-lived Mohawk Records label. They asked Dion to sing a song which had been arranged by Hugo Montenegro and recorded featuring Vic Damone doing vocals. At first Dion refused, stating the song would sound like something his old fashioned parents would listen to, but the Schwartzes convinced him to give it a try. The backing vocals were by a group called "the Timberlanes", whom Dion had never met. The resulting single, "The Chosen Few", was released under the name "Dion and the Timberlanes", and became a minor regional hit. Dion himself stated in 2019 during an interview at "Crashing the Party" (a radio program related to Norton Records in Brooklyn, New York) that "The Chosen Few" hit the Top Ten locally in Boston and enabled him to perform this song on American Bandstand where the kids at the show started screaming during his performance, which gave him his first impression of being a record star. Writing about this experience later, in his autobiography, The Wanderer, Dion said that he had never met the Timberlanes and did not even know who they were. "The vocal group was so white bread, I went back to my neighborhood and I recruited a bunch of guys – three guys – and we called ourselves Dion and the Belmonts." Career Beginnings with the Belmonts: 1957–1960 Bob and Gene Schwartz signed Dion's friends, the Belmonts (Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo D'Aleo), a vocal group named for the Belmont, Bronx neighborhood, and teamed them up with Dion singing lead. The new group's breakthrough came in early 1958, when "I Wonder Why" (on their newly formed Laurie Records) made No. 22 on the U.S. charts. Dion said of the Belmonts; "I'd give 'em sounds. I'd give 'em parts and stuff. That's what 'I Wonder Why' was about. We kind of invented this percussive rhythmic sound. If you listen to that song, everybody was doing something different. There's four guys, one guy was doing bass, I was singing lead, one guy's going 'ooh wah ooh,' and another guy's doing tenor. It was totally amazing. When I listen to it today, oftentimes I think, 'man, those kids are talented.'" Their initial hit was followed by "No One Knows" and "Don't Pity Me", which also charted the Billboard Top 100. This success won a place for Dion and the Belmonts on the ill-fated "The Winter Dance Party" tour with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson), Frankie Sardo, and other performers. On February 3, 1959, after a concert stop in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly and others decided to charter a flight to the next venue rather than travel on the tour bus. Dion was invited to accompany the group but decided that he did not want to spend $36 for the flight, as it was the same monthly rent his parents paid for his childhood apartment and he could not justify the indulgence. The plane crashed, killing all on board: Holly, Valens, Richardson, and the pilot Roger Peterson. Dion and the Belmonts continued on the tour, along with Frankie Sardo, while Bobby Vee, then an unknown artist, performed in Holly's place at the very next concert. Later, Jimmy Clanton, Frankie Avalon, and Fabian were added to replace the other now-deceased headliners. Dion and the Belmonts' next single, "A Teenager in Love", was released in March 1959, eventually hitting No. 5 on the U.S. pop charts and No. 28 in the UK. The group's biggest hit, "Where or When", was released in November of that year, and reached No. 3 on the U.S. charts. However, in early 1960, Dion checked into hospital for heroin addiction, a problem he had had since his mid-teens. Further single releases for the group that year were less successful. There were musical, personal and financial differences between Dion and members of the Belmonts, and in October 1960, Dion decided to quit for a solo career. By the time of their breakup, all eight Laurie releases had charted on the Hot 100. Solo stardom and touring worldwide: 1960–1964 By the end of 1960, Dion produced his first solo album on Laurie Records, Alone with Dion, released in 1961. The single "Lonely Teenager" rose to No. 12 in the US charts. The name on his solo releases was simply "Dion". Follow-ups "Havin' Fun" and "Kissin' Game" had less success, and the signs were that Dion would drift onto the cabaret circuit. However, he then recorded an up-tempo number co-written with Ernie Maresca with a new vocal group, the Del-Satins. The record, "Runaround Sue", stormed up the U.S. charts, reaching No. 1 in October 1961, and No. 11 in the UK, where he also toured. "Runaround Sue" sold over a million copies, achieving gold disc status. For the next single, Laurie promoted the A-side, "The Majestic", but it was the B-side, Maresca's "The Wanderer", which received more radio play and climbed swiftly up the charts to reach No. 2 in the U.S. in February 1962 and No. 10 in the UK. The 1976 re-release made the UK Top 20. By the end of 1961, Dion had become a major star, touring worldwide and making an appearance in the Columbia Pictures musical film Twist Around the Clock. In 1962, he followed with a string of singles he wrote or co-wrote including "Lovers Who Wander" (No. 3), "Little Diane" (No. 8), "Love Came to Me" (No. 10). He also had successful albums with Runaround Sue and Lovers Who Wander. At the end of 1962, Dion moved from Laurie to Columbia Records. He was the first rock and roll artist signed to the label, which was an anomaly considering that its then-A&R director, Mitch Miller, loathed that particular genre of music. The first Columbia single, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller's "Ruby Baby" (originally a hit for the Drifters) reached No. 2, while "Donna the Prima Donna" and "Drip Drop" (another remake of a Drifters hit) both reached No. 6 in late 1963. (Dion also recorded an Italian version of "Donna the Prima Donna" using the identical backup vocals.) His other Columbia releases were less successful, and problems with his drug addiction and changing public tastes, especially the British Invasion, saw a period of commercial decline. Belmonts reunion and renewed contract: 1965–1968 Following a European tour, Dion returned to the U.S. and was introduced to classic blues by Columbia's John Hammond. To the consternation of his management, he began recording more blues-oriented material, including Willie Dixon's "Hoochie Coochie Man" and "Spoonful", but these releases – some produced by Tom Wilson, with Al Kooper on keyboards – were not commercially successful. In 1965, still with Columbia, Dion formed a new group to back him, The Wanderers, composed of John Falbo on guitar, Pete Baron (Pete Falciglia) on bass, and Carlo Mastrangelo of the Belmonts on drums. They made national appearances on Dick Clark's, Where The Action Is, and The Lloyd Thaxton Show. A number of self-penned tracks were recorded and released unsuccessfully as singles, and did not appear in album format until years later. In June 1965 he recorded fellow Columbia Records's contemporary Bob Dylan's composition "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" a half-year before Them (featuring Van Morrison)'s hit version. In 1966–67, Dion briefly reunited with the Belmonts, recording the LP Together Again for ABC Records. The album was unsuccessful, despite one classic self-penned song, "My Girl the Month of May". Two singles were released from the LP. While neither charted in the United States, they fared better in the UK. "My Girl The Month of May" entered the Radio London "Fab 40" at No. 9 the week of December 25, 1966. A 'turntable' hit at London underground clubs like Middle Earth, the disc received a lot of play from pirate radio DJ's John Peel and Kenny Everett. The follow up, "Movin' Man", reached No. 17 on the "Radio London" charts on Easter Sunday, March 26, 1967. "My Girl The Month of May" was later covered by English artists Alan Bown in 1967, and Island Records artists The Bunch (featuring Sandy Denny and other members of Fairport Convention) in April 1972. During their brief mid-60's reunion, Dion and the Belmonts appeared on the popular Clay Cole Show performing "Berimbau" and "My Girl The Month of May", and occasionally performed at local New York City clubs such as "The Mardi Gras" on Staten Island (April 29, 1967) before disbanding. While Dion's career appeared to be nearing an end, he still retained enough credibility to be, along with Bob Dylan, one of only two rock artists featured on the album cover of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. In April 1968, Dion experienced what he identified as a powerful religious transformation. After getting clean once again from heroin addiction, an experience he documented in his 1970 song "Your Own Backyard", he approached Laurie Records for a new contract. They agreed on the condition that he record the song "Abraham, Martin & John", written by Dick Holler (also the writer of the Royal Guardsmen's "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron") in response to the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, and those of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy during the spring of 1968. The success of this song (released by Dion in August 1968 and later recorded by many others including Marvin Gaye) which reached No. 4 in the US charts and No. 1 in Canada, resuscitated Dion's career. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc. Mature and Christian music period: 1969–1986 For the next few years, Dion's music became radically different, moving to more contemplative and mature material. He released several albums essentially as a singer-songwriter, to moderate sales, moving to the Warner Brothers label in 1969. There followed a live reunion show with the Belmonts at Madison Square Garden on June 2, 1972, which was recorded and released as a live album by Warner. A year later, in 1973, Dion and the original Belmonts performed once more, doing a sold-out concert at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, New York. However, no recording of the 1973 reunion was released. This was followed in 1975 by the album Born to Be with You produced by Phil Spector. The album was a commercial failure, but has been subsequently praised by such artists as Jason Pierce of Spiritualized and Pete Townshend of The Who with the track "Only You Know" being sampled by Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker for his single "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time" from his 2006 solo album Jarvis. In 1978, Dion released an album drawing on many of his teenage influences, Return of the Wanderer, another commercial failure. In December 1979, there was a radical spiritual change in Dion, who had become a born again Christian. Thereafter, his recordings for several years were in a contemporary Christian vein, in which he released five albums on the DaySpring Records label, a division of Word Records in Waco, Texas. These albums reflecting his evangelical Christian convictions were Inside Job (1980), Only Jesus (1981), I Put Away My Idols (1983) which charted at No. 37, Seasons (1984), Kingdom in the Streets (1985) and Velvet & Steel (1986). Several singles were successfully released to Christian radio, notably "Still in the Spirit" from Kingdom in the Streets. In 1984, Dion won the GMA Dove Award (Christian Music Award) for the album I Put Away My Idols. He was also nominated for Grammy Award for Best Gospel Vocal Performance, Male for the same album. On September 24, 1985, Dion was a guest on 100 Huntley Street. Return to secular music and RRHOF induction: 1987–1999 In 1987, Dion agreed to do a concert of his old hits at Radio City Music Hall in New York. The two disc CD of this concert was released in 2005, featuring concert photos by Dion's friend, Michael J. Friedman. This concert helped free him to celebrate both his past and his future, and led to a series of special appearances, including a fundraiser for homeless medical relief. There he shared the stage with fans such as Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon and Lou Reed, all of whom cited Dion as one of their prime influences. Dion's autobiography, The Wanderer: Dion's Story, co-authored by Davin Seay, was published in the late-1980s. In 1989, DiMucci returned to rock music with the contemporary album Yo Frankie, which included appearances by Paul Simon, Lou Reed, k.d. lang, Patty Smyth and Bryan Adams. Produced by Dave Edmunds (who also played guitar on the album), "Yo Frankie has a sharp sound while never losing sight of Dion's soulful, doo-wop voice." Overall, "the relevant and nostalgic statement from an artist who helped forge rock & roll's first wave" found his way back on radio and in music videos during this period (both on VH1 and MTV), as well as touring. Dion was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF) in 1989 (with an introduction by Lou Reed). Controversially, when Dion's solo induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame occurred, the other original members of the Belmonts (Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo D'Aleo) were not inducted. A January 3, 2012 Billboard magazine article stated: "There was strife between DiMucci and Belmonts members, who were not pleased when DiMucci was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame without them in 1989." DiMucci joined Scott Kempner and Frank Funaro of the Del-Lords and Mike Mesaros of the Smithereens in a short-lived band called Little Kings. A live album was later released, but not widely circulated or promoted. Grammy Hall of Fame and blues success: 2000–2019 Dion has released several albums with contemporary rock artists. His Déjà Nu album in 2000 found him covering Bruce Springsteen, a major follower over the years. He joined Springsteen onstage in Miami in 2002 for a performance of "If I Should Fall Behind" from Dream on Fire. In 2002, Dion was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for "Runaround Sue". He continues to perform songs from his albums live, including a concert in 2004 being recorded for release on DVD. In January 2006, Dion released Bronx in Blue, an album of blues and country standards, which was nominated for a Grammy Award. It peaked at No. 2 on the Top Blues Albums chart. In November 2007, Dion issued a follow-up album titled Son of Skip James, which peaked at No. 4 on the Top Blues Albums chart. In October 2008, DiMucci released Heroes: Giants of Early Guitar Rock, an album of his covers of early rock and roll songs he considers seminal to the genre. The album includes versions of songs originally recorded by Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Ricky Nelson, Johnny Cash, and many other early rock guitarists. In October 2009, Dion performed "The Wanderer" with Paul Simon at the 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert. An audiobook and paperback by Dion and Mike Aquilina, titled Dion: The Wanderer Talks Truth (Stories, Humor Music), was published in April 2011. DiMucci shares stories about The Bronx in the 1950s, how he ended up on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and his travels with Sam Cooke in the Jim Crow South. Dion released Tank Full of Blues on January 24, 2012. It peaked at No. 3 on the Top Blues Albums chart. While touring on April 5, 2015, Dion performed "Donna the Prima Donna" live in Las Vegas. On July 11, 2015, he held a concert in Westbury, New York. In 2015, Dion released the single "New York Is My Home" with Paul Simon. Dion had previously worked with Simon on his 1989 hit "Written on the Subway Wall". The single was followed by the album New York Is My Home, released February 12, 2016. The album peaked at No. 3 on the Top Blues Album chart. Dion planned four concerts in the U.S. during early 2016 and was invited as a keynote speaker for the 2016 SXSW in Texas. He spoke on the topic A Conversation with Dion: Rock's Enduring Voice on March 17, 2016. Dion appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on April 8, 2016. In May 2017, Dion released Kickin' Child: The Lost Album 1965 from Norton Records, containing songs recorded in 1965 when he was with Columbia Records but were not previously released. Also in May 2017, Richard Barone's Sorrows & Promises: Greenwich Village in the 1960s was released, which included Dion performing a duet of his 1964 song "The Road I'm On (Gloria)" with Barone. The album is a celebration of the New York City scene that Dion was part of during that pivotal era. Recent albums with KTBA Records: 2020–present In June 2020, Dion released Blues with Friends via Keeping the Blues Alive Records (KTBA), a new record label created by Joe Bonamassa and Roy Weisman for Dion and other blues musicians to showcase their talents. The album features Van Morrison, Jeff Beck, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, and others (including liner notes by Bob Dylan). A digital album (and a double vinyl record set), Dion released a music video for every song from the album on his website and social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. The album reached No. 1 on the Billboard Blues Albums chart (9 weeks at No. 1 and 59 weeks total). It also charted in United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Australia. American Songwriter magazine honored Dion's "Song for Sam Cooke (Here in America)" as the "Greatest of the Great 2020 Songs". Dion also released two Christmas songs in 2020: "Hello Christmas" (featuring Amy Grant) and "You Know It's Christmas" (featuring Bonamassa). Both songs were co-written with Mike Aquilina. Music videos were produced for both songs. Dion's song "Blues Comin' On" (with Bonamassa) from Blues with Friends was nominated for a 2021 Blues Music Award. In November 2021, Dion released Stomping Ground (with music videos), which includes extensive liner notes written by Pete Townshend. Except for a cover of "Red House", the songs were written by Dion and Aquilina. Multiple guest artists participate on the album. The album became Dion's second No. 1 blues album. The Wanderer musical On October 13, 2011, an industry-only reading of a new play about Dion's life was performed in New York City. In a December 9, 2011 article from The New York Times, Dion and his collaborator (writer/director Charles Messina) discussed details about the project – titled The Wanderer: The Life and Music of Dion – which will focus on the years between 1957 until the late-1960s, and will feature more than 20 songs from that era as well as new/original music. In the article, Dion gave his perspective on the story: "You know, I always saw my story as a young Sopranos with great music and a Rocky Graziano Somebody Up There Likes Me ending. It's a story of redemption. A rock and roll redemption story!" DiMucci revealed that Michael Wartella would be starring in The Wanderer on December 16, 2017. There was a reading of the musical on November 2, 2017 while working on it continued. On December 4, 2019, it was announced that former New Kids on the Block member Joey McIntyre would star as Johnny, Michael Wartella as Dion, and Christy Altomare as wife, Susan. The first performance was scheduled to start on May 28, 2020, at the Paper Mill Playhouse. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the opening performance was rescheduled to March 24, 2022. Personal life Dion lives in Boca Raton, Florida and New York City. In the late 1990s, Dion visited his old Bronx parish, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and returned to Catholicism. Sparking Dion's reversion to Catholicism was "a chance viewing of The Journey Home program on EWTN." As a practicing Roman Catholic and having struggled with a heroin addiction during his youth, Dion has been involved in prison religion, reaching out to men going through drug recovery. DiMucci was a member of the American board of directors for Renewal Ministries in 2004. Dion appeared on The Journey Home and discussed his wanderings from Catholicism to Protestantism and back again on May 1, 2006. Selective discography With the Belmonts Presenting Dion and the Belmonts (1959) Wish Upon a Star with Dion and the Belmonts (1960) Together Again (1966) Live at Madison Square Garden 1972 (1973) Solo albums Alone with Dion (1961) Runaround Sue (1961) Donna the Prima Donna (1963) Dion (1968) Suite for Late Summer (1972) Born to Be with You (1975) Streetheart (1976) I Put Away My Idols (1983) Yo Frankie (1989) Son of Skip James (2007) Blues with Friends (2020) Stomping Ground (2021) References External links Comprehensive Rolling Stone profile The Spiritual Journey of the Wanderer Who Came Home By Dion Dimucci Dion the Wanderer, Back In Blue (an article at NPR.com) 1939 births Living people American male singers American people of Italian descent American male pop singers American folk singers American rock singers Musicians from the Bronx American performers of Christian music Laurie Records artists Columbia Records artists Singers from New York City Dion and the Belmonts members Doo-wop musicians Catholics from New York (state)

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How did The Aquabats originate?

How did The Aquabats originate?

The Aquabats! Super Show!

In 1994, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in Brea, California. Influenced as much by cartoons and camp television as theatrical bands like Devo and Oingo Boingo, The Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for their eccentric persona in which they claimed to be a band of superheroes on a quest to save the world and their elaborate stage shows which regularly featured scripted fights with costumed villains alongside similar stunts and comedy sketches. The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough for the group, charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs - a former child actor with ties in the industry - to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television. In 1998, Buena Vista Television helped produce a live-action mini-pilot directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait titled simply The Aquabats!, following the comic misadventures of the then-eight member band in an over-the-top camp style similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves. Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot the following year, using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death!. Independently directed and produced by Jacobs and his creative partner Scott Schultz, the result was a five-minute promo video entitled The Aquabats in Color!. In contrast to the wackier tone of the previous pilot, The Aquabats in Color! was a more action-oriented superhero series modeled after Japanese tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider. According to Jacobs, the Fox Family Channel reportedly expressed interest in the series and ordered production on a proper pilot episode, though following the channel's acquisition by Disney in 2001, the project was cancelled. CANNOTANSWER

musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in

The Aquabats! Super Show! is an American action-comedy musical television series which aired from March 3, 2012 to January 8, 2014 on The Hub Network and resumed as an independent YouTube web series in September 2019. The series was created by Christian Jacobs, and Scott Schultz, both the creators of the Nick Jr. show Yo Gabba Gabba!, and Jason deVilliers. Based on the superhero mythology of The Aquabats, a real-life comedy rock band which series co-creator and lead singer Jacobs formed in 1994, The Aquabats! Super Show! follows the comic adventures of a fictionalized version of the band, a musical group of amateur superheroes, as they haphazardly defend the world from a variety of villains and monsters. Styled similarly to the campy aesthetics of 1960s and 1970s children's television and Japanese tokusatsu, Super Show! utilizes various mediums of visual styles and special effects, mixing live-action storylines with cartoon shorts, parody advertisements and musical interludes. The series' first season concluded on June 16, 2012 following a run of 13 episodes, having met with a largely positive critical reception, consistently high ratings for the channel and a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Children's Series. The series' second season consisted of an initial five episodes which aired through June 2013, with three additional episodes airing in late December and January 2014, receiving similar acclaim and a further seven Daytime Emmy nominations, ultimately winning one for Best Stunt Coordination. In June 2014, co-creator Jacobs officially announced the series' cancellation, following news of The Hub's financial losses which led to the network's rebranding as Discovery Family later that October. In July 2018, The Aquabats launched a successful Kickstarter to help independently finance new episodes of The Aquabats! Super Show!, promoting the campaign with a series of YouTube-exclusive mini-episodes continuing the original series' storyline. On September 28, 2019, The Aquabats premiered the first installment of these new episodes, now a biweekly YouTube series entitled The Aquabats! RadVentures!, though still retaining Super Show!s theme song and title card. Series overview Premise Chronicled in both live-action and animated segments, The Aquabats! Super Show! is centered around the adventures of The Aquabats, a group of superhero rock musicians who travel the countryside on a self-appointed mission to fight evil and "destroy boredom", protecting the world from the villains and creatures who threaten to destroy it while aiming to become a famous rock and roll band in their own right. The Aquabats consist of singer The MC Bat Commander (Christian Jacobs), the swaggering leader of the group; bassist Crash McLarson (Chad Larson), who can grow up to 100 feet in size; drummer Ricky Fitness (Richard Falomir), who has the power of super speed; guitarist EagleBones Falconhawk (Ian Fowles), who's armed with a laser-shooting electric guitar; and keyboardist Jimmy the Robot (James R. Briggs, Jr.), an android. Despite their superhuman strengths and abilities, The Aquabats are quite bumbling, disorganized, and sometimes cowardly when faced with danger; this has in fact led them to be labeled "the world's most inept superheroes". The band lives and travels by way of their "Battletram", a modified classic GMC motorhome which, despite its small exterior, has an implausibly massive interior (similar to the TARDIS from Doctor Who or The Big Bologna from The Kids From C.A.P.E.R.), which contains, among many things, a science lab, a command center, and a living room. The Aquabats' origin story was left intentionally vague throughout the series, a choice Jacobs explains was done for the sake of the viewer's imagination, as he felt kids were more accepting of the inherent absurdity of the premise than adults tend to be: "'There's five guys. This is what each of the five guys does. There are monsters. They're gonna try to fight them'. It's so simple. And I think that's why it's so awesome with kids—they just take it and run with it". In the first five episodes of season two, each member of The Aquabats shares their memory of how they joined the band via animated flashback sequences; however, all of these flashbacks directly and intentionally contradict each other, leaving it unknown which—if any—could be considered officially canonical. Format and influences The Aquabats! Super Show! juxtaposes both live-action and animated segments starring The Aquabats, interwoven with various tangential skits and cartoon interstitials. The live-action storylines are the primary focus of each episode, following a self-contained villain of the week formula. In the first season, each episode featured brief anime-styled cartoon shorts which one of the characters would introduce at a random point of the show, often by finding "A Cartoon" (represented by a miniature television set) in an absurd location. Unlike the live-action segments, these cartoons followed a serialized story arc, with each installment ending in a cliffhanger to be resolved in the next episode. In season two, this format was replaced with a series of animated flashbacks recounting the origins of The Aquabats, each by a different animation studio and in a different animation style. Between these segments are pantomime cartoon shorts starring "Lil' Bat", The Aquabats' anthropomorphic bat mascot, and live-action parody commercials for outlandish fictional products, the latter of which has long been a staple of The Aquabats' multi-media stage shows. Jacobs says the concept behind Super Show! was something he had always dreamed of doing, making a "campy, live-action, funky kid's show" in the vein of the 1960s and 1970s television that he and the rest of the series' producers had grown up with. While the show pays homage to many facets of pop culture, Jacobs has named the 1960s Batman television series as the primary influence on Super Show!s "obviously silly" tone and visual style, ranging from set design to the trademark use of dutch angles for villain scenes. Other notable influences Jacobs has repeatedly mentioned include the works of Sid and Marty Krofft and Hanna-Barbera, Japanese tokusatsu series such as Ultraman and Johnny Sokko And His Flying Robot, the Shaw Brothers and Hong Kong cinema, and shows including Danger Island, Star Trek, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, and Pee-wee's Playhouse, noting "there's a good 30 years worth of television culture packed into these 22-minute episodes". Demographic As The Hub's key demographic were children aged 6 to 12, Super Show! was ostensibly targeted towards said age group, though Jacobs has stated that the series primarily aimed to appeal to an all-ages crowd, with the intent of creating entertainment that both kids and parents can watch and enjoy together or separately. In interviews prior to the series' premiere, he explained that this was merely an extension of The Aquabats' own family-friendly ethos: "There's just obviously something about the costumes and being superheroes that really appeals to younger kids, and I think we always knew that as a band...I think we'll want to put things in [the show] for an older audience, because we realize we have an older audience, but then also we want the young kids, to not have it go over their heads". Production history History and previous attempts at a series In 1994, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in Brea, California. Influenced as much by cartoons and camp television as theatrical bands like Devo and Oingo Boingo, The Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for their eccentric persona in which they claimed to be a band of superheroes on a quest to save the world and their elaborate stage shows which regularly featured scripted fights with costumed villains alongside similar stunts and comedy sketches. The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough for the group, charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs – a former child actor with ties in the industry – to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television. In 1998, Buena Vista Television helped produce a live-action mini-pilot directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait titled simply The Aquabats!, following the comic misadventures of the then-eight member band in an over-the-top camp style similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves. Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot the following year, using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death!. Independently directed and produced by Jacobs and his creative partner Scott Schultz, the result was a five-minute promo video entitled The Aquabats in Color!. In contrast to the wackier tone of the previous pilot, The Aquabats in Color! was a more action-oriented superhero series modeled after Japanese tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider. According to Jacobs, the Fox Family Channel reportedly expressed interest in the series and ordered production on a proper pilot episode, though following the channel's acquisition by Disney in 2001, the project was cancelled. The Aquabats! Super Show! pilot (2008) In 2005, Jacobs and Schultz formed the Orange County-based production company The Magic Store, focusing on creating family-oriented television entertainment. One of the company's independently produced pilots, the children's television series Yo Gabba Gabba!, was eventually picked up as a series by Viacoms Nick Jr. channel, premiering in August 2007 and ultimately becoming an award-winning and critically acclaimed international success. In the wake of the series' popularity, Jacobs and Schultz persuaded Yo Gabba Gabba!s joint production company Wild Brain to help produce a new pilot based around The Aquabats in conjuncture with The Magic Store. Again creatively spearheaded by Jacobs and Schultz, The Aquabats' third pilot, titled The Aquabats! Super Show!, was shot on location throughout southern California in late 2007 and early 2008. Part of this filming took place at a free invitation-only concert for members of the band's official fan club at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles on January 12, 2008. While The Aquabats' previous pilots were short, live-action promotional videos, The Aquabats! Super Show! was a fully realized 22-minute episode featuring two separate storylines based on the adventures of The Aquabats, one live-action and one animated, and interspersed with parody commercials and live footage of the band. Speaking on the decision to structure the show in such a varied format, Jacobs said "[w]e did that for a strategic reason – some networks like cartoons more than other networks. We wanted to say, 'this could be both shows'." Following a period of post-production, The Aquabats began widely self-promoting Super Show! in June 2008, redesigning their website to promote the pilot and releasing a teaser trailer and several exclusive clips through an official Super Show! YouTube channel. On July 25, 2008, the band screened the full pilot at a concert in San Diego held during the weekend of the San Diego Comic-Con, while a segment of the episode was hosted on Boing Boing the same day. In 2009, Cartoon Network allegedly picked the series up for a run of 22 episodes, though following major staff changes within the company—which, according to Jacobs, included the termination of the executives who had green-lighted Super Show!—the project was again cancelled. The Hub and season one After several more unsuccessful network pitches into the 2010s, The Aquabats! Super Show! was finally picked up as a series by family cable channel The Hub, a joint venture between Hasbro and Discovery which launched in 2010 as a replacement for Discovery Kids. The Hub formally announced the series in a press release on March 23, 2011, revealing Super Show! would be given a first season run of 13 episodes, produced in conjuncture with FremantleMedia. In promotion of the series, The Aquabats appeared as part of a panel at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con where they discussed their initial plans for the show, while The Hub sponsored an Aquabats concert held at the nearby House of Blues during the same weekend. Production on season one of Super Show! officially began in May 2011. The entirety of the first season was shot within and around The Aquabats' hometown of Orange County, California; according to the first season DVD audio commentary, episodes were shot on location in the cities of Irvine, Silverado, Yorba Linda, Huntington Beach and Fullerton, while a private sound stage in Santa Ana was used for interior shots of the Battletram. A public Aquabats concert held at The Glass House club in Pomona on November 5, 2011 was also filmed to provide live footage of the band which is featured in the series' opening credits montage and several individual episodes. Much of Super Show!s staff consist of friends and colleagues of The Aquabats who've previously worked with the band on various projects, ranging from members of Yo Gabba Gabba!s production team to fellow musicians within the southern California music scene. Among the more notable examples include Dallas McLaughlin and Matthew Gorney, both members of the San Diego hip hop band Bad Credit, who prominently served as writers, composers and performers, Warren Fitzgerald, guitarist for The Vandals, who was hired as a writer and music director, internet sketch comedy group Mega64 were commissioned to produce original material, primarily the series' parody commercials, and Japanese artist Pey, who had designed much of The Aquabats' promotional art and merchandise during the 2000s, was hired to design the season's animated segments. Additionally, several industry professionals were brought in to help work on the show: Dani Michaeli, a staff writer on SpongeBob SquarePants, was hired as the series' story editor, while Matt Chapman, co-creator of the internet Flash cartoon Homestar Runner, acted as a writer, director and actor on several episodes. As none of the members besides Jacobs had any previous acting experience, comedian Matt Walsh of the Upright Citizens Brigade was brought in to help teach The Aquabats comedic acting and timing. In further homage to the original Batman series, Super Show! features a variety of celebrity cameo appearances. The series' first season included appearances from actors Jon Heder, Lou Diamond Phillips and Samm Levine, comedians Rip Taylor, Paul Scheer and Paul Rust, and comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic, who appeared in two episodes as different characters. The first season also included several "Easter egg" cameos from original Aquabats members Corey "Chainsaw" Pollock and Boyd "Catboy" Terry, as well as from fellow musicians Warren Fitzgerald and Art Mitchell of the band Supernova. Despite having been originally announced as part of The Hub's 2011 Fall line-up, production delays postponed Super Show!s premiere to early 2012. The series' marketing campaign began in December 2011, with a later announcement of an official premiere date confirmed for March 3, 2012. Following a non-consecutive run of 13 episodes, the first-season finale aired on June 16, 2012. Season two On October 16, 2012, The Aquabats and The Hub confirmed production on new episodes of Super Show! through the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, announcing a tentative debut date of Spring 2013. Principal photography on season two began on October 22 and wrapped on December 1. Unlike the first season, the majority of season two was shot in and around Salt Lake City, Utah, which Jacobs explained was considerably less expensive than shooting in California. While no changes were made to Super Shows creative team, in December 2012 it was announced that season two would introduce the series' first guest director, musician and comic book writer Gerard Way, who co-directed and co-wrote the season finale "The AntiBats!" with Jacobs and deVilliers. Way's involvement with the series was heavily covered by the music press in the wake of the March 2013 break-up of his popular alternative rock band My Chemical Romance. Among the guest stars featured in season two were professional skateboarders Tony Hawk and Eric Koston, Devo frontman and Yo Gabba Gabba! cast member Mark Mothersbaugh, internet celebrity Leslie Hall, actor Martin Starr and My Chemical Romance bassist Mikey Way. On December 2, 2012, deVilliers revealed on his Twitter account that the upcoming season would consist of only five new episodes, in what he called more "season 1.5" than a "season 2", though mentioned the possibility of more being made in the future. On May 1, 2013, it was announced through Entertainment Weekly that the series' second season would begin airing on June 1. After a run of only five episodes, the season concluded on June 29, 2013. 2013–2014 specials On August 22, 2013, series performer Chad Larson confirmed via Twitter that three additional episodes of Super Show! were being filmed near the end of the year, "and maybe more next". Principal photography on these episodes eventually began in Utah in early October. Throughout the month, The Aquabats posted numerous pictures of production on the new episodes on their Twitter and Instagram accounts, some of which revealed production code numbers of 301, 302 and 303, ostensibly indicating what would be a third season. Though these numbers were later verified by the Internet Movie Database, a November press release from The Hub explicitly referred to these three episodes as "specials". The first of these specials, "Christmas with The Aquabats!", aired on December 21, featuring comedians Robert Smigel and Matt Walsh in guest roles. The second of these episodes, "The Shark Fighter!" (based on The Aquabats' song of the same name), featuring comedian Rhys Darby, aired the following week on December 28, while the final special "Kitty Litter!" aired on January 18, 2014. "Kitty Litter!" was helmed by another guest director, Munn Powell, best known for his work as cinematographer on the Jared and Jerusha Hess films Napoleon Dynamite and Gentlemen Broncos. Following this short run of episodes, there was no confirmation by either The Hub or The Aquabats as to the production of any future episodes. In a December 2013 interview, Christian Jacobs acknowledged the network's unusually small order of episodes but didn't elaborate on any possible reasoning. In the same interview, he stated that the band had initially prepared for another order of 13 episodes, having written as many scripts for potential future episodes. On May 1, 2014, the nominees for the 2014 Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, revealing that Super Show! had been nominated for five awards in four categories, including the award for Best Writing in a Children's Series for the episode "The AntiBats!". The awards ceremony was held on June 22, 2014, where the series ultimately won the award for Best Stunt Coordination for stuntman Skip Carlson. Cancellation by The Hub and hiatus In mid-2014, it was announced in entertainment press that Hasbro and Discovery had been in the process of rebranding The Hub following what they saw to be disappointing returns for the channel, changes which included the departure of CEO Margaret Loesch, who was instrumental in acquiring Super Show! as a series. In a Huffington Post feature about The Aquabats prior to the band's appearance at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, it was revealed that The Hub had opted not to renew Super Show! for a third season, effectively cancelling the series. Jacobs admitted he was surprised by this turn of events, noting "Everything we heard was that the show has been a real Cinderella story for the Hub and that it was rating really well with viewers. We just assumed that we'd eventually go back into production or at least get picked up for Season 3", but ultimately concluded "it is what it is" in regard to the network's decision. Despite this, Jacobs remained optimistic about the series' future, saying "Given that we now live in a world where people are streaming TV shows directly onto their iPhones & computers, and given that companies like Netflix & Yahoo! are now picking up so much new content for their customers...I just find it hard to believe that The Aquabats! Super Show! is really over. I mean, we haven't even made any toys yet". He concluded by stating "It took us almost 15 years to get that TV series made. And even though we've got a bunch more concert dates lined up for the rest of this year, our first priority is to find a new home for The Aquabats! Super Show!". On March 31, 2015, the nominees for the 42nd annual Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, with Super Show! earning nominations for Best SFX Mixer (Blaine Stewart) and Best Stunt Coordinator (Braxton McAllister). On June 27, 2015, The Aquabats screened the entire first season of Super Show! before a sold-out crowd at The Frida Cinema in downtown Santa Ana, which was accompanied by a live performance by the band and Q&A sessions with The Aquabats and numerous members of the cast and crew. A similar presentation of the entire second season – including the three additional specials – took place at The Art Theater in Long Beach on December 16, 2017, coinciding with the release of the second season Blu-ray. Bring Back The Aquabats! Kickstarter campaign Following weeks of teasing a major announcement, The Aquabats launched a Kickstarter campaign on July 31, 2018 to help finance the return of The Aquabats! Super Show! as well as new studio albums from the band at a minimum projected cost of $1.1 million. The Aquabats promoted their campaign with a video featuring a slew of celebrity cameos, including Super Show! guest stars "Weird Al" Yankovic, Robert Smigel (as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog), Matt Chapman (as Homestar Runner and Strong Bad), former Aquabats member Travis Barker, Tony Kanal, Tom Dumont, Oscar Nunez, Kate Micucci, Blake Anderson, Imagine Dragons, Felicia Day and Tom Lennon, all of whom appeared in The Aquabats' trademark uniforms and spoke the Kickstarter's promotional slogan "I am The Aquabats"/"We are The Aquabats". Most prominently featured, however, was comedian Jack Black, who was later confirmed by the campaign's press releases to act as executive producer for the series' return. Along with their Kickstarter, the band began releasing a series of Super Show! "mini-episodes", depicting the MC Bat Commander's metafictional quest to reunite the estranged Aquabats following the series' cancellation. The band confirmed that as the Kickstarter progresses, further "mini-episodes" will be released to both promote the campaign as well as act as a continuation of Super Show!. By August 28, mere days before the campaign's end date of September 1, The Aquabats' Kickstarter had raised only $601,629 of its projected $1.1 million goal. The funding was subsequently cancelled and the campaign was rebooted the same day with a smaller goal of $100,000 to instead finance one new album and the continued production of the Super Show!! "mini-episodes". The project's goal was met within minutes. Music Original music for The Aquabats! Super Show! was primarily composed and performed by The Aquabats themselves, with additional scoring on most episodes provided by Matthew Gorney, Warren Fitzgerald or individual credits for Aquabats members James R. Briggs, Jr., Richard Falomir and Ian Fowles. Fitzgerald, guitarist for punk rock band The Vandals and former member of Oingo Boingo, acted as the series' music supervisor. The theme song to Super Show!, "Super Show Theme Song!", was co-written by The Aquabats and Fitzgerald. Whereas most musically oriented shows like The Monkees typically break the narrative of an episode for a music video performance of a standalone song, each episode of Super Show! typically features one or two unique songs that tied directly into the plot, usually about and performed during the events of a particular scene. Most of these songs are rather brief, averaging a running time of just under a minute; Jacobs stated that many of the show's original songs were recorded as full-length pieces but trimmed down for inclusion in an episode, simply due to the show "trying to pack so much into 22 minutes". Shortly after Super Show!s premiere, Jacobs confirmed plans to eventually release the series' original full-length songs as a soundtrack album. However, these plans wouldn't fully come to fruition until 2019; in a 2018 interview, Jacobs retrospectively revealed that the album had been long completed but the band "hadn't had all the rights tied up" until then. The first original and full-length recordings from the series' first season debuted in July 2017, when "Burger Rain" and "Beat Fishin'" were released as a tour-exclusive 7" single. Songs from the series' first season were eventually compiled as The Aquabats! Super Show! Television Soundtrack: Volume One, which was released digitally in March 2019 and then onto physical media the following June, where it became The Aquabats' highest-charting album to date, debuting at the top of Billboards Top Heatseekers chart and at 165 on the Billboard 200. Cast and characters See: List of The Aquabats! Super Show! characters The Aquabats! Super Show! stars and is based upon fictionalized versions of the then-current (since 2006) line-up of the California comedy rock band The Aquabats. Adapting the backstory the band has used for the entirety of their professional career, Super Show! depicts The Aquabats as a group of bumbling, out-of-shape superheroes on a self-appointed mission to fight the forces of evil, presented in both live-action and animated segments. The five members of The Aquabats are: The MC Bat Commander (played and voiced by Christian Jacobs) – The Aquabats' singer and de facto leader of the team. Though he doesn't have any superpowers of his own and is often quite stubborn and naive, the Commander is shown to be an effective strategist whose sharp leadership skills, bravery and determination regularly drive the band towards victory. Crash McLarson (played and voiced by Chad Larson) – The band's bass guitarist, who has the frequently uncontrollable ability to grow upwards of 100 feet in size when under emotional stress. Despite being the largest and strongest of The Aquabats, Crash has a gentle, childlike demeanor bordering on slight dim-wittedness, and as such is usually the most cowardly member of the team. Jimmy the Robot (played and voiced by James R. Briggs, Jr.) – The Aquabats' keyboardist. As his name implies, Jimmy is an android whose mechanical body houses a variety of built-in gadgets and weaponry, plus a comprehensive knowledge database which earns him the position of the group's resident scientist. Being a robot, Jimmy is generally perplexed by human emotions and behavior. Ricky Fitness (played and voiced by Richard Falomir) – the band's drummer, Ricky possesses the power of super speed. Being the most physically fit and health-conscious member of The Aquabats, some of the series' running gags revolve around Ricky's status as a handsome ladies' man and his fondness for "fresh, healthy veggies" in contrast to the rest of the team's voracious affinity for junk food. EagleBones Falconhawk (played and voiced by Ian Fowles) – The Aquabats' guitarist. The cocky and boyish maverick of the team, EagleBones is highly proficient on his custom weaponized electric guitar which shoots lasers from its headstock. Following a spiritual encounter early in season one, EagleBones also has the gift of second sight and is accompanied by "The Dude", an invisible spirit eagle whom he summons to aide The Aquabats in battle. Voice actor and writer Mr. Lawrence provided the minimal narration for both seasons of Super Show!s live-action segments, while staff writer Kyle McCulloch narrated the first season's animated segments. Guest stars and recurring characters Though each episode of the series introduced a new villain, ally and/or celebrity cameo, Super Show! never featured any major recurring characters throughout its run. However, every episode of the show included a very brief appearance by a character fans dubbed the "Fox Man", a man in a cheap-looking fox costume played by visual effects supervisor Joel Fox, who would appear hidden in the background of a random scene as an Easter egg for viewers to spot, although his character was never explained within the context of the series. Comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic and comedian Paul Rust were the only two guest actors to appear in two episodes: Yankovic played two different roles as the President of the United States and superhero SuperMagic PowerMan! (in a 2012 interview, Jacobs alluded to the two possibly being the same character, though this isn't implied within the series), while Rust played a boorish slacker named Ronmark, first appearing in live-action in a first-season episode and subsequently lending his voice to a mutated monster version of the character in part of a second-season episode. Episodes Distribution International broadcast Outside of North America, The Aquabats! Super Show! broadcast in Australia on the children's public broadcasting channel ABC3 and in the United Kingdom on the children's network CITV. Home media Coinciding with the run of the first season, each new episode of The Aquabats! Super Show! was released through the iTunes Store for digital download. Prior to the series debut, a season pass was made available for purchase to enable viewers to automatically receive a download of each new episode on its airdate. The first season of Super Show! was added to the video streaming service Netflix on December 1, 2012, later being added to Hulu on December 21. Unlike the first season, the series' second season was not made available for iTunes pre-order, nor were episodes released for purchase. Though each episode was briefly streamed on The Hub's official website, none of the seasons' episodes were made available on Hulu, Netflix or similar streaming services. Shout! Factory had the DVD publishing rights for The Aquabats! Super Show! within Region 1 for release of the first season. The company first announced their acquisition of the series and plans for a future DVD in a press release dated August 6, 2012, though did not initially confirm a set release date until several months later. On May 21, 2013, the first season of Super Show! was released on a two-disc DVD set. On November 22, 2017, in conjunction with their announcement of a season two theatrical screening, The Aquabats confirmed an independent Blu-ray release for season two, including the three specials often considered a "season three". On December 5, pre-orders were launched on The Aquabats' merchandising site for an official release date of December 22, though copies were first made for public sale at the second season theatrical screening on December 16. Starting in December 2014, The Aquabats gradually began uploading the series' full episodes onto their official YouTube channel. As of August 2019, all 21 episodes of Super Show! and its pilot episode have been publicly uploaded to their account. Critical reception Critical response to The Aquabats! Super Show! was predominantly positive, with most reviewers praising the series' intentionally campy tone and offbeat humor. The Onions The A.V. Club gave the series premiere an A− rating, describing it as "a loving homage to basically everything ever done by the brothers Krofft": "the show adeptly flips from humor to melodrama to action, providing some awesomely cheap special effects, goofy songs, and gags that range from slapstick to sublime", summarizing "there's so much here that both kids and parents will be able to enjoy the proceedings on their own respective levels and rarely find themselves bored". Brian Lowry of Variety wrote "you don't have to laugh at everything to admire the effort and sheer silliness", calling the show a "goofy and nostalgic" throwback to the "children's TV of baby boomers' youth, down to crappy production values and awful-looking 'monsters' that work to its advantage". He summarized "Although this Hub series at times feels like an SNL skit stretched to a half-hour, its sly mix of music, live-action crime-fighting, cartoons and mock ads ought to develop a cult following—and might be more popular with parents, at least those with the geek gene, than their kids". Technology magazine Wired was consistently positive towards the series, calling it both "wonderfully strange" and "delightfully deranged", writing "[f]illed with self-deprecating music videos, toon interludes and ludicrous villains, The Aquabats! Super Show! has become one of television's strangely comforting finds". Common Sense Media, who review shows based on age-appropriate content, gave Super Show! a rating of 4 out of 5 stars, calling it "demented and manic...fun by sheer dint of how many jokes, visual and otherwise, are thrown at the screen, both those calculated to appeal to kids and adults". The site praised the series for its lighter and sillier tone in comparison to more violent live-action superhero fare, and considered the "kind-hearted" Aquabats to be relatively positive role models. However, the reviewer suggested the show's violence and creatures may be too intense for very young children, and pointed out a distinct lack of central female characters. Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times offered a more indifferent opinion, calling The Aquabats "indescribably odd" and the series "frenetic, semicoherent and generally harmless. Also somewhat hallucinogenic", noting Super Show!s writing "may be over the heads of the 2-to-12 set", suggesting its most receptive audience might be "the college drinking-game crowd". Awards and nominations The Aquabats! Super Show! was nominated for the following awards: Daytime Emmy Award References External links Official website of The Aquabats The Aquabats 2010s American children's television series 2010s American musical comedy television series 2010s American satirical television series 2010s American sketch comedy television series 2010s American superhero comedy television series 2012 American television series debuts 2014 American television series endings American children's adventure television series American children's musical television series American television series with live action and animation Children's sketch comedy English-language television shows Television series by Fremantle (company) Television shows set in Orange County, California American television shows featuring puppetry Discovery Family original programming

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When did they form?

When did The Aquabats form?

The Aquabats! Super Show!

In 1994, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in Brea, California. Influenced as much by cartoons and camp television as theatrical bands like Devo and Oingo Boingo, The Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for their eccentric persona in which they claimed to be a band of superheroes on a quest to save the world and their elaborate stage shows which regularly featured scripted fights with costumed villains alongside similar stunts and comedy sketches. The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough for the group, charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs - a former child actor with ties in the industry - to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television. In 1998, Buena Vista Television helped produce a live-action mini-pilot directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait titled simply The Aquabats!, following the comic misadventures of the then-eight member band in an over-the-top camp style similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves. Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot the following year, using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death!. Independently directed and produced by Jacobs and his creative partner Scott Schultz, the result was a five-minute promo video entitled The Aquabats in Color!. In contrast to the wackier tone of the previous pilot, The Aquabats in Color! was a more action-oriented superhero series modeled after Japanese tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider. According to Jacobs, the Fox Family Channel reportedly expressed interest in the series and ordered production on a proper pilot episode, though following the channel's acquisition by Disney in 2001, the project was cancelled. CANNOTANSWER

In 1994,

The Aquabats! Super Show! is an American action-comedy musical television series which aired from March 3, 2012 to January 8, 2014 on The Hub Network and resumed as an independent YouTube web series in September 2019. The series was created by Christian Jacobs, and Scott Schultz, both the creators of the Nick Jr. show Yo Gabba Gabba!, and Jason deVilliers. Based on the superhero mythology of The Aquabats, a real-life comedy rock band which series co-creator and lead singer Jacobs formed in 1994, The Aquabats! Super Show! follows the comic adventures of a fictionalized version of the band, a musical group of amateur superheroes, as they haphazardly defend the world from a variety of villains and monsters. Styled similarly to the campy aesthetics of 1960s and 1970s children's television and Japanese tokusatsu, Super Show! utilizes various mediums of visual styles and special effects, mixing live-action storylines with cartoon shorts, parody advertisements and musical interludes. The series' first season concluded on June 16, 2012 following a run of 13 episodes, having met with a largely positive critical reception, consistently high ratings for the channel and a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Children's Series. The series' second season consisted of an initial five episodes which aired through June 2013, with three additional episodes airing in late December and January 2014, receiving similar acclaim and a further seven Daytime Emmy nominations, ultimately winning one for Best Stunt Coordination. In June 2014, co-creator Jacobs officially announced the series' cancellation, following news of The Hub's financial losses which led to the network's rebranding as Discovery Family later that October. In July 2018, The Aquabats launched a successful Kickstarter to help independently finance new episodes of The Aquabats! Super Show!, promoting the campaign with a series of YouTube-exclusive mini-episodes continuing the original series' storyline. On September 28, 2019, The Aquabats premiered the first installment of these new episodes, now a biweekly YouTube series entitled The Aquabats! RadVentures!, though still retaining Super Show!s theme song and title card. Series overview Premise Chronicled in both live-action and animated segments, The Aquabats! Super Show! is centered around the adventures of The Aquabats, a group of superhero rock musicians who travel the countryside on a self-appointed mission to fight evil and "destroy boredom", protecting the world from the villains and creatures who threaten to destroy it while aiming to become a famous rock and roll band in their own right. The Aquabats consist of singer The MC Bat Commander (Christian Jacobs), the swaggering leader of the group; bassist Crash McLarson (Chad Larson), who can grow up to 100 feet in size; drummer Ricky Fitness (Richard Falomir), who has the power of super speed; guitarist EagleBones Falconhawk (Ian Fowles), who's armed with a laser-shooting electric guitar; and keyboardist Jimmy the Robot (James R. Briggs, Jr.), an android. Despite their superhuman strengths and abilities, The Aquabats are quite bumbling, disorganized, and sometimes cowardly when faced with danger; this has in fact led them to be labeled "the world's most inept superheroes". The band lives and travels by way of their "Battletram", a modified classic GMC motorhome which, despite its small exterior, has an implausibly massive interior (similar to the TARDIS from Doctor Who or The Big Bologna from The Kids From C.A.P.E.R.), which contains, among many things, a science lab, a command center, and a living room. The Aquabats' origin story was left intentionally vague throughout the series, a choice Jacobs explains was done for the sake of the viewer's imagination, as he felt kids were more accepting of the inherent absurdity of the premise than adults tend to be: "'There's five guys. This is what each of the five guys does. There are monsters. They're gonna try to fight them'. It's so simple. And I think that's why it's so awesome with kids—they just take it and run with it". In the first five episodes of season two, each member of The Aquabats shares their memory of how they joined the band via animated flashback sequences; however, all of these flashbacks directly and intentionally contradict each other, leaving it unknown which—if any—could be considered officially canonical. Format and influences The Aquabats! Super Show! juxtaposes both live-action and animated segments starring The Aquabats, interwoven with various tangential skits and cartoon interstitials. The live-action storylines are the primary focus of each episode, following a self-contained villain of the week formula. In the first season, each episode featured brief anime-styled cartoon shorts which one of the characters would introduce at a random point of the show, often by finding "A Cartoon" (represented by a miniature television set) in an absurd location. Unlike the live-action segments, these cartoons followed a serialized story arc, with each installment ending in a cliffhanger to be resolved in the next episode. In season two, this format was replaced with a series of animated flashbacks recounting the origins of The Aquabats, each by a different animation studio and in a different animation style. Between these segments are pantomime cartoon shorts starring "Lil' Bat", The Aquabats' anthropomorphic bat mascot, and live-action parody commercials for outlandish fictional products, the latter of which has long been a staple of The Aquabats' multi-media stage shows. Jacobs says the concept behind Super Show! was something he had always dreamed of doing, making a "campy, live-action, funky kid's show" in the vein of the 1960s and 1970s television that he and the rest of the series' producers had grown up with. While the show pays homage to many facets of pop culture, Jacobs has named the 1960s Batman television series as the primary influence on Super Show!s "obviously silly" tone and visual style, ranging from set design to the trademark use of dutch angles for villain scenes. Other notable influences Jacobs has repeatedly mentioned include the works of Sid and Marty Krofft and Hanna-Barbera, Japanese tokusatsu series such as Ultraman and Johnny Sokko And His Flying Robot, the Shaw Brothers and Hong Kong cinema, and shows including Danger Island, Star Trek, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, and Pee-wee's Playhouse, noting "there's a good 30 years worth of television culture packed into these 22-minute episodes". Demographic As The Hub's key demographic were children aged 6 to 12, Super Show! was ostensibly targeted towards said age group, though Jacobs has stated that the series primarily aimed to appeal to an all-ages crowd, with the intent of creating entertainment that both kids and parents can watch and enjoy together or separately. In interviews prior to the series' premiere, he explained that this was merely an extension of The Aquabats' own family-friendly ethos: "There's just obviously something about the costumes and being superheroes that really appeals to younger kids, and I think we always knew that as a band...I think we'll want to put things in [the show] for an older audience, because we realize we have an older audience, but then also we want the young kids, to not have it go over their heads". Production history History and previous attempts at a series In 1994, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in Brea, California. Influenced as much by cartoons and camp television as theatrical bands like Devo and Oingo Boingo, The Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for their eccentric persona in which they claimed to be a band of superheroes on a quest to save the world and their elaborate stage shows which regularly featured scripted fights with costumed villains alongside similar stunts and comedy sketches. The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough for the group, charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs – a former child actor with ties in the industry – to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television. In 1998, Buena Vista Television helped produce a live-action mini-pilot directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait titled simply The Aquabats!, following the comic misadventures of the then-eight member band in an over-the-top camp style similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves. Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot the following year, using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death!. Independently directed and produced by Jacobs and his creative partner Scott Schultz, the result was a five-minute promo video entitled The Aquabats in Color!. In contrast to the wackier tone of the previous pilot, The Aquabats in Color! was a more action-oriented superhero series modeled after Japanese tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider. According to Jacobs, the Fox Family Channel reportedly expressed interest in the series and ordered production on a proper pilot episode, though following the channel's acquisition by Disney in 2001, the project was cancelled. The Aquabats! Super Show! pilot (2008) In 2005, Jacobs and Schultz formed the Orange County-based production company The Magic Store, focusing on creating family-oriented television entertainment. One of the company's independently produced pilots, the children's television series Yo Gabba Gabba!, was eventually picked up as a series by Viacoms Nick Jr. channel, premiering in August 2007 and ultimately becoming an award-winning and critically acclaimed international success. In the wake of the series' popularity, Jacobs and Schultz persuaded Yo Gabba Gabba!s joint production company Wild Brain to help produce a new pilot based around The Aquabats in conjuncture with The Magic Store. Again creatively spearheaded by Jacobs and Schultz, The Aquabats' third pilot, titled The Aquabats! Super Show!, was shot on location throughout southern California in late 2007 and early 2008. Part of this filming took place at a free invitation-only concert for members of the band's official fan club at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles on January 12, 2008. While The Aquabats' previous pilots were short, live-action promotional videos, The Aquabats! Super Show! was a fully realized 22-minute episode featuring two separate storylines based on the adventures of The Aquabats, one live-action and one animated, and interspersed with parody commercials and live footage of the band. Speaking on the decision to structure the show in such a varied format, Jacobs said "[w]e did that for a strategic reason – some networks like cartoons more than other networks. We wanted to say, 'this could be both shows'." Following a period of post-production, The Aquabats began widely self-promoting Super Show! in June 2008, redesigning their website to promote the pilot and releasing a teaser trailer and several exclusive clips through an official Super Show! YouTube channel. On July 25, 2008, the band screened the full pilot at a concert in San Diego held during the weekend of the San Diego Comic-Con, while a segment of the episode was hosted on Boing Boing the same day. In 2009, Cartoon Network allegedly picked the series up for a run of 22 episodes, though following major staff changes within the company—which, according to Jacobs, included the termination of the executives who had green-lighted Super Show!—the project was again cancelled. The Hub and season one After several more unsuccessful network pitches into the 2010s, The Aquabats! Super Show! was finally picked up as a series by family cable channel The Hub, a joint venture between Hasbro and Discovery which launched in 2010 as a replacement for Discovery Kids. The Hub formally announced the series in a press release on March 23, 2011, revealing Super Show! would be given a first season run of 13 episodes, produced in conjuncture with FremantleMedia. In promotion of the series, The Aquabats appeared as part of a panel at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con where they discussed their initial plans for the show, while The Hub sponsored an Aquabats concert held at the nearby House of Blues during the same weekend. Production on season one of Super Show! officially began in May 2011. The entirety of the first season was shot within and around The Aquabats' hometown of Orange County, California; according to the first season DVD audio commentary, episodes were shot on location in the cities of Irvine, Silverado, Yorba Linda, Huntington Beach and Fullerton, while a private sound stage in Santa Ana was used for interior shots of the Battletram. A public Aquabats concert held at The Glass House club in Pomona on November 5, 2011 was also filmed to provide live footage of the band which is featured in the series' opening credits montage and several individual episodes. Much of Super Show!s staff consist of friends and colleagues of The Aquabats who've previously worked with the band on various projects, ranging from members of Yo Gabba Gabba!s production team to fellow musicians within the southern California music scene. Among the more notable examples include Dallas McLaughlin and Matthew Gorney, both members of the San Diego hip hop band Bad Credit, who prominently served as writers, composers and performers, Warren Fitzgerald, guitarist for The Vandals, who was hired as a writer and music director, internet sketch comedy group Mega64 were commissioned to produce original material, primarily the series' parody commercials, and Japanese artist Pey, who had designed much of The Aquabats' promotional art and merchandise during the 2000s, was hired to design the season's animated segments. Additionally, several industry professionals were brought in to help work on the show: Dani Michaeli, a staff writer on SpongeBob SquarePants, was hired as the series' story editor, while Matt Chapman, co-creator of the internet Flash cartoon Homestar Runner, acted as a writer, director and actor on several episodes. As none of the members besides Jacobs had any previous acting experience, comedian Matt Walsh of the Upright Citizens Brigade was brought in to help teach The Aquabats comedic acting and timing. In further homage to the original Batman series, Super Show! features a variety of celebrity cameo appearances. The series' first season included appearances from actors Jon Heder, Lou Diamond Phillips and Samm Levine, comedians Rip Taylor, Paul Scheer and Paul Rust, and comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic, who appeared in two episodes as different characters. The first season also included several "Easter egg" cameos from original Aquabats members Corey "Chainsaw" Pollock and Boyd "Catboy" Terry, as well as from fellow musicians Warren Fitzgerald and Art Mitchell of the band Supernova. Despite having been originally announced as part of The Hub's 2011 Fall line-up, production delays postponed Super Show!s premiere to early 2012. The series' marketing campaign began in December 2011, with a later announcement of an official premiere date confirmed for March 3, 2012. Following a non-consecutive run of 13 episodes, the first-season finale aired on June 16, 2012. Season two On October 16, 2012, The Aquabats and The Hub confirmed production on new episodes of Super Show! through the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, announcing a tentative debut date of Spring 2013. Principal photography on season two began on October 22 and wrapped on December 1. Unlike the first season, the majority of season two was shot in and around Salt Lake City, Utah, which Jacobs explained was considerably less expensive than shooting in California. While no changes were made to Super Shows creative team, in December 2012 it was announced that season two would introduce the series' first guest director, musician and comic book writer Gerard Way, who co-directed and co-wrote the season finale "The AntiBats!" with Jacobs and deVilliers. Way's involvement with the series was heavily covered by the music press in the wake of the March 2013 break-up of his popular alternative rock band My Chemical Romance. Among the guest stars featured in season two were professional skateboarders Tony Hawk and Eric Koston, Devo frontman and Yo Gabba Gabba! cast member Mark Mothersbaugh, internet celebrity Leslie Hall, actor Martin Starr and My Chemical Romance bassist Mikey Way. On December 2, 2012, deVilliers revealed on his Twitter account that the upcoming season would consist of only five new episodes, in what he called more "season 1.5" than a "season 2", though mentioned the possibility of more being made in the future. On May 1, 2013, it was announced through Entertainment Weekly that the series' second season would begin airing on June 1. After a run of only five episodes, the season concluded on June 29, 2013. 2013–2014 specials On August 22, 2013, series performer Chad Larson confirmed via Twitter that three additional episodes of Super Show! were being filmed near the end of the year, "and maybe more next". Principal photography on these episodes eventually began in Utah in early October. Throughout the month, The Aquabats posted numerous pictures of production on the new episodes on their Twitter and Instagram accounts, some of which revealed production code numbers of 301, 302 and 303, ostensibly indicating what would be a third season. Though these numbers were later verified by the Internet Movie Database, a November press release from The Hub explicitly referred to these three episodes as "specials". The first of these specials, "Christmas with The Aquabats!", aired on December 21, featuring comedians Robert Smigel and Matt Walsh in guest roles. The second of these episodes, "The Shark Fighter!" (based on The Aquabats' song of the same name), featuring comedian Rhys Darby, aired the following week on December 28, while the final special "Kitty Litter!" aired on January 18, 2014. "Kitty Litter!" was helmed by another guest director, Munn Powell, best known for his work as cinematographer on the Jared and Jerusha Hess films Napoleon Dynamite and Gentlemen Broncos. Following this short run of episodes, there was no confirmation by either The Hub or The Aquabats as to the production of any future episodes. In a December 2013 interview, Christian Jacobs acknowledged the network's unusually small order of episodes but didn't elaborate on any possible reasoning. In the same interview, he stated that the band had initially prepared for another order of 13 episodes, having written as many scripts for potential future episodes. On May 1, 2014, the nominees for the 2014 Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, revealing that Super Show! had been nominated for five awards in four categories, including the award for Best Writing in a Children's Series for the episode "The AntiBats!". The awards ceremony was held on June 22, 2014, where the series ultimately won the award for Best Stunt Coordination for stuntman Skip Carlson. Cancellation by The Hub and hiatus In mid-2014, it was announced in entertainment press that Hasbro and Discovery had been in the process of rebranding The Hub following what they saw to be disappointing returns for the channel, changes which included the departure of CEO Margaret Loesch, who was instrumental in acquiring Super Show! as a series. In a Huffington Post feature about The Aquabats prior to the band's appearance at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, it was revealed that The Hub had opted not to renew Super Show! for a third season, effectively cancelling the series. Jacobs admitted he was surprised by this turn of events, noting "Everything we heard was that the show has been a real Cinderella story for the Hub and that it was rating really well with viewers. We just assumed that we'd eventually go back into production or at least get picked up for Season 3", but ultimately concluded "it is what it is" in regard to the network's decision. Despite this, Jacobs remained optimistic about the series' future, saying "Given that we now live in a world where people are streaming TV shows directly onto their iPhones & computers, and given that companies like Netflix & Yahoo! are now picking up so much new content for their customers...I just find it hard to believe that The Aquabats! Super Show! is really over. I mean, we haven't even made any toys yet". He concluded by stating "It took us almost 15 years to get that TV series made. And even though we've got a bunch more concert dates lined up for the rest of this year, our first priority is to find a new home for The Aquabats! Super Show!". On March 31, 2015, the nominees for the 42nd annual Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, with Super Show! earning nominations for Best SFX Mixer (Blaine Stewart) and Best Stunt Coordinator (Braxton McAllister). On June 27, 2015, The Aquabats screened the entire first season of Super Show! before a sold-out crowd at The Frida Cinema in downtown Santa Ana, which was accompanied by a live performance by the band and Q&A sessions with The Aquabats and numerous members of the cast and crew. A similar presentation of the entire second season – including the three additional specials – took place at The Art Theater in Long Beach on December 16, 2017, coinciding with the release of the second season Blu-ray. Bring Back The Aquabats! Kickstarter campaign Following weeks of teasing a major announcement, The Aquabats launched a Kickstarter campaign on July 31, 2018 to help finance the return of The Aquabats! Super Show! as well as new studio albums from the band at a minimum projected cost of $1.1 million. The Aquabats promoted their campaign with a video featuring a slew of celebrity cameos, including Super Show! guest stars "Weird Al" Yankovic, Robert Smigel (as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog), Matt Chapman (as Homestar Runner and Strong Bad), former Aquabats member Travis Barker, Tony Kanal, Tom Dumont, Oscar Nunez, Kate Micucci, Blake Anderson, Imagine Dragons, Felicia Day and Tom Lennon, all of whom appeared in The Aquabats' trademark uniforms and spoke the Kickstarter's promotional slogan "I am The Aquabats"/"We are The Aquabats". Most prominently featured, however, was comedian Jack Black, who was later confirmed by the campaign's press releases to act as executive producer for the series' return. Along with their Kickstarter, the band began releasing a series of Super Show! "mini-episodes", depicting the MC Bat Commander's metafictional quest to reunite the estranged Aquabats following the series' cancellation. The band confirmed that as the Kickstarter progresses, further "mini-episodes" will be released to both promote the campaign as well as act as a continuation of Super Show!. By August 28, mere days before the campaign's end date of September 1, The Aquabats' Kickstarter had raised only $601,629 of its projected $1.1 million goal. The funding was subsequently cancelled and the campaign was rebooted the same day with a smaller goal of $100,000 to instead finance one new album and the continued production of the Super Show!! "mini-episodes". The project's goal was met within minutes. Music Original music for The Aquabats! Super Show! was primarily composed and performed by The Aquabats themselves, with additional scoring on most episodes provided by Matthew Gorney, Warren Fitzgerald or individual credits for Aquabats members James R. Briggs, Jr., Richard Falomir and Ian Fowles. Fitzgerald, guitarist for punk rock band The Vandals and former member of Oingo Boingo, acted as the series' music supervisor. The theme song to Super Show!, "Super Show Theme Song!", was co-written by The Aquabats and Fitzgerald. Whereas most musically oriented shows like The Monkees typically break the narrative of an episode for a music video performance of a standalone song, each episode of Super Show! typically features one or two unique songs that tied directly into the plot, usually about and performed during the events of a particular scene. Most of these songs are rather brief, averaging a running time of just under a minute; Jacobs stated that many of the show's original songs were recorded as full-length pieces but trimmed down for inclusion in an episode, simply due to the show "trying to pack so much into 22 minutes". Shortly after Super Show!s premiere, Jacobs confirmed plans to eventually release the series' original full-length songs as a soundtrack album. However, these plans wouldn't fully come to fruition until 2019; in a 2018 interview, Jacobs retrospectively revealed that the album had been long completed but the band "hadn't had all the rights tied up" until then. The first original and full-length recordings from the series' first season debuted in July 2017, when "Burger Rain" and "Beat Fishin'" were released as a tour-exclusive 7" single. Songs from the series' first season were eventually compiled as The Aquabats! Super Show! Television Soundtrack: Volume One, which was released digitally in March 2019 and then onto physical media the following June, where it became The Aquabats' highest-charting album to date, debuting at the top of Billboards Top Heatseekers chart and at 165 on the Billboard 200. Cast and characters See: List of The Aquabats! Super Show! characters The Aquabats! Super Show! stars and is based upon fictionalized versions of the then-current (since 2006) line-up of the California comedy rock band The Aquabats. Adapting the backstory the band has used for the entirety of their professional career, Super Show! depicts The Aquabats as a group of bumbling, out-of-shape superheroes on a self-appointed mission to fight the forces of evil, presented in both live-action and animated segments. The five members of The Aquabats are: The MC Bat Commander (played and voiced by Christian Jacobs) – The Aquabats' singer and de facto leader of the team. Though he doesn't have any superpowers of his own and is often quite stubborn and naive, the Commander is shown to be an effective strategist whose sharp leadership skills, bravery and determination regularly drive the band towards victory. Crash McLarson (played and voiced by Chad Larson) – The band's bass guitarist, who has the frequently uncontrollable ability to grow upwards of 100 feet in size when under emotional stress. Despite being the largest and strongest of The Aquabats, Crash has a gentle, childlike demeanor bordering on slight dim-wittedness, and as such is usually the most cowardly member of the team. Jimmy the Robot (played and voiced by James R. Briggs, Jr.) – The Aquabats' keyboardist. As his name implies, Jimmy is an android whose mechanical body houses a variety of built-in gadgets and weaponry, plus a comprehensive knowledge database which earns him the position of the group's resident scientist. Being a robot, Jimmy is generally perplexed by human emotions and behavior. Ricky Fitness (played and voiced by Richard Falomir) – the band's drummer, Ricky possesses the power of super speed. Being the most physically fit and health-conscious member of The Aquabats, some of the series' running gags revolve around Ricky's status as a handsome ladies' man and his fondness for "fresh, healthy veggies" in contrast to the rest of the team's voracious affinity for junk food. EagleBones Falconhawk (played and voiced by Ian Fowles) – The Aquabats' guitarist. The cocky and boyish maverick of the team, EagleBones is highly proficient on his custom weaponized electric guitar which shoots lasers from its headstock. Following a spiritual encounter early in season one, EagleBones also has the gift of second sight and is accompanied by "The Dude", an invisible spirit eagle whom he summons to aide The Aquabats in battle. Voice actor and writer Mr. Lawrence provided the minimal narration for both seasons of Super Show!s live-action segments, while staff writer Kyle McCulloch narrated the first season's animated segments. Guest stars and recurring characters Though each episode of the series introduced a new villain, ally and/or celebrity cameo, Super Show! never featured any major recurring characters throughout its run. However, every episode of the show included a very brief appearance by a character fans dubbed the "Fox Man", a man in a cheap-looking fox costume played by visual effects supervisor Joel Fox, who would appear hidden in the background of a random scene as an Easter egg for viewers to spot, although his character was never explained within the context of the series. Comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic and comedian Paul Rust were the only two guest actors to appear in two episodes: Yankovic played two different roles as the President of the United States and superhero SuperMagic PowerMan! (in a 2012 interview, Jacobs alluded to the two possibly being the same character, though this isn't implied within the series), while Rust played a boorish slacker named Ronmark, first appearing in live-action in a first-season episode and subsequently lending his voice to a mutated monster version of the character in part of a second-season episode. Episodes Distribution International broadcast Outside of North America, The Aquabats! Super Show! broadcast in Australia on the children's public broadcasting channel ABC3 and in the United Kingdom on the children's network CITV. Home media Coinciding with the run of the first season, each new episode of The Aquabats! Super Show! was released through the iTunes Store for digital download. Prior to the series debut, a season pass was made available for purchase to enable viewers to automatically receive a download of each new episode on its airdate. The first season of Super Show! was added to the video streaming service Netflix on December 1, 2012, later being added to Hulu on December 21. Unlike the first season, the series' second season was not made available for iTunes pre-order, nor were episodes released for purchase. Though each episode was briefly streamed on The Hub's official website, none of the seasons' episodes were made available on Hulu, Netflix or similar streaming services. Shout! Factory had the DVD publishing rights for The Aquabats! Super Show! within Region 1 for release of the first season. The company first announced their acquisition of the series and plans for a future DVD in a press release dated August 6, 2012, though did not initially confirm a set release date until several months later. On May 21, 2013, the first season of Super Show! was released on a two-disc DVD set. On November 22, 2017, in conjunction with their announcement of a season two theatrical screening, The Aquabats confirmed an independent Blu-ray release for season two, including the three specials often considered a "season three". On December 5, pre-orders were launched on The Aquabats' merchandising site for an official release date of December 22, though copies were first made for public sale at the second season theatrical screening on December 16. Starting in December 2014, The Aquabats gradually began uploading the series' full episodes onto their official YouTube channel. As of August 2019, all 21 episodes of Super Show! and its pilot episode have been publicly uploaded to their account. Critical reception Critical response to The Aquabats! Super Show! was predominantly positive, with most reviewers praising the series' intentionally campy tone and offbeat humor. The Onions The A.V. Club gave the series premiere an A− rating, describing it as "a loving homage to basically everything ever done by the brothers Krofft": "the show adeptly flips from humor to melodrama to action, providing some awesomely cheap special effects, goofy songs, and gags that range from slapstick to sublime", summarizing "there's so much here that both kids and parents will be able to enjoy the proceedings on their own respective levels and rarely find themselves bored". Brian Lowry of Variety wrote "you don't have to laugh at everything to admire the effort and sheer silliness", calling the show a "goofy and nostalgic" throwback to the "children's TV of baby boomers' youth, down to crappy production values and awful-looking 'monsters' that work to its advantage". He summarized "Although this Hub series at times feels like an SNL skit stretched to a half-hour, its sly mix of music, live-action crime-fighting, cartoons and mock ads ought to develop a cult following—and might be more popular with parents, at least those with the geek gene, than their kids". Technology magazine Wired was consistently positive towards the series, calling it both "wonderfully strange" and "delightfully deranged", writing "[f]illed with self-deprecating music videos, toon interludes and ludicrous villains, The Aquabats! Super Show! has become one of television's strangely comforting finds". Common Sense Media, who review shows based on age-appropriate content, gave Super Show! a rating of 4 out of 5 stars, calling it "demented and manic...fun by sheer dint of how many jokes, visual and otherwise, are thrown at the screen, both those calculated to appeal to kids and adults". The site praised the series for its lighter and sillier tone in comparison to more violent live-action superhero fare, and considered the "kind-hearted" Aquabats to be relatively positive role models. However, the reviewer suggested the show's violence and creatures may be too intense for very young children, and pointed out a distinct lack of central female characters. Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times offered a more indifferent opinion, calling The Aquabats "indescribably odd" and the series "frenetic, semicoherent and generally harmless. Also somewhat hallucinogenic", noting Super Show!s writing "may be over the heads of the 2-to-12 set", suggesting its most receptive audience might be "the college drinking-game crowd". Awards and nominations The Aquabats! Super Show! was nominated for the following awards: Daytime Emmy Award References External links Official website of The Aquabats The Aquabats 2010s American children's television series 2010s American musical comedy television series 2010s American satirical television series 2010s American sketch comedy television series 2010s American superhero comedy television series 2012 American television series debuts 2014 American television series endings American children's adventure television series American children's musical television series American television series with live action and animation Children's sketch comedy English-language television shows Television series by Fremantle (company) Television shows set in Orange County, California American television shows featuring puppetry Discovery Family original programming

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What happened with the previous attempts?

What happened with the previous attempts of forming the Aquabats! Super Show!?

The Aquabats! Super Show!

In 1994, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in Brea, California. Influenced as much by cartoons and camp television as theatrical bands like Devo and Oingo Boingo, The Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for their eccentric persona in which they claimed to be a band of superheroes on a quest to save the world and their elaborate stage shows which regularly featured scripted fights with costumed villains alongside similar stunts and comedy sketches. The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough for the group, charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs - a former child actor with ties in the industry - to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television. In 1998, Buena Vista Television helped produce a live-action mini-pilot directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait titled simply The Aquabats!, following the comic misadventures of the then-eight member band in an over-the-top camp style similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves. Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot the following year, using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death!. Independently directed and produced by Jacobs and his creative partner Scott Schultz, the result was a five-minute promo video entitled The Aquabats in Color!. In contrast to the wackier tone of the previous pilot, The Aquabats in Color! was a more action-oriented superhero series modeled after Japanese tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider. According to Jacobs, the Fox Family Channel reportedly expressed interest in the series and ordered production on a proper pilot episode, though following the channel's acquisition by Disney in 2001, the project was cancelled. CANNOTANSWER

The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves.

The Aquabats! Super Show! is an American action-comedy musical television series which aired from March 3, 2012 to January 8, 2014 on The Hub Network and resumed as an independent YouTube web series in September 2019. The series was created by Christian Jacobs, and Scott Schultz, both the creators of the Nick Jr. show Yo Gabba Gabba!, and Jason deVilliers. Based on the superhero mythology of The Aquabats, a real-life comedy rock band which series co-creator and lead singer Jacobs formed in 1994, The Aquabats! Super Show! follows the comic adventures of a fictionalized version of the band, a musical group of amateur superheroes, as they haphazardly defend the world from a variety of villains and monsters. Styled similarly to the campy aesthetics of 1960s and 1970s children's television and Japanese tokusatsu, Super Show! utilizes various mediums of visual styles and special effects, mixing live-action storylines with cartoon shorts, parody advertisements and musical interludes. The series' first season concluded on June 16, 2012 following a run of 13 episodes, having met with a largely positive critical reception, consistently high ratings for the channel and a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Children's Series. The series' second season consisted of an initial five episodes which aired through June 2013, with three additional episodes airing in late December and January 2014, receiving similar acclaim and a further seven Daytime Emmy nominations, ultimately winning one for Best Stunt Coordination. In June 2014, co-creator Jacobs officially announced the series' cancellation, following news of The Hub's financial losses which led to the network's rebranding as Discovery Family later that October. In July 2018, The Aquabats launched a successful Kickstarter to help independently finance new episodes of The Aquabats! Super Show!, promoting the campaign with a series of YouTube-exclusive mini-episodes continuing the original series' storyline. On September 28, 2019, The Aquabats premiered the first installment of these new episodes, now a biweekly YouTube series entitled The Aquabats! RadVentures!, though still retaining Super Show!s theme song and title card. Series overview Premise Chronicled in both live-action and animated segments, The Aquabats! Super Show! is centered around the adventures of The Aquabats, a group of superhero rock musicians who travel the countryside on a self-appointed mission to fight evil and "destroy boredom", protecting the world from the villains and creatures who threaten to destroy it while aiming to become a famous rock and roll band in their own right. The Aquabats consist of singer The MC Bat Commander (Christian Jacobs), the swaggering leader of the group; bassist Crash McLarson (Chad Larson), who can grow up to 100 feet in size; drummer Ricky Fitness (Richard Falomir), who has the power of super speed; guitarist EagleBones Falconhawk (Ian Fowles), who's armed with a laser-shooting electric guitar; and keyboardist Jimmy the Robot (James R. Briggs, Jr.), an android. Despite their superhuman strengths and abilities, The Aquabats are quite bumbling, disorganized, and sometimes cowardly when faced with danger; this has in fact led them to be labeled "the world's most inept superheroes". The band lives and travels by way of their "Battletram", a modified classic GMC motorhome which, despite its small exterior, has an implausibly massive interior (similar to the TARDIS from Doctor Who or The Big Bologna from The Kids From C.A.P.E.R.), which contains, among many things, a science lab, a command center, and a living room. The Aquabats' origin story was left intentionally vague throughout the series, a choice Jacobs explains was done for the sake of the viewer's imagination, as he felt kids were more accepting of the inherent absurdity of the premise than adults tend to be: "'There's five guys. This is what each of the five guys does. There are monsters. They're gonna try to fight them'. It's so simple. And I think that's why it's so awesome with kids—they just take it and run with it". In the first five episodes of season two, each member of The Aquabats shares their memory of how they joined the band via animated flashback sequences; however, all of these flashbacks directly and intentionally contradict each other, leaving it unknown which—if any—could be considered officially canonical. Format and influences The Aquabats! Super Show! juxtaposes both live-action and animated segments starring The Aquabats, interwoven with various tangential skits and cartoon interstitials. The live-action storylines are the primary focus of each episode, following a self-contained villain of the week formula. In the first season, each episode featured brief anime-styled cartoon shorts which one of the characters would introduce at a random point of the show, often by finding "A Cartoon" (represented by a miniature television set) in an absurd location. Unlike the live-action segments, these cartoons followed a serialized story arc, with each installment ending in a cliffhanger to be resolved in the next episode. In season two, this format was replaced with a series of animated flashbacks recounting the origins of The Aquabats, each by a different animation studio and in a different animation style. Between these segments are pantomime cartoon shorts starring "Lil' Bat", The Aquabats' anthropomorphic bat mascot, and live-action parody commercials for outlandish fictional products, the latter of which has long been a staple of The Aquabats' multi-media stage shows. Jacobs says the concept behind Super Show! was something he had always dreamed of doing, making a "campy, live-action, funky kid's show" in the vein of the 1960s and 1970s television that he and the rest of the series' producers had grown up with. While the show pays homage to many facets of pop culture, Jacobs has named the 1960s Batman television series as the primary influence on Super Show!s "obviously silly" tone and visual style, ranging from set design to the trademark use of dutch angles for villain scenes. Other notable influences Jacobs has repeatedly mentioned include the works of Sid and Marty Krofft and Hanna-Barbera, Japanese tokusatsu series such as Ultraman and Johnny Sokko And His Flying Robot, the Shaw Brothers and Hong Kong cinema, and shows including Danger Island, Star Trek, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, and Pee-wee's Playhouse, noting "there's a good 30 years worth of television culture packed into these 22-minute episodes". Demographic As The Hub's key demographic were children aged 6 to 12, Super Show! was ostensibly targeted towards said age group, though Jacobs has stated that the series primarily aimed to appeal to an all-ages crowd, with the intent of creating entertainment that both kids and parents can watch and enjoy together or separately. In interviews prior to the series' premiere, he explained that this was merely an extension of The Aquabats' own family-friendly ethos: "There's just obviously something about the costumes and being superheroes that really appeals to younger kids, and I think we always knew that as a band...I think we'll want to put things in [the show] for an older audience, because we realize we have an older audience, but then also we want the young kids, to not have it go over their heads". Production history History and previous attempts at a series In 1994, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in Brea, California. Influenced as much by cartoons and camp television as theatrical bands like Devo and Oingo Boingo, The Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for their eccentric persona in which they claimed to be a band of superheroes on a quest to save the world and their elaborate stage shows which regularly featured scripted fights with costumed villains alongside similar stunts and comedy sketches. The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough for the group, charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs – a former child actor with ties in the industry – to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television. In 1998, Buena Vista Television helped produce a live-action mini-pilot directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait titled simply The Aquabats!, following the comic misadventures of the then-eight member band in an over-the-top camp style similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves. Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot the following year, using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death!. Independently directed and produced by Jacobs and his creative partner Scott Schultz, the result was a five-minute promo video entitled The Aquabats in Color!. In contrast to the wackier tone of the previous pilot, The Aquabats in Color! was a more action-oriented superhero series modeled after Japanese tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider. According to Jacobs, the Fox Family Channel reportedly expressed interest in the series and ordered production on a proper pilot episode, though following the channel's acquisition by Disney in 2001, the project was cancelled. The Aquabats! Super Show! pilot (2008) In 2005, Jacobs and Schultz formed the Orange County-based production company The Magic Store, focusing on creating family-oriented television entertainment. One of the company's independently produced pilots, the children's television series Yo Gabba Gabba!, was eventually picked up as a series by Viacoms Nick Jr. channel, premiering in August 2007 and ultimately becoming an award-winning and critically acclaimed international success. In the wake of the series' popularity, Jacobs and Schultz persuaded Yo Gabba Gabba!s joint production company Wild Brain to help produce a new pilot based around The Aquabats in conjuncture with The Magic Store. Again creatively spearheaded by Jacobs and Schultz, The Aquabats' third pilot, titled The Aquabats! Super Show!, was shot on location throughout southern California in late 2007 and early 2008. Part of this filming took place at a free invitation-only concert for members of the band's official fan club at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles on January 12, 2008. While The Aquabats' previous pilots were short, live-action promotional videos, The Aquabats! Super Show! was a fully realized 22-minute episode featuring two separate storylines based on the adventures of The Aquabats, one live-action and one animated, and interspersed with parody commercials and live footage of the band. Speaking on the decision to structure the show in such a varied format, Jacobs said "[w]e did that for a strategic reason – some networks like cartoons more than other networks. We wanted to say, 'this could be both shows'." Following a period of post-production, The Aquabats began widely self-promoting Super Show! in June 2008, redesigning their website to promote the pilot and releasing a teaser trailer and several exclusive clips through an official Super Show! YouTube channel. On July 25, 2008, the band screened the full pilot at a concert in San Diego held during the weekend of the San Diego Comic-Con, while a segment of the episode was hosted on Boing Boing the same day. In 2009, Cartoon Network allegedly picked the series up for a run of 22 episodes, though following major staff changes within the company—which, according to Jacobs, included the termination of the executives who had green-lighted Super Show!—the project was again cancelled. The Hub and season one After several more unsuccessful network pitches into the 2010s, The Aquabats! Super Show! was finally picked up as a series by family cable channel The Hub, a joint venture between Hasbro and Discovery which launched in 2010 as a replacement for Discovery Kids. The Hub formally announced the series in a press release on March 23, 2011, revealing Super Show! would be given a first season run of 13 episodes, produced in conjuncture with FremantleMedia. In promotion of the series, The Aquabats appeared as part of a panel at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con where they discussed their initial plans for the show, while The Hub sponsored an Aquabats concert held at the nearby House of Blues during the same weekend. Production on season one of Super Show! officially began in May 2011. The entirety of the first season was shot within and around The Aquabats' hometown of Orange County, California; according to the first season DVD audio commentary, episodes were shot on location in the cities of Irvine, Silverado, Yorba Linda, Huntington Beach and Fullerton, while a private sound stage in Santa Ana was used for interior shots of the Battletram. A public Aquabats concert held at The Glass House club in Pomona on November 5, 2011 was also filmed to provide live footage of the band which is featured in the series' opening credits montage and several individual episodes. Much of Super Show!s staff consist of friends and colleagues of The Aquabats who've previously worked with the band on various projects, ranging from members of Yo Gabba Gabba!s production team to fellow musicians within the southern California music scene. Among the more notable examples include Dallas McLaughlin and Matthew Gorney, both members of the San Diego hip hop band Bad Credit, who prominently served as writers, composers and performers, Warren Fitzgerald, guitarist for The Vandals, who was hired as a writer and music director, internet sketch comedy group Mega64 were commissioned to produce original material, primarily the series' parody commercials, and Japanese artist Pey, who had designed much of The Aquabats' promotional art and merchandise during the 2000s, was hired to design the season's animated segments. Additionally, several industry professionals were brought in to help work on the show: Dani Michaeli, a staff writer on SpongeBob SquarePants, was hired as the series' story editor, while Matt Chapman, co-creator of the internet Flash cartoon Homestar Runner, acted as a writer, director and actor on several episodes. As none of the members besides Jacobs had any previous acting experience, comedian Matt Walsh of the Upright Citizens Brigade was brought in to help teach The Aquabats comedic acting and timing. In further homage to the original Batman series, Super Show! features a variety of celebrity cameo appearances. The series' first season included appearances from actors Jon Heder, Lou Diamond Phillips and Samm Levine, comedians Rip Taylor, Paul Scheer and Paul Rust, and comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic, who appeared in two episodes as different characters. The first season also included several "Easter egg" cameos from original Aquabats members Corey "Chainsaw" Pollock and Boyd "Catboy" Terry, as well as from fellow musicians Warren Fitzgerald and Art Mitchell of the band Supernova. Despite having been originally announced as part of The Hub's 2011 Fall line-up, production delays postponed Super Show!s premiere to early 2012. The series' marketing campaign began in December 2011, with a later announcement of an official premiere date confirmed for March 3, 2012. Following a non-consecutive run of 13 episodes, the first-season finale aired on June 16, 2012. Season two On October 16, 2012, The Aquabats and The Hub confirmed production on new episodes of Super Show! through the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, announcing a tentative debut date of Spring 2013. Principal photography on season two began on October 22 and wrapped on December 1. Unlike the first season, the majority of season two was shot in and around Salt Lake City, Utah, which Jacobs explained was considerably less expensive than shooting in California. While no changes were made to Super Shows creative team, in December 2012 it was announced that season two would introduce the series' first guest director, musician and comic book writer Gerard Way, who co-directed and co-wrote the season finale "The AntiBats!" with Jacobs and deVilliers. Way's involvement with the series was heavily covered by the music press in the wake of the March 2013 break-up of his popular alternative rock band My Chemical Romance. Among the guest stars featured in season two were professional skateboarders Tony Hawk and Eric Koston, Devo frontman and Yo Gabba Gabba! cast member Mark Mothersbaugh, internet celebrity Leslie Hall, actor Martin Starr and My Chemical Romance bassist Mikey Way. On December 2, 2012, deVilliers revealed on his Twitter account that the upcoming season would consist of only five new episodes, in what he called more "season 1.5" than a "season 2", though mentioned the possibility of more being made in the future. On May 1, 2013, it was announced through Entertainment Weekly that the series' second season would begin airing on June 1. After a run of only five episodes, the season concluded on June 29, 2013. 2013–2014 specials On August 22, 2013, series performer Chad Larson confirmed via Twitter that three additional episodes of Super Show! were being filmed near the end of the year, "and maybe more next". Principal photography on these episodes eventually began in Utah in early October. Throughout the month, The Aquabats posted numerous pictures of production on the new episodes on their Twitter and Instagram accounts, some of which revealed production code numbers of 301, 302 and 303, ostensibly indicating what would be a third season. Though these numbers were later verified by the Internet Movie Database, a November press release from The Hub explicitly referred to these three episodes as "specials". The first of these specials, "Christmas with The Aquabats!", aired on December 21, featuring comedians Robert Smigel and Matt Walsh in guest roles. The second of these episodes, "The Shark Fighter!" (based on The Aquabats' song of the same name), featuring comedian Rhys Darby, aired the following week on December 28, while the final special "Kitty Litter!" aired on January 18, 2014. "Kitty Litter!" was helmed by another guest director, Munn Powell, best known for his work as cinematographer on the Jared and Jerusha Hess films Napoleon Dynamite and Gentlemen Broncos. Following this short run of episodes, there was no confirmation by either The Hub or The Aquabats as to the production of any future episodes. In a December 2013 interview, Christian Jacobs acknowledged the network's unusually small order of episodes but didn't elaborate on any possible reasoning. In the same interview, he stated that the band had initially prepared for another order of 13 episodes, having written as many scripts for potential future episodes. On May 1, 2014, the nominees for the 2014 Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, revealing that Super Show! had been nominated for five awards in four categories, including the award for Best Writing in a Children's Series for the episode "The AntiBats!". The awards ceremony was held on June 22, 2014, where the series ultimately won the award for Best Stunt Coordination for stuntman Skip Carlson. Cancellation by The Hub and hiatus In mid-2014, it was announced in entertainment press that Hasbro and Discovery had been in the process of rebranding The Hub following what they saw to be disappointing returns for the channel, changes which included the departure of CEO Margaret Loesch, who was instrumental in acquiring Super Show! as a series. In a Huffington Post feature about The Aquabats prior to the band's appearance at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, it was revealed that The Hub had opted not to renew Super Show! for a third season, effectively cancelling the series. Jacobs admitted he was surprised by this turn of events, noting "Everything we heard was that the show has been a real Cinderella story for the Hub and that it was rating really well with viewers. We just assumed that we'd eventually go back into production or at least get picked up for Season 3", but ultimately concluded "it is what it is" in regard to the network's decision. Despite this, Jacobs remained optimistic about the series' future, saying "Given that we now live in a world where people are streaming TV shows directly onto their iPhones & computers, and given that companies like Netflix & Yahoo! are now picking up so much new content for their customers...I just find it hard to believe that The Aquabats! Super Show! is really over. I mean, we haven't even made any toys yet". He concluded by stating "It took us almost 15 years to get that TV series made. And even though we've got a bunch more concert dates lined up for the rest of this year, our first priority is to find a new home for The Aquabats! Super Show!". On March 31, 2015, the nominees for the 42nd annual Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, with Super Show! earning nominations for Best SFX Mixer (Blaine Stewart) and Best Stunt Coordinator (Braxton McAllister). On June 27, 2015, The Aquabats screened the entire first season of Super Show! before a sold-out crowd at The Frida Cinema in downtown Santa Ana, which was accompanied by a live performance by the band and Q&A sessions with The Aquabats and numerous members of the cast and crew. A similar presentation of the entire second season – including the three additional specials – took place at The Art Theater in Long Beach on December 16, 2017, coinciding with the release of the second season Blu-ray. Bring Back The Aquabats! Kickstarter campaign Following weeks of teasing a major announcement, The Aquabats launched a Kickstarter campaign on July 31, 2018 to help finance the return of The Aquabats! Super Show! as well as new studio albums from the band at a minimum projected cost of $1.1 million. The Aquabats promoted their campaign with a video featuring a slew of celebrity cameos, including Super Show! guest stars "Weird Al" Yankovic, Robert Smigel (as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog), Matt Chapman (as Homestar Runner and Strong Bad), former Aquabats member Travis Barker, Tony Kanal, Tom Dumont, Oscar Nunez, Kate Micucci, Blake Anderson, Imagine Dragons, Felicia Day and Tom Lennon, all of whom appeared in The Aquabats' trademark uniforms and spoke the Kickstarter's promotional slogan "I am The Aquabats"/"We are The Aquabats". Most prominently featured, however, was comedian Jack Black, who was later confirmed by the campaign's press releases to act as executive producer for the series' return. Along with their Kickstarter, the band began releasing a series of Super Show! "mini-episodes", depicting the MC Bat Commander's metafictional quest to reunite the estranged Aquabats following the series' cancellation. The band confirmed that as the Kickstarter progresses, further "mini-episodes" will be released to both promote the campaign as well as act as a continuation of Super Show!. By August 28, mere days before the campaign's end date of September 1, The Aquabats' Kickstarter had raised only $601,629 of its projected $1.1 million goal. The funding was subsequently cancelled and the campaign was rebooted the same day with a smaller goal of $100,000 to instead finance one new album and the continued production of the Super Show!! "mini-episodes". The project's goal was met within minutes. Music Original music for The Aquabats! Super Show! was primarily composed and performed by The Aquabats themselves, with additional scoring on most episodes provided by Matthew Gorney, Warren Fitzgerald or individual credits for Aquabats members James R. Briggs, Jr., Richard Falomir and Ian Fowles. Fitzgerald, guitarist for punk rock band The Vandals and former member of Oingo Boingo, acted as the series' music supervisor. The theme song to Super Show!, "Super Show Theme Song!", was co-written by The Aquabats and Fitzgerald. Whereas most musically oriented shows like The Monkees typically break the narrative of an episode for a music video performance of a standalone song, each episode of Super Show! typically features one or two unique songs that tied directly into the plot, usually about and performed during the events of a particular scene. Most of these songs are rather brief, averaging a running time of just under a minute; Jacobs stated that many of the show's original songs were recorded as full-length pieces but trimmed down for inclusion in an episode, simply due to the show "trying to pack so much into 22 minutes". Shortly after Super Show!s premiere, Jacobs confirmed plans to eventually release the series' original full-length songs as a soundtrack album. However, these plans wouldn't fully come to fruition until 2019; in a 2018 interview, Jacobs retrospectively revealed that the album had been long completed but the band "hadn't had all the rights tied up" until then. The first original and full-length recordings from the series' first season debuted in July 2017, when "Burger Rain" and "Beat Fishin'" were released as a tour-exclusive 7" single. Songs from the series' first season were eventually compiled as The Aquabats! Super Show! Television Soundtrack: Volume One, which was released digitally in March 2019 and then onto physical media the following June, where it became The Aquabats' highest-charting album to date, debuting at the top of Billboards Top Heatseekers chart and at 165 on the Billboard 200. Cast and characters See: List of The Aquabats! Super Show! characters The Aquabats! Super Show! stars and is based upon fictionalized versions of the then-current (since 2006) line-up of the California comedy rock band The Aquabats. Adapting the backstory the band has used for the entirety of their professional career, Super Show! depicts The Aquabats as a group of bumbling, out-of-shape superheroes on a self-appointed mission to fight the forces of evil, presented in both live-action and animated segments. The five members of The Aquabats are: The MC Bat Commander (played and voiced by Christian Jacobs) – The Aquabats' singer and de facto leader of the team. Though he doesn't have any superpowers of his own and is often quite stubborn and naive, the Commander is shown to be an effective strategist whose sharp leadership skills, bravery and determination regularly drive the band towards victory. Crash McLarson (played and voiced by Chad Larson) – The band's bass guitarist, who has the frequently uncontrollable ability to grow upwards of 100 feet in size when under emotional stress. Despite being the largest and strongest of The Aquabats, Crash has a gentle, childlike demeanor bordering on slight dim-wittedness, and as such is usually the most cowardly member of the team. Jimmy the Robot (played and voiced by James R. Briggs, Jr.) – The Aquabats' keyboardist. As his name implies, Jimmy is an android whose mechanical body houses a variety of built-in gadgets and weaponry, plus a comprehensive knowledge database which earns him the position of the group's resident scientist. Being a robot, Jimmy is generally perplexed by human emotions and behavior. Ricky Fitness (played and voiced by Richard Falomir) – the band's drummer, Ricky possesses the power of super speed. Being the most physically fit and health-conscious member of The Aquabats, some of the series' running gags revolve around Ricky's status as a handsome ladies' man and his fondness for "fresh, healthy veggies" in contrast to the rest of the team's voracious affinity for junk food. EagleBones Falconhawk (played and voiced by Ian Fowles) – The Aquabats' guitarist. The cocky and boyish maverick of the team, EagleBones is highly proficient on his custom weaponized electric guitar which shoots lasers from its headstock. Following a spiritual encounter early in season one, EagleBones also has the gift of second sight and is accompanied by "The Dude", an invisible spirit eagle whom he summons to aide The Aquabats in battle. Voice actor and writer Mr. Lawrence provided the minimal narration for both seasons of Super Show!s live-action segments, while staff writer Kyle McCulloch narrated the first season's animated segments. Guest stars and recurring characters Though each episode of the series introduced a new villain, ally and/or celebrity cameo, Super Show! never featured any major recurring characters throughout its run. However, every episode of the show included a very brief appearance by a character fans dubbed the "Fox Man", a man in a cheap-looking fox costume played by visual effects supervisor Joel Fox, who would appear hidden in the background of a random scene as an Easter egg for viewers to spot, although his character was never explained within the context of the series. Comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic and comedian Paul Rust were the only two guest actors to appear in two episodes: Yankovic played two different roles as the President of the United States and superhero SuperMagic PowerMan! (in a 2012 interview, Jacobs alluded to the two possibly being the same character, though this isn't implied within the series), while Rust played a boorish slacker named Ronmark, first appearing in live-action in a first-season episode and subsequently lending his voice to a mutated monster version of the character in part of a second-season episode. Episodes Distribution International broadcast Outside of North America, The Aquabats! Super Show! broadcast in Australia on the children's public broadcasting channel ABC3 and in the United Kingdom on the children's network CITV. Home media Coinciding with the run of the first season, each new episode of The Aquabats! Super Show! was released through the iTunes Store for digital download. Prior to the series debut, a season pass was made available for purchase to enable viewers to automatically receive a download of each new episode on its airdate. The first season of Super Show! was added to the video streaming service Netflix on December 1, 2012, later being added to Hulu on December 21. Unlike the first season, the series' second season was not made available for iTunes pre-order, nor were episodes released for purchase. Though each episode was briefly streamed on The Hub's official website, none of the seasons' episodes were made available on Hulu, Netflix or similar streaming services. Shout! Factory had the DVD publishing rights for The Aquabats! Super Show! within Region 1 for release of the first season. The company first announced their acquisition of the series and plans for a future DVD in a press release dated August 6, 2012, though did not initially confirm a set release date until several months later. On May 21, 2013, the first season of Super Show! was released on a two-disc DVD set. On November 22, 2017, in conjunction with their announcement of a season two theatrical screening, The Aquabats confirmed an independent Blu-ray release for season two, including the three specials often considered a "season three". On December 5, pre-orders were launched on The Aquabats' merchandising site for an official release date of December 22, though copies were first made for public sale at the second season theatrical screening on December 16. Starting in December 2014, The Aquabats gradually began uploading the series' full episodes onto their official YouTube channel. As of August 2019, all 21 episodes of Super Show! and its pilot episode have been publicly uploaded to their account. Critical reception Critical response to The Aquabats! Super Show! was predominantly positive, with most reviewers praising the series' intentionally campy tone and offbeat humor. The Onions The A.V. Club gave the series premiere an A− rating, describing it as "a loving homage to basically everything ever done by the brothers Krofft": "the show adeptly flips from humor to melodrama to action, providing some awesomely cheap special effects, goofy songs, and gags that range from slapstick to sublime", summarizing "there's so much here that both kids and parents will be able to enjoy the proceedings on their own respective levels and rarely find themselves bored". Brian Lowry of Variety wrote "you don't have to laugh at everything to admire the effort and sheer silliness", calling the show a "goofy and nostalgic" throwback to the "children's TV of baby boomers' youth, down to crappy production values and awful-looking 'monsters' that work to its advantage". He summarized "Although this Hub series at times feels like an SNL skit stretched to a half-hour, its sly mix of music, live-action crime-fighting, cartoons and mock ads ought to develop a cult following—and might be more popular with parents, at least those with the geek gene, than their kids". Technology magazine Wired was consistently positive towards the series, calling it both "wonderfully strange" and "delightfully deranged", writing "[f]illed with self-deprecating music videos, toon interludes and ludicrous villains, The Aquabats! Super Show! has become one of television's strangely comforting finds". Common Sense Media, who review shows based on age-appropriate content, gave Super Show! a rating of 4 out of 5 stars, calling it "demented and manic...fun by sheer dint of how many jokes, visual and otherwise, are thrown at the screen, both those calculated to appeal to kids and adults". The site praised the series for its lighter and sillier tone in comparison to more violent live-action superhero fare, and considered the "kind-hearted" Aquabats to be relatively positive role models. However, the reviewer suggested the show's violence and creatures may be too intense for very young children, and pointed out a distinct lack of central female characters. Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times offered a more indifferent opinion, calling The Aquabats "indescribably odd" and the series "frenetic, semicoherent and generally harmless. Also somewhat hallucinogenic", noting Super Show!s writing "may be over the heads of the 2-to-12 set", suggesting its most receptive audience might be "the college drinking-game crowd". Awards and nominations The Aquabats! Super Show! was nominated for the following awards: Daytime Emmy Award References External links Official website of The Aquabats The Aquabats 2010s American children's television series 2010s American musical comedy television series 2010s American satirical television series 2010s American sketch comedy television series 2010s American superhero comedy television series 2012 American television series debuts 2014 American television series endings American children's adventure television series American children's musical television series American television series with live action and animation Children's sketch comedy English-language television shows Television series by Fremantle (company) Television shows set in Orange County, California American television shows featuring puppetry Discovery Family original programming

C_4cdf6386fc074258b24b5e00bbcdec23_0

What did they do after this?

What did the Aquabats do after the pilot of the Aquabats! Super Show! failed to generate network interest?

The Aquabats! Super Show!

In 1994, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in Brea, California. Influenced as much by cartoons and camp television as theatrical bands like Devo and Oingo Boingo, The Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for their eccentric persona in which they claimed to be a band of superheroes on a quest to save the world and their elaborate stage shows which regularly featured scripted fights with costumed villains alongside similar stunts and comedy sketches. The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough for the group, charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs - a former child actor with ties in the industry - to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television. In 1998, Buena Vista Television helped produce a live-action mini-pilot directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait titled simply The Aquabats!, following the comic misadventures of the then-eight member band in an over-the-top camp style similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves. Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot the following year, using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death!. Independently directed and produced by Jacobs and his creative partner Scott Schultz, the result was a five-minute promo video entitled The Aquabats in Color!. In contrast to the wackier tone of the previous pilot, The Aquabats in Color! was a more action-oriented superhero series modeled after Japanese tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider. According to Jacobs, the Fox Family Channel reportedly expressed interest in the series and ordered production on a proper pilot episode, though following the channel's acquisition by Disney in 2001, the project was cancelled. CANNOTANSWER

Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot

The Aquabats! Super Show! is an American action-comedy musical television series which aired from March 3, 2012 to January 8, 2014 on The Hub Network and resumed as an independent YouTube web series in September 2019. The series was created by Christian Jacobs, and Scott Schultz, both the creators of the Nick Jr. show Yo Gabba Gabba!, and Jason deVilliers. Based on the superhero mythology of The Aquabats, a real-life comedy rock band which series co-creator and lead singer Jacobs formed in 1994, The Aquabats! Super Show! follows the comic adventures of a fictionalized version of the band, a musical group of amateur superheroes, as they haphazardly defend the world from a variety of villains and monsters. Styled similarly to the campy aesthetics of 1960s and 1970s children's television and Japanese tokusatsu, Super Show! utilizes various mediums of visual styles and special effects, mixing live-action storylines with cartoon shorts, parody advertisements and musical interludes. The series' first season concluded on June 16, 2012 following a run of 13 episodes, having met with a largely positive critical reception, consistently high ratings for the channel and a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Children's Series. The series' second season consisted of an initial five episodes which aired through June 2013, with three additional episodes airing in late December and January 2014, receiving similar acclaim and a further seven Daytime Emmy nominations, ultimately winning one for Best Stunt Coordination. In June 2014, co-creator Jacobs officially announced the series' cancellation, following news of The Hub's financial losses which led to the network's rebranding as Discovery Family later that October. In July 2018, The Aquabats launched a successful Kickstarter to help independently finance new episodes of The Aquabats! Super Show!, promoting the campaign with a series of YouTube-exclusive mini-episodes continuing the original series' storyline. On September 28, 2019, The Aquabats premiered the first installment of these new episodes, now a biweekly YouTube series entitled The Aquabats! RadVentures!, though still retaining Super Show!s theme song and title card. Series overview Premise Chronicled in both live-action and animated segments, The Aquabats! Super Show! is centered around the adventures of The Aquabats, a group of superhero rock musicians who travel the countryside on a self-appointed mission to fight evil and "destroy boredom", protecting the world from the villains and creatures who threaten to destroy it while aiming to become a famous rock and roll band in their own right. The Aquabats consist of singer The MC Bat Commander (Christian Jacobs), the swaggering leader of the group; bassist Crash McLarson (Chad Larson), who can grow up to 100 feet in size; drummer Ricky Fitness (Richard Falomir), who has the power of super speed; guitarist EagleBones Falconhawk (Ian Fowles), who's armed with a laser-shooting electric guitar; and keyboardist Jimmy the Robot (James R. Briggs, Jr.), an android. Despite their superhuman strengths and abilities, The Aquabats are quite bumbling, disorganized, and sometimes cowardly when faced with danger; this has in fact led them to be labeled "the world's most inept superheroes". The band lives and travels by way of their "Battletram", a modified classic GMC motorhome which, despite its small exterior, has an implausibly massive interior (similar to the TARDIS from Doctor Who or The Big Bologna from The Kids From C.A.P.E.R.), which contains, among many things, a science lab, a command center, and a living room. The Aquabats' origin story was left intentionally vague throughout the series, a choice Jacobs explains was done for the sake of the viewer's imagination, as he felt kids were more accepting of the inherent absurdity of the premise than adults tend to be: "'There's five guys. This is what each of the five guys does. There are monsters. They're gonna try to fight them'. It's so simple. And I think that's why it's so awesome with kids—they just take it and run with it". In the first five episodes of season two, each member of The Aquabats shares their memory of how they joined the band via animated flashback sequences; however, all of these flashbacks directly and intentionally contradict each other, leaving it unknown which—if any—could be considered officially canonical. Format and influences The Aquabats! Super Show! juxtaposes both live-action and animated segments starring The Aquabats, interwoven with various tangential skits and cartoon interstitials. The live-action storylines are the primary focus of each episode, following a self-contained villain of the week formula. In the first season, each episode featured brief anime-styled cartoon shorts which one of the characters would introduce at a random point of the show, often by finding "A Cartoon" (represented by a miniature television set) in an absurd location. Unlike the live-action segments, these cartoons followed a serialized story arc, with each installment ending in a cliffhanger to be resolved in the next episode. In season two, this format was replaced with a series of animated flashbacks recounting the origins of The Aquabats, each by a different animation studio and in a different animation style. Between these segments are pantomime cartoon shorts starring "Lil' Bat", The Aquabats' anthropomorphic bat mascot, and live-action parody commercials for outlandish fictional products, the latter of which has long been a staple of The Aquabats' multi-media stage shows. Jacobs says the concept behind Super Show! was something he had always dreamed of doing, making a "campy, live-action, funky kid's show" in the vein of the 1960s and 1970s television that he and the rest of the series' producers had grown up with. While the show pays homage to many facets of pop culture, Jacobs has named the 1960s Batman television series as the primary influence on Super Show!s "obviously silly" tone and visual style, ranging from set design to the trademark use of dutch angles for villain scenes. Other notable influences Jacobs has repeatedly mentioned include the works of Sid and Marty Krofft and Hanna-Barbera, Japanese tokusatsu series such as Ultraman and Johnny Sokko And His Flying Robot, the Shaw Brothers and Hong Kong cinema, and shows including Danger Island, Star Trek, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, and Pee-wee's Playhouse, noting "there's a good 30 years worth of television culture packed into these 22-minute episodes". Demographic As The Hub's key demographic were children aged 6 to 12, Super Show! was ostensibly targeted towards said age group, though Jacobs has stated that the series primarily aimed to appeal to an all-ages crowd, with the intent of creating entertainment that both kids and parents can watch and enjoy together or separately. In interviews prior to the series' premiere, he explained that this was merely an extension of The Aquabats' own family-friendly ethos: "There's just obviously something about the costumes and being superheroes that really appeals to younger kids, and I think we always knew that as a band...I think we'll want to put things in [the show] for an older audience, because we realize we have an older audience, but then also we want the young kids, to not have it go over their heads". Production history History and previous attempts at a series In 1994, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in Brea, California. Influenced as much by cartoons and camp television as theatrical bands like Devo and Oingo Boingo, The Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for their eccentric persona in which they claimed to be a band of superheroes on a quest to save the world and their elaborate stage shows which regularly featured scripted fights with costumed villains alongside similar stunts and comedy sketches. The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough for the group, charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs – a former child actor with ties in the industry – to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television. In 1998, Buena Vista Television helped produce a live-action mini-pilot directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait titled simply The Aquabats!, following the comic misadventures of the then-eight member band in an over-the-top camp style similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves. Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot the following year, using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death!. Independently directed and produced by Jacobs and his creative partner Scott Schultz, the result was a five-minute promo video entitled The Aquabats in Color!. In contrast to the wackier tone of the previous pilot, The Aquabats in Color! was a more action-oriented superhero series modeled after Japanese tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider. According to Jacobs, the Fox Family Channel reportedly expressed interest in the series and ordered production on a proper pilot episode, though following the channel's acquisition by Disney in 2001, the project was cancelled. The Aquabats! Super Show! pilot (2008) In 2005, Jacobs and Schultz formed the Orange County-based production company The Magic Store, focusing on creating family-oriented television entertainment. One of the company's independently produced pilots, the children's television series Yo Gabba Gabba!, was eventually picked up as a series by Viacoms Nick Jr. channel, premiering in August 2007 and ultimately becoming an award-winning and critically acclaimed international success. In the wake of the series' popularity, Jacobs and Schultz persuaded Yo Gabba Gabba!s joint production company Wild Brain to help produce a new pilot based around The Aquabats in conjuncture with The Magic Store. Again creatively spearheaded by Jacobs and Schultz, The Aquabats' third pilot, titled The Aquabats! Super Show!, was shot on location throughout southern California in late 2007 and early 2008. Part of this filming took place at a free invitation-only concert for members of the band's official fan club at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles on January 12, 2008. While The Aquabats' previous pilots were short, live-action promotional videos, The Aquabats! Super Show! was a fully realized 22-minute episode featuring two separate storylines based on the adventures of The Aquabats, one live-action and one animated, and interspersed with parody commercials and live footage of the band. Speaking on the decision to structure the show in such a varied format, Jacobs said "[w]e did that for a strategic reason – some networks like cartoons more than other networks. We wanted to say, 'this could be both shows'." Following a period of post-production, The Aquabats began widely self-promoting Super Show! in June 2008, redesigning their website to promote the pilot and releasing a teaser trailer and several exclusive clips through an official Super Show! YouTube channel. On July 25, 2008, the band screened the full pilot at a concert in San Diego held during the weekend of the San Diego Comic-Con, while a segment of the episode was hosted on Boing Boing the same day. In 2009, Cartoon Network allegedly picked the series up for a run of 22 episodes, though following major staff changes within the company—which, according to Jacobs, included the termination of the executives who had green-lighted Super Show!—the project was again cancelled. The Hub and season one After several more unsuccessful network pitches into the 2010s, The Aquabats! Super Show! was finally picked up as a series by family cable channel The Hub, a joint venture between Hasbro and Discovery which launched in 2010 as a replacement for Discovery Kids. The Hub formally announced the series in a press release on March 23, 2011, revealing Super Show! would be given a first season run of 13 episodes, produced in conjuncture with FremantleMedia. In promotion of the series, The Aquabats appeared as part of a panel at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con where they discussed their initial plans for the show, while The Hub sponsored an Aquabats concert held at the nearby House of Blues during the same weekend. Production on season one of Super Show! officially began in May 2011. The entirety of the first season was shot within and around The Aquabats' hometown of Orange County, California; according to the first season DVD audio commentary, episodes were shot on location in the cities of Irvine, Silverado, Yorba Linda, Huntington Beach and Fullerton, while a private sound stage in Santa Ana was used for interior shots of the Battletram. A public Aquabats concert held at The Glass House club in Pomona on November 5, 2011 was also filmed to provide live footage of the band which is featured in the series' opening credits montage and several individual episodes. Much of Super Show!s staff consist of friends and colleagues of The Aquabats who've previously worked with the band on various projects, ranging from members of Yo Gabba Gabba!s production team to fellow musicians within the southern California music scene. Among the more notable examples include Dallas McLaughlin and Matthew Gorney, both members of the San Diego hip hop band Bad Credit, who prominently served as writers, composers and performers, Warren Fitzgerald, guitarist for The Vandals, who was hired as a writer and music director, internet sketch comedy group Mega64 were commissioned to produce original material, primarily the series' parody commercials, and Japanese artist Pey, who had designed much of The Aquabats' promotional art and merchandise during the 2000s, was hired to design the season's animated segments. Additionally, several industry professionals were brought in to help work on the show: Dani Michaeli, a staff writer on SpongeBob SquarePants, was hired as the series' story editor, while Matt Chapman, co-creator of the internet Flash cartoon Homestar Runner, acted as a writer, director and actor on several episodes. As none of the members besides Jacobs had any previous acting experience, comedian Matt Walsh of the Upright Citizens Brigade was brought in to help teach The Aquabats comedic acting and timing. In further homage to the original Batman series, Super Show! features a variety of celebrity cameo appearances. The series' first season included appearances from actors Jon Heder, Lou Diamond Phillips and Samm Levine, comedians Rip Taylor, Paul Scheer and Paul Rust, and comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic, who appeared in two episodes as different characters. The first season also included several "Easter egg" cameos from original Aquabats members Corey "Chainsaw" Pollock and Boyd "Catboy" Terry, as well as from fellow musicians Warren Fitzgerald and Art Mitchell of the band Supernova. Despite having been originally announced as part of The Hub's 2011 Fall line-up, production delays postponed Super Show!s premiere to early 2012. The series' marketing campaign began in December 2011, with a later announcement of an official premiere date confirmed for March 3, 2012. Following a non-consecutive run of 13 episodes, the first-season finale aired on June 16, 2012. Season two On October 16, 2012, The Aquabats and The Hub confirmed production on new episodes of Super Show! through the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, announcing a tentative debut date of Spring 2013. Principal photography on season two began on October 22 and wrapped on December 1. Unlike the first season, the majority of season two was shot in and around Salt Lake City, Utah, which Jacobs explained was considerably less expensive than shooting in California. While no changes were made to Super Shows creative team, in December 2012 it was announced that season two would introduce the series' first guest director, musician and comic book writer Gerard Way, who co-directed and co-wrote the season finale "The AntiBats!" with Jacobs and deVilliers. Way's involvement with the series was heavily covered by the music press in the wake of the March 2013 break-up of his popular alternative rock band My Chemical Romance. Among the guest stars featured in season two were professional skateboarders Tony Hawk and Eric Koston, Devo frontman and Yo Gabba Gabba! cast member Mark Mothersbaugh, internet celebrity Leslie Hall, actor Martin Starr and My Chemical Romance bassist Mikey Way. On December 2, 2012, deVilliers revealed on his Twitter account that the upcoming season would consist of only five new episodes, in what he called more "season 1.5" than a "season 2", though mentioned the possibility of more being made in the future. On May 1, 2013, it was announced through Entertainment Weekly that the series' second season would begin airing on June 1. After a run of only five episodes, the season concluded on June 29, 2013. 2013–2014 specials On August 22, 2013, series performer Chad Larson confirmed via Twitter that three additional episodes of Super Show! were being filmed near the end of the year, "and maybe more next". Principal photography on these episodes eventually began in Utah in early October. Throughout the month, The Aquabats posted numerous pictures of production on the new episodes on their Twitter and Instagram accounts, some of which revealed production code numbers of 301, 302 and 303, ostensibly indicating what would be a third season. Though these numbers were later verified by the Internet Movie Database, a November press release from The Hub explicitly referred to these three episodes as "specials". The first of these specials, "Christmas with The Aquabats!", aired on December 21, featuring comedians Robert Smigel and Matt Walsh in guest roles. The second of these episodes, "The Shark Fighter!" (based on The Aquabats' song of the same name), featuring comedian Rhys Darby, aired the following week on December 28, while the final special "Kitty Litter!" aired on January 18, 2014. "Kitty Litter!" was helmed by another guest director, Munn Powell, best known for his work as cinematographer on the Jared and Jerusha Hess films Napoleon Dynamite and Gentlemen Broncos. Following this short run of episodes, there was no confirmation by either The Hub or The Aquabats as to the production of any future episodes. In a December 2013 interview, Christian Jacobs acknowledged the network's unusually small order of episodes but didn't elaborate on any possible reasoning. In the same interview, he stated that the band had initially prepared for another order of 13 episodes, having written as many scripts for potential future episodes. On May 1, 2014, the nominees for the 2014 Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, revealing that Super Show! had been nominated for five awards in four categories, including the award for Best Writing in a Children's Series for the episode "The AntiBats!". The awards ceremony was held on June 22, 2014, where the series ultimately won the award for Best Stunt Coordination for stuntman Skip Carlson. Cancellation by The Hub and hiatus In mid-2014, it was announced in entertainment press that Hasbro and Discovery had been in the process of rebranding The Hub following what they saw to be disappointing returns for the channel, changes which included the departure of CEO Margaret Loesch, who was instrumental in acquiring Super Show! as a series. In a Huffington Post feature about The Aquabats prior to the band's appearance at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, it was revealed that The Hub had opted not to renew Super Show! for a third season, effectively cancelling the series. Jacobs admitted he was surprised by this turn of events, noting "Everything we heard was that the show has been a real Cinderella story for the Hub and that it was rating really well with viewers. We just assumed that we'd eventually go back into production or at least get picked up for Season 3", but ultimately concluded "it is what it is" in regard to the network's decision. Despite this, Jacobs remained optimistic about the series' future, saying "Given that we now live in a world where people are streaming TV shows directly onto their iPhones & computers, and given that companies like Netflix & Yahoo! are now picking up so much new content for their customers...I just find it hard to believe that The Aquabats! Super Show! is really over. I mean, we haven't even made any toys yet". He concluded by stating "It took us almost 15 years to get that TV series made. And even though we've got a bunch more concert dates lined up for the rest of this year, our first priority is to find a new home for The Aquabats! Super Show!". On March 31, 2015, the nominees for the 42nd annual Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, with Super Show! earning nominations for Best SFX Mixer (Blaine Stewart) and Best Stunt Coordinator (Braxton McAllister). On June 27, 2015, The Aquabats screened the entire first season of Super Show! before a sold-out crowd at The Frida Cinema in downtown Santa Ana, which was accompanied by a live performance by the band and Q&A sessions with The Aquabats and numerous members of the cast and crew. A similar presentation of the entire second season – including the three additional specials – took place at The Art Theater in Long Beach on December 16, 2017, coinciding with the release of the second season Blu-ray. Bring Back The Aquabats! Kickstarter campaign Following weeks of teasing a major announcement, The Aquabats launched a Kickstarter campaign on July 31, 2018 to help finance the return of The Aquabats! Super Show! as well as new studio albums from the band at a minimum projected cost of $1.1 million. The Aquabats promoted their campaign with a video featuring a slew of celebrity cameos, including Super Show! guest stars "Weird Al" Yankovic, Robert Smigel (as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog), Matt Chapman (as Homestar Runner and Strong Bad), former Aquabats member Travis Barker, Tony Kanal, Tom Dumont, Oscar Nunez, Kate Micucci, Blake Anderson, Imagine Dragons, Felicia Day and Tom Lennon, all of whom appeared in The Aquabats' trademark uniforms and spoke the Kickstarter's promotional slogan "I am The Aquabats"/"We are The Aquabats". Most prominently featured, however, was comedian Jack Black, who was later confirmed by the campaign's press releases to act as executive producer for the series' return. Along with their Kickstarter, the band began releasing a series of Super Show! "mini-episodes", depicting the MC Bat Commander's metafictional quest to reunite the estranged Aquabats following the series' cancellation. The band confirmed that as the Kickstarter progresses, further "mini-episodes" will be released to both promote the campaign as well as act as a continuation of Super Show!. By August 28, mere days before the campaign's end date of September 1, The Aquabats' Kickstarter had raised only $601,629 of its projected $1.1 million goal. The funding was subsequently cancelled and the campaign was rebooted the same day with a smaller goal of $100,000 to instead finance one new album and the continued production of the Super Show!! "mini-episodes". The project's goal was met within minutes. Music Original music for The Aquabats! Super Show! was primarily composed and performed by The Aquabats themselves, with additional scoring on most episodes provided by Matthew Gorney, Warren Fitzgerald or individual credits for Aquabats members James R. Briggs, Jr., Richard Falomir and Ian Fowles. Fitzgerald, guitarist for punk rock band The Vandals and former member of Oingo Boingo, acted as the series' music supervisor. The theme song to Super Show!, "Super Show Theme Song!", was co-written by The Aquabats and Fitzgerald. Whereas most musically oriented shows like The Monkees typically break the narrative of an episode for a music video performance of a standalone song, each episode of Super Show! typically features one or two unique songs that tied directly into the plot, usually about and performed during the events of a particular scene. Most of these songs are rather brief, averaging a running time of just under a minute; Jacobs stated that many of the show's original songs were recorded as full-length pieces but trimmed down for inclusion in an episode, simply due to the show "trying to pack so much into 22 minutes". Shortly after Super Show!s premiere, Jacobs confirmed plans to eventually release the series' original full-length songs as a soundtrack album. However, these plans wouldn't fully come to fruition until 2019; in a 2018 interview, Jacobs retrospectively revealed that the album had been long completed but the band "hadn't had all the rights tied up" until then. The first original and full-length recordings from the series' first season debuted in July 2017, when "Burger Rain" and "Beat Fishin'" were released as a tour-exclusive 7" single. Songs from the series' first season were eventually compiled as The Aquabats! Super Show! Television Soundtrack: Volume One, which was released digitally in March 2019 and then onto physical media the following June, where it became The Aquabats' highest-charting album to date, debuting at the top of Billboards Top Heatseekers chart and at 165 on the Billboard 200. Cast and characters See: List of The Aquabats! Super Show! characters The Aquabats! Super Show! stars and is based upon fictionalized versions of the then-current (since 2006) line-up of the California comedy rock band The Aquabats. Adapting the backstory the band has used for the entirety of their professional career, Super Show! depicts The Aquabats as a group of bumbling, out-of-shape superheroes on a self-appointed mission to fight the forces of evil, presented in both live-action and animated segments. The five members of The Aquabats are: The MC Bat Commander (played and voiced by Christian Jacobs) – The Aquabats' singer and de facto leader of the team. Though he doesn't have any superpowers of his own and is often quite stubborn and naive, the Commander is shown to be an effective strategist whose sharp leadership skills, bravery and determination regularly drive the band towards victory. Crash McLarson (played and voiced by Chad Larson) – The band's bass guitarist, who has the frequently uncontrollable ability to grow upwards of 100 feet in size when under emotional stress. Despite being the largest and strongest of The Aquabats, Crash has a gentle, childlike demeanor bordering on slight dim-wittedness, and as such is usually the most cowardly member of the team. Jimmy the Robot (played and voiced by James R. Briggs, Jr.) – The Aquabats' keyboardist. As his name implies, Jimmy is an android whose mechanical body houses a variety of built-in gadgets and weaponry, plus a comprehensive knowledge database which earns him the position of the group's resident scientist. Being a robot, Jimmy is generally perplexed by human emotions and behavior. Ricky Fitness (played and voiced by Richard Falomir) – the band's drummer, Ricky possesses the power of super speed. Being the most physically fit and health-conscious member of The Aquabats, some of the series' running gags revolve around Ricky's status as a handsome ladies' man and his fondness for "fresh, healthy veggies" in contrast to the rest of the team's voracious affinity for junk food. EagleBones Falconhawk (played and voiced by Ian Fowles) – The Aquabats' guitarist. The cocky and boyish maverick of the team, EagleBones is highly proficient on his custom weaponized electric guitar which shoots lasers from its headstock. Following a spiritual encounter early in season one, EagleBones also has the gift of second sight and is accompanied by "The Dude", an invisible spirit eagle whom he summons to aide The Aquabats in battle. Voice actor and writer Mr. Lawrence provided the minimal narration for both seasons of Super Show!s live-action segments, while staff writer Kyle McCulloch narrated the first season's animated segments. Guest stars and recurring characters Though each episode of the series introduced a new villain, ally and/or celebrity cameo, Super Show! never featured any major recurring characters throughout its run. However, every episode of the show included a very brief appearance by a character fans dubbed the "Fox Man", a man in a cheap-looking fox costume played by visual effects supervisor Joel Fox, who would appear hidden in the background of a random scene as an Easter egg for viewers to spot, although his character was never explained within the context of the series. Comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic and comedian Paul Rust were the only two guest actors to appear in two episodes: Yankovic played two different roles as the President of the United States and superhero SuperMagic PowerMan! (in a 2012 interview, Jacobs alluded to the two possibly being the same character, though this isn't implied within the series), while Rust played a boorish slacker named Ronmark, first appearing in live-action in a first-season episode and subsequently lending his voice to a mutated monster version of the character in part of a second-season episode. Episodes Distribution International broadcast Outside of North America, The Aquabats! Super Show! broadcast in Australia on the children's public broadcasting channel ABC3 and in the United Kingdom on the children's network CITV. Home media Coinciding with the run of the first season, each new episode of The Aquabats! Super Show! was released through the iTunes Store for digital download. Prior to the series debut, a season pass was made available for purchase to enable viewers to automatically receive a download of each new episode on its airdate. The first season of Super Show! was added to the video streaming service Netflix on December 1, 2012, later being added to Hulu on December 21. Unlike the first season, the series' second season was not made available for iTunes pre-order, nor were episodes released for purchase. Though each episode was briefly streamed on The Hub's official website, none of the seasons' episodes were made available on Hulu, Netflix or similar streaming services. Shout! Factory had the DVD publishing rights for The Aquabats! Super Show! within Region 1 for release of the first season. The company first announced their acquisition of the series and plans for a future DVD in a press release dated August 6, 2012, though did not initially confirm a set release date until several months later. On May 21, 2013, the first season of Super Show! was released on a two-disc DVD set. On November 22, 2017, in conjunction with their announcement of a season two theatrical screening, The Aquabats confirmed an independent Blu-ray release for season two, including the three specials often considered a "season three". On December 5, pre-orders were launched on The Aquabats' merchandising site for an official release date of December 22, though copies were first made for public sale at the second season theatrical screening on December 16. Starting in December 2014, The Aquabats gradually began uploading the series' full episodes onto their official YouTube channel. As of August 2019, all 21 episodes of Super Show! and its pilot episode have been publicly uploaded to their account. Critical reception Critical response to The Aquabats! Super Show! was predominantly positive, with most reviewers praising the series' intentionally campy tone and offbeat humor. The Onions The A.V. Club gave the series premiere an A− rating, describing it as "a loving homage to basically everything ever done by the brothers Krofft": "the show adeptly flips from humor to melodrama to action, providing some awesomely cheap special effects, goofy songs, and gags that range from slapstick to sublime", summarizing "there's so much here that both kids and parents will be able to enjoy the proceedings on their own respective levels and rarely find themselves bored". Brian Lowry of Variety wrote "you don't have to laugh at everything to admire the effort and sheer silliness", calling the show a "goofy and nostalgic" throwback to the "children's TV of baby boomers' youth, down to crappy production values and awful-looking 'monsters' that work to its advantage". He summarized "Although this Hub series at times feels like an SNL skit stretched to a half-hour, its sly mix of music, live-action crime-fighting, cartoons and mock ads ought to develop a cult following—and might be more popular with parents, at least those with the geek gene, than their kids". Technology magazine Wired was consistently positive towards the series, calling it both "wonderfully strange" and "delightfully deranged", writing "[f]illed with self-deprecating music videos, toon interludes and ludicrous villains, The Aquabats! Super Show! has become one of television's strangely comforting finds". Common Sense Media, who review shows based on age-appropriate content, gave Super Show! a rating of 4 out of 5 stars, calling it "demented and manic...fun by sheer dint of how many jokes, visual and otherwise, are thrown at the screen, both those calculated to appeal to kids and adults". The site praised the series for its lighter and sillier tone in comparison to more violent live-action superhero fare, and considered the "kind-hearted" Aquabats to be relatively positive role models. However, the reviewer suggested the show's violence and creatures may be too intense for very young children, and pointed out a distinct lack of central female characters. Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times offered a more indifferent opinion, calling The Aquabats "indescribably odd" and the series "frenetic, semicoherent and generally harmless. Also somewhat hallucinogenic", noting Super Show!s writing "may be over the heads of the 2-to-12 set", suggesting its most receptive audience might be "the college drinking-game crowd". Awards and nominations The Aquabats! Super Show! was nominated for the following awards: Daytime Emmy Award References External links Official website of The Aquabats The Aquabats 2010s American children's television series 2010s American musical comedy television series 2010s American satirical television series 2010s American sketch comedy television series 2010s American superhero comedy television series 2012 American television series debuts 2014 American television series endings American children's adventure television series American children's musical television series American television series with live action and animation Children's sketch comedy English-language television shows Television series by Fremantle (company) Television shows set in Orange County, California American television shows featuring puppetry Discovery Family original programming

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How did this do?

How did the second pilot of the Aquabats! Super Show! do?

The Aquabats! Super Show!

In 1994, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in Brea, California. Influenced as much by cartoons and camp television as theatrical bands like Devo and Oingo Boingo, The Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for their eccentric persona in which they claimed to be a band of superheroes on a quest to save the world and their elaborate stage shows which regularly featured scripted fights with costumed villains alongside similar stunts and comedy sketches. The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough for the group, charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs - a former child actor with ties in the industry - to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television. In 1998, Buena Vista Television helped produce a live-action mini-pilot directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait titled simply The Aquabats!, following the comic misadventures of the then-eight member band in an over-the-top camp style similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves. Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot the following year, using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death!. Independently directed and produced by Jacobs and his creative partner Scott Schultz, the result was a five-minute promo video entitled The Aquabats in Color!. In contrast to the wackier tone of the previous pilot, The Aquabats in Color! was a more action-oriented superhero series modeled after Japanese tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider. According to Jacobs, the Fox Family Channel reportedly expressed interest in the series and ordered production on a proper pilot episode, though following the channel's acquisition by Disney in 2001, the project was cancelled. CANNOTANSWER

using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album

The Aquabats! Super Show! is an American action-comedy musical television series which aired from March 3, 2012 to January 8, 2014 on The Hub Network and resumed as an independent YouTube web series in September 2019. The series was created by Christian Jacobs, and Scott Schultz, both the creators of the Nick Jr. show Yo Gabba Gabba!, and Jason deVilliers. Based on the superhero mythology of The Aquabats, a real-life comedy rock band which series co-creator and lead singer Jacobs formed in 1994, The Aquabats! Super Show! follows the comic adventures of a fictionalized version of the band, a musical group of amateur superheroes, as they haphazardly defend the world from a variety of villains and monsters. Styled similarly to the campy aesthetics of 1960s and 1970s children's television and Japanese tokusatsu, Super Show! utilizes various mediums of visual styles and special effects, mixing live-action storylines with cartoon shorts, parody advertisements and musical interludes. The series' first season concluded on June 16, 2012 following a run of 13 episodes, having met with a largely positive critical reception, consistently high ratings for the channel and a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Children's Series. The series' second season consisted of an initial five episodes which aired through June 2013, with three additional episodes airing in late December and January 2014, receiving similar acclaim and a further seven Daytime Emmy nominations, ultimately winning one for Best Stunt Coordination. In June 2014, co-creator Jacobs officially announced the series' cancellation, following news of The Hub's financial losses which led to the network's rebranding as Discovery Family later that October. In July 2018, The Aquabats launched a successful Kickstarter to help independently finance new episodes of The Aquabats! Super Show!, promoting the campaign with a series of YouTube-exclusive mini-episodes continuing the original series' storyline. On September 28, 2019, The Aquabats premiered the first installment of these new episodes, now a biweekly YouTube series entitled The Aquabats! RadVentures!, though still retaining Super Show!s theme song and title card. Series overview Premise Chronicled in both live-action and animated segments, The Aquabats! Super Show! is centered around the adventures of The Aquabats, a group of superhero rock musicians who travel the countryside on a self-appointed mission to fight evil and "destroy boredom", protecting the world from the villains and creatures who threaten to destroy it while aiming to become a famous rock and roll band in their own right. The Aquabats consist of singer The MC Bat Commander (Christian Jacobs), the swaggering leader of the group; bassist Crash McLarson (Chad Larson), who can grow up to 100 feet in size; drummer Ricky Fitness (Richard Falomir), who has the power of super speed; guitarist EagleBones Falconhawk (Ian Fowles), who's armed with a laser-shooting electric guitar; and keyboardist Jimmy the Robot (James R. Briggs, Jr.), an android. Despite their superhuman strengths and abilities, The Aquabats are quite bumbling, disorganized, and sometimes cowardly when faced with danger; this has in fact led them to be labeled "the world's most inept superheroes". The band lives and travels by way of their "Battletram", a modified classic GMC motorhome which, despite its small exterior, has an implausibly massive interior (similar to the TARDIS from Doctor Who or The Big Bologna from The Kids From C.A.P.E.R.), which contains, among many things, a science lab, a command center, and a living room. The Aquabats' origin story was left intentionally vague throughout the series, a choice Jacobs explains was done for the sake of the viewer's imagination, as he felt kids were more accepting of the inherent absurdity of the premise than adults tend to be: "'There's five guys. This is what each of the five guys does. There are monsters. They're gonna try to fight them'. It's so simple. And I think that's why it's so awesome with kids—they just take it and run with it". In the first five episodes of season two, each member of The Aquabats shares their memory of how they joined the band via animated flashback sequences; however, all of these flashbacks directly and intentionally contradict each other, leaving it unknown which—if any—could be considered officially canonical. Format and influences The Aquabats! Super Show! juxtaposes both live-action and animated segments starring The Aquabats, interwoven with various tangential skits and cartoon interstitials. The live-action storylines are the primary focus of each episode, following a self-contained villain of the week formula. In the first season, each episode featured brief anime-styled cartoon shorts which one of the characters would introduce at a random point of the show, often by finding "A Cartoon" (represented by a miniature television set) in an absurd location. Unlike the live-action segments, these cartoons followed a serialized story arc, with each installment ending in a cliffhanger to be resolved in the next episode. In season two, this format was replaced with a series of animated flashbacks recounting the origins of The Aquabats, each by a different animation studio and in a different animation style. Between these segments are pantomime cartoon shorts starring "Lil' Bat", The Aquabats' anthropomorphic bat mascot, and live-action parody commercials for outlandish fictional products, the latter of which has long been a staple of The Aquabats' multi-media stage shows. Jacobs says the concept behind Super Show! was something he had always dreamed of doing, making a "campy, live-action, funky kid's show" in the vein of the 1960s and 1970s television that he and the rest of the series' producers had grown up with. While the show pays homage to many facets of pop culture, Jacobs has named the 1960s Batman television series as the primary influence on Super Show!s "obviously silly" tone and visual style, ranging from set design to the trademark use of dutch angles for villain scenes. Other notable influences Jacobs has repeatedly mentioned include the works of Sid and Marty Krofft and Hanna-Barbera, Japanese tokusatsu series such as Ultraman and Johnny Sokko And His Flying Robot, the Shaw Brothers and Hong Kong cinema, and shows including Danger Island, Star Trek, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, and Pee-wee's Playhouse, noting "there's a good 30 years worth of television culture packed into these 22-minute episodes". Demographic As The Hub's key demographic were children aged 6 to 12, Super Show! was ostensibly targeted towards said age group, though Jacobs has stated that the series primarily aimed to appeal to an all-ages crowd, with the intent of creating entertainment that both kids and parents can watch and enjoy together or separately. In interviews prior to the series' premiere, he explained that this was merely an extension of The Aquabats' own family-friendly ethos: "There's just obviously something about the costumes and being superheroes that really appeals to younger kids, and I think we always knew that as a band...I think we'll want to put things in [the show] for an older audience, because we realize we have an older audience, but then also we want the young kids, to not have it go over their heads". Production history History and previous attempts at a series In 1994, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in Brea, California. Influenced as much by cartoons and camp television as theatrical bands like Devo and Oingo Boingo, The Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for their eccentric persona in which they claimed to be a band of superheroes on a quest to save the world and their elaborate stage shows which regularly featured scripted fights with costumed villains alongside similar stunts and comedy sketches. The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough for the group, charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs – a former child actor with ties in the industry – to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television. In 1998, Buena Vista Television helped produce a live-action mini-pilot directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait titled simply The Aquabats!, following the comic misadventures of the then-eight member band in an over-the-top camp style similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves. Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot the following year, using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death!. Independently directed and produced by Jacobs and his creative partner Scott Schultz, the result was a five-minute promo video entitled The Aquabats in Color!. In contrast to the wackier tone of the previous pilot, The Aquabats in Color! was a more action-oriented superhero series modeled after Japanese tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider. According to Jacobs, the Fox Family Channel reportedly expressed interest in the series and ordered production on a proper pilot episode, though following the channel's acquisition by Disney in 2001, the project was cancelled. The Aquabats! Super Show! pilot (2008) In 2005, Jacobs and Schultz formed the Orange County-based production company The Magic Store, focusing on creating family-oriented television entertainment. One of the company's independently produced pilots, the children's television series Yo Gabba Gabba!, was eventually picked up as a series by Viacoms Nick Jr. channel, premiering in August 2007 and ultimately becoming an award-winning and critically acclaimed international success. In the wake of the series' popularity, Jacobs and Schultz persuaded Yo Gabba Gabba!s joint production company Wild Brain to help produce a new pilot based around The Aquabats in conjuncture with The Magic Store. Again creatively spearheaded by Jacobs and Schultz, The Aquabats' third pilot, titled The Aquabats! Super Show!, was shot on location throughout southern California in late 2007 and early 2008. Part of this filming took place at a free invitation-only concert for members of the band's official fan club at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles on January 12, 2008. While The Aquabats' previous pilots were short, live-action promotional videos, The Aquabats! Super Show! was a fully realized 22-minute episode featuring two separate storylines based on the adventures of The Aquabats, one live-action and one animated, and interspersed with parody commercials and live footage of the band. Speaking on the decision to structure the show in such a varied format, Jacobs said "[w]e did that for a strategic reason – some networks like cartoons more than other networks. We wanted to say, 'this could be both shows'." Following a period of post-production, The Aquabats began widely self-promoting Super Show! in June 2008, redesigning their website to promote the pilot and releasing a teaser trailer and several exclusive clips through an official Super Show! YouTube channel. On July 25, 2008, the band screened the full pilot at a concert in San Diego held during the weekend of the San Diego Comic-Con, while a segment of the episode was hosted on Boing Boing the same day. In 2009, Cartoon Network allegedly picked the series up for a run of 22 episodes, though following major staff changes within the company—which, according to Jacobs, included the termination of the executives who had green-lighted Super Show!—the project was again cancelled. The Hub and season one After several more unsuccessful network pitches into the 2010s, The Aquabats! Super Show! was finally picked up as a series by family cable channel The Hub, a joint venture between Hasbro and Discovery which launched in 2010 as a replacement for Discovery Kids. The Hub formally announced the series in a press release on March 23, 2011, revealing Super Show! would be given a first season run of 13 episodes, produced in conjuncture with FremantleMedia. In promotion of the series, The Aquabats appeared as part of a panel at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con where they discussed their initial plans for the show, while The Hub sponsored an Aquabats concert held at the nearby House of Blues during the same weekend. Production on season one of Super Show! officially began in May 2011. The entirety of the first season was shot within and around The Aquabats' hometown of Orange County, California; according to the first season DVD audio commentary, episodes were shot on location in the cities of Irvine, Silverado, Yorba Linda, Huntington Beach and Fullerton, while a private sound stage in Santa Ana was used for interior shots of the Battletram. A public Aquabats concert held at The Glass House club in Pomona on November 5, 2011 was also filmed to provide live footage of the band which is featured in the series' opening credits montage and several individual episodes. Much of Super Show!s staff consist of friends and colleagues of The Aquabats who've previously worked with the band on various projects, ranging from members of Yo Gabba Gabba!s production team to fellow musicians within the southern California music scene. Among the more notable examples include Dallas McLaughlin and Matthew Gorney, both members of the San Diego hip hop band Bad Credit, who prominently served as writers, composers and performers, Warren Fitzgerald, guitarist for The Vandals, who was hired as a writer and music director, internet sketch comedy group Mega64 were commissioned to produce original material, primarily the series' parody commercials, and Japanese artist Pey, who had designed much of The Aquabats' promotional art and merchandise during the 2000s, was hired to design the season's animated segments. Additionally, several industry professionals were brought in to help work on the show: Dani Michaeli, a staff writer on SpongeBob SquarePants, was hired as the series' story editor, while Matt Chapman, co-creator of the internet Flash cartoon Homestar Runner, acted as a writer, director and actor on several episodes. As none of the members besides Jacobs had any previous acting experience, comedian Matt Walsh of the Upright Citizens Brigade was brought in to help teach The Aquabats comedic acting and timing. In further homage to the original Batman series, Super Show! features a variety of celebrity cameo appearances. The series' first season included appearances from actors Jon Heder, Lou Diamond Phillips and Samm Levine, comedians Rip Taylor, Paul Scheer and Paul Rust, and comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic, who appeared in two episodes as different characters. The first season also included several "Easter egg" cameos from original Aquabats members Corey "Chainsaw" Pollock and Boyd "Catboy" Terry, as well as from fellow musicians Warren Fitzgerald and Art Mitchell of the band Supernova. Despite having been originally announced as part of The Hub's 2011 Fall line-up, production delays postponed Super Show!s premiere to early 2012. The series' marketing campaign began in December 2011, with a later announcement of an official premiere date confirmed for March 3, 2012. Following a non-consecutive run of 13 episodes, the first-season finale aired on June 16, 2012. Season two On October 16, 2012, The Aquabats and The Hub confirmed production on new episodes of Super Show! through the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, announcing a tentative debut date of Spring 2013. Principal photography on season two began on October 22 and wrapped on December 1. Unlike the first season, the majority of season two was shot in and around Salt Lake City, Utah, which Jacobs explained was considerably less expensive than shooting in California. While no changes were made to Super Shows creative team, in December 2012 it was announced that season two would introduce the series' first guest director, musician and comic book writer Gerard Way, who co-directed and co-wrote the season finale "The AntiBats!" with Jacobs and deVilliers. Way's involvement with the series was heavily covered by the music press in the wake of the March 2013 break-up of his popular alternative rock band My Chemical Romance. Among the guest stars featured in season two were professional skateboarders Tony Hawk and Eric Koston, Devo frontman and Yo Gabba Gabba! cast member Mark Mothersbaugh, internet celebrity Leslie Hall, actor Martin Starr and My Chemical Romance bassist Mikey Way. On December 2, 2012, deVilliers revealed on his Twitter account that the upcoming season would consist of only five new episodes, in what he called more "season 1.5" than a "season 2", though mentioned the possibility of more being made in the future. On May 1, 2013, it was announced through Entertainment Weekly that the series' second season would begin airing on June 1. After a run of only five episodes, the season concluded on June 29, 2013. 2013–2014 specials On August 22, 2013, series performer Chad Larson confirmed via Twitter that three additional episodes of Super Show! were being filmed near the end of the year, "and maybe more next". Principal photography on these episodes eventually began in Utah in early October. Throughout the month, The Aquabats posted numerous pictures of production on the new episodes on their Twitter and Instagram accounts, some of which revealed production code numbers of 301, 302 and 303, ostensibly indicating what would be a third season. Though these numbers were later verified by the Internet Movie Database, a November press release from The Hub explicitly referred to these three episodes as "specials". The first of these specials, "Christmas with The Aquabats!", aired on December 21, featuring comedians Robert Smigel and Matt Walsh in guest roles. The second of these episodes, "The Shark Fighter!" (based on The Aquabats' song of the same name), featuring comedian Rhys Darby, aired the following week on December 28, while the final special "Kitty Litter!" aired on January 18, 2014. "Kitty Litter!" was helmed by another guest director, Munn Powell, best known for his work as cinematographer on the Jared and Jerusha Hess films Napoleon Dynamite and Gentlemen Broncos. Following this short run of episodes, there was no confirmation by either The Hub or The Aquabats as to the production of any future episodes. In a December 2013 interview, Christian Jacobs acknowledged the network's unusually small order of episodes but didn't elaborate on any possible reasoning. In the same interview, he stated that the band had initially prepared for another order of 13 episodes, having written as many scripts for potential future episodes. On May 1, 2014, the nominees for the 2014 Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, revealing that Super Show! had been nominated for five awards in four categories, including the award for Best Writing in a Children's Series for the episode "The AntiBats!". The awards ceremony was held on June 22, 2014, where the series ultimately won the award for Best Stunt Coordination for stuntman Skip Carlson. Cancellation by The Hub and hiatus In mid-2014, it was announced in entertainment press that Hasbro and Discovery had been in the process of rebranding The Hub following what they saw to be disappointing returns for the channel, changes which included the departure of CEO Margaret Loesch, who was instrumental in acquiring Super Show! as a series. In a Huffington Post feature about The Aquabats prior to the band's appearance at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, it was revealed that The Hub had opted not to renew Super Show! for a third season, effectively cancelling the series. Jacobs admitted he was surprised by this turn of events, noting "Everything we heard was that the show has been a real Cinderella story for the Hub and that it was rating really well with viewers. We just assumed that we'd eventually go back into production or at least get picked up for Season 3", but ultimately concluded "it is what it is" in regard to the network's decision. Despite this, Jacobs remained optimistic about the series' future, saying "Given that we now live in a world where people are streaming TV shows directly onto their iPhones & computers, and given that companies like Netflix & Yahoo! are now picking up so much new content for their customers...I just find it hard to believe that The Aquabats! Super Show! is really over. I mean, we haven't even made any toys yet". He concluded by stating "It took us almost 15 years to get that TV series made. And even though we've got a bunch more concert dates lined up for the rest of this year, our first priority is to find a new home for The Aquabats! Super Show!". On March 31, 2015, the nominees for the 42nd annual Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, with Super Show! earning nominations for Best SFX Mixer (Blaine Stewart) and Best Stunt Coordinator (Braxton McAllister). On June 27, 2015, The Aquabats screened the entire first season of Super Show! before a sold-out crowd at The Frida Cinema in downtown Santa Ana, which was accompanied by a live performance by the band and Q&A sessions with The Aquabats and numerous members of the cast and crew. A similar presentation of the entire second season – including the three additional specials – took place at The Art Theater in Long Beach on December 16, 2017, coinciding with the release of the second season Blu-ray. Bring Back The Aquabats! Kickstarter campaign Following weeks of teasing a major announcement, The Aquabats launched a Kickstarter campaign on July 31, 2018 to help finance the return of The Aquabats! Super Show! as well as new studio albums from the band at a minimum projected cost of $1.1 million. The Aquabats promoted their campaign with a video featuring a slew of celebrity cameos, including Super Show! guest stars "Weird Al" Yankovic, Robert Smigel (as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog), Matt Chapman (as Homestar Runner and Strong Bad), former Aquabats member Travis Barker, Tony Kanal, Tom Dumont, Oscar Nunez, Kate Micucci, Blake Anderson, Imagine Dragons, Felicia Day and Tom Lennon, all of whom appeared in The Aquabats' trademark uniforms and spoke the Kickstarter's promotional slogan "I am The Aquabats"/"We are The Aquabats". Most prominently featured, however, was comedian Jack Black, who was later confirmed by the campaign's press releases to act as executive producer for the series' return. Along with their Kickstarter, the band began releasing a series of Super Show! "mini-episodes", depicting the MC Bat Commander's metafictional quest to reunite the estranged Aquabats following the series' cancellation. The band confirmed that as the Kickstarter progresses, further "mini-episodes" will be released to both promote the campaign as well as act as a continuation of Super Show!. By August 28, mere days before the campaign's end date of September 1, The Aquabats' Kickstarter had raised only $601,629 of its projected $1.1 million goal. The funding was subsequently cancelled and the campaign was rebooted the same day with a smaller goal of $100,000 to instead finance one new album and the continued production of the Super Show!! "mini-episodes". The project's goal was met within minutes. Music Original music for The Aquabats! Super Show! was primarily composed and performed by The Aquabats themselves, with additional scoring on most episodes provided by Matthew Gorney, Warren Fitzgerald or individual credits for Aquabats members James R. Briggs, Jr., Richard Falomir and Ian Fowles. Fitzgerald, guitarist for punk rock band The Vandals and former member of Oingo Boingo, acted as the series' music supervisor. The theme song to Super Show!, "Super Show Theme Song!", was co-written by The Aquabats and Fitzgerald. Whereas most musically oriented shows like The Monkees typically break the narrative of an episode for a music video performance of a standalone song, each episode of Super Show! typically features one or two unique songs that tied directly into the plot, usually about and performed during the events of a particular scene. Most of these songs are rather brief, averaging a running time of just under a minute; Jacobs stated that many of the show's original songs were recorded as full-length pieces but trimmed down for inclusion in an episode, simply due to the show "trying to pack so much into 22 minutes". Shortly after Super Show!s premiere, Jacobs confirmed plans to eventually release the series' original full-length songs as a soundtrack album. However, these plans wouldn't fully come to fruition until 2019; in a 2018 interview, Jacobs retrospectively revealed that the album had been long completed but the band "hadn't had all the rights tied up" until then. The first original and full-length recordings from the series' first season debuted in July 2017, when "Burger Rain" and "Beat Fishin'" were released as a tour-exclusive 7" single. Songs from the series' first season were eventually compiled as The Aquabats! Super Show! Television Soundtrack: Volume One, which was released digitally in March 2019 and then onto physical media the following June, where it became The Aquabats' highest-charting album to date, debuting at the top of Billboards Top Heatseekers chart and at 165 on the Billboard 200. Cast and characters See: List of The Aquabats! Super Show! characters The Aquabats! Super Show! stars and is based upon fictionalized versions of the then-current (since 2006) line-up of the California comedy rock band The Aquabats. Adapting the backstory the band has used for the entirety of their professional career, Super Show! depicts The Aquabats as a group of bumbling, out-of-shape superheroes on a self-appointed mission to fight the forces of evil, presented in both live-action and animated segments. The five members of The Aquabats are: The MC Bat Commander (played and voiced by Christian Jacobs) – The Aquabats' singer and de facto leader of the team. Though he doesn't have any superpowers of his own and is often quite stubborn and naive, the Commander is shown to be an effective strategist whose sharp leadership skills, bravery and determination regularly drive the band towards victory. Crash McLarson (played and voiced by Chad Larson) – The band's bass guitarist, who has the frequently uncontrollable ability to grow upwards of 100 feet in size when under emotional stress. Despite being the largest and strongest of The Aquabats, Crash has a gentle, childlike demeanor bordering on slight dim-wittedness, and as such is usually the most cowardly member of the team. Jimmy the Robot (played and voiced by James R. Briggs, Jr.) – The Aquabats' keyboardist. As his name implies, Jimmy is an android whose mechanical body houses a variety of built-in gadgets and weaponry, plus a comprehensive knowledge database which earns him the position of the group's resident scientist. Being a robot, Jimmy is generally perplexed by human emotions and behavior. Ricky Fitness (played and voiced by Richard Falomir) – the band's drummer, Ricky possesses the power of super speed. Being the most physically fit and health-conscious member of The Aquabats, some of the series' running gags revolve around Ricky's status as a handsome ladies' man and his fondness for "fresh, healthy veggies" in contrast to the rest of the team's voracious affinity for junk food. EagleBones Falconhawk (played and voiced by Ian Fowles) – The Aquabats' guitarist. The cocky and boyish maverick of the team, EagleBones is highly proficient on his custom weaponized electric guitar which shoots lasers from its headstock. Following a spiritual encounter early in season one, EagleBones also has the gift of second sight and is accompanied by "The Dude", an invisible spirit eagle whom he summons to aide The Aquabats in battle. Voice actor and writer Mr. Lawrence provided the minimal narration for both seasons of Super Show!s live-action segments, while staff writer Kyle McCulloch narrated the first season's animated segments. Guest stars and recurring characters Though each episode of the series introduced a new villain, ally and/or celebrity cameo, Super Show! never featured any major recurring characters throughout its run. However, every episode of the show included a very brief appearance by a character fans dubbed the "Fox Man", a man in a cheap-looking fox costume played by visual effects supervisor Joel Fox, who would appear hidden in the background of a random scene as an Easter egg for viewers to spot, although his character was never explained within the context of the series. Comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic and comedian Paul Rust were the only two guest actors to appear in two episodes: Yankovic played two different roles as the President of the United States and superhero SuperMagic PowerMan! (in a 2012 interview, Jacobs alluded to the two possibly being the same character, though this isn't implied within the series), while Rust played a boorish slacker named Ronmark, first appearing in live-action in a first-season episode and subsequently lending his voice to a mutated monster version of the character in part of a second-season episode. Episodes Distribution International broadcast Outside of North America, The Aquabats! Super Show! broadcast in Australia on the children's public broadcasting channel ABC3 and in the United Kingdom on the children's network CITV. Home media Coinciding with the run of the first season, each new episode of The Aquabats! Super Show! was released through the iTunes Store for digital download. Prior to the series debut, a season pass was made available for purchase to enable viewers to automatically receive a download of each new episode on its airdate. The first season of Super Show! was added to the video streaming service Netflix on December 1, 2012, later being added to Hulu on December 21. Unlike the first season, the series' second season was not made available for iTunes pre-order, nor were episodes released for purchase. Though each episode was briefly streamed on The Hub's official website, none of the seasons' episodes were made available on Hulu, Netflix or similar streaming services. Shout! Factory had the DVD publishing rights for The Aquabats! Super Show! within Region 1 for release of the first season. The company first announced their acquisition of the series and plans for a future DVD in a press release dated August 6, 2012, though did not initially confirm a set release date until several months later. On May 21, 2013, the first season of Super Show! was released on a two-disc DVD set. On November 22, 2017, in conjunction with their announcement of a season two theatrical screening, The Aquabats confirmed an independent Blu-ray release for season two, including the three specials often considered a "season three". On December 5, pre-orders were launched on The Aquabats' merchandising site for an official release date of December 22, though copies were first made for public sale at the second season theatrical screening on December 16. Starting in December 2014, The Aquabats gradually began uploading the series' full episodes onto their official YouTube channel. As of August 2019, all 21 episodes of Super Show! and its pilot episode have been publicly uploaded to their account. Critical reception Critical response to The Aquabats! Super Show! was predominantly positive, with most reviewers praising the series' intentionally campy tone and offbeat humor. The Onions The A.V. Club gave the series premiere an A− rating, describing it as "a loving homage to basically everything ever done by the brothers Krofft": "the show adeptly flips from humor to melodrama to action, providing some awesomely cheap special effects, goofy songs, and gags that range from slapstick to sublime", summarizing "there's so much here that both kids and parents will be able to enjoy the proceedings on their own respective levels and rarely find themselves bored". Brian Lowry of Variety wrote "you don't have to laugh at everything to admire the effort and sheer silliness", calling the show a "goofy and nostalgic" throwback to the "children's TV of baby boomers' youth, down to crappy production values and awful-looking 'monsters' that work to its advantage". He summarized "Although this Hub series at times feels like an SNL skit stretched to a half-hour, its sly mix of music, live-action crime-fighting, cartoons and mock ads ought to develop a cult following—and might be more popular with parents, at least those with the geek gene, than their kids". Technology magazine Wired was consistently positive towards the series, calling it both "wonderfully strange" and "delightfully deranged", writing "[f]illed with self-deprecating music videos, toon interludes and ludicrous villains, The Aquabats! Super Show! has become one of television's strangely comforting finds". Common Sense Media, who review shows based on age-appropriate content, gave Super Show! a rating of 4 out of 5 stars, calling it "demented and manic...fun by sheer dint of how many jokes, visual and otherwise, are thrown at the screen, both those calculated to appeal to kids and adults". The site praised the series for its lighter and sillier tone in comparison to more violent live-action superhero fare, and considered the "kind-hearted" Aquabats to be relatively positive role models. However, the reviewer suggested the show's violence and creatures may be too intense for very young children, and pointed out a distinct lack of central female characters. Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times offered a more indifferent opinion, calling The Aquabats "indescribably odd" and the series "frenetic, semicoherent and generally harmless. Also somewhat hallucinogenic", noting Super Show!s writing "may be over the heads of the 2-to-12 set", suggesting its most receptive audience might be "the college drinking-game crowd". Awards and nominations The Aquabats! Super Show! was nominated for the following awards: Daytime Emmy Award References External links Official website of The Aquabats The Aquabats 2010s American children's television series 2010s American musical comedy television series 2010s American satirical television series 2010s American sketch comedy television series 2010s American superhero comedy television series 2012 American television series debuts 2014 American television series endings American children's adventure television series American children's musical television series American television series with live action and animation Children's sketch comedy English-language television shows Television series by Fremantle (company) Television shows set in Orange County, California American television shows featuring puppetry Discovery Family original programming

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Was this successful?

Was the second pilot of the Aquabats! Super Show! successful?

The Aquabats! Super Show!

In 1994, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in Brea, California. Influenced as much by cartoons and camp television as theatrical bands like Devo and Oingo Boingo, The Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for their eccentric persona in which they claimed to be a band of superheroes on a quest to save the world and their elaborate stage shows which regularly featured scripted fights with costumed villains alongside similar stunts and comedy sketches. The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough for the group, charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs - a former child actor with ties in the industry - to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television. In 1998, Buena Vista Television helped produce a live-action mini-pilot directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait titled simply The Aquabats!, following the comic misadventures of the then-eight member band in an over-the-top camp style similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves. Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot the following year, using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death!. Independently directed and produced by Jacobs and his creative partner Scott Schultz, the result was a five-minute promo video entitled The Aquabats in Color!. In contrast to the wackier tone of the previous pilot, The Aquabats in Color! was a more action-oriented superhero series modeled after Japanese tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider. According to Jacobs, the Fox Family Channel reportedly expressed interest in the series and ordered production on a proper pilot episode, though following the channel's acquisition by Disney in 2001, the project was cancelled. CANNOTANSWER

the project was cancelled.

The Aquabats! Super Show! is an American action-comedy musical television series which aired from March 3, 2012 to January 8, 2014 on The Hub Network and resumed as an independent YouTube web series in September 2019. The series was created by Christian Jacobs, and Scott Schultz, both the creators of the Nick Jr. show Yo Gabba Gabba!, and Jason deVilliers. Based on the superhero mythology of The Aquabats, a real-life comedy rock band which series co-creator and lead singer Jacobs formed in 1994, The Aquabats! Super Show! follows the comic adventures of a fictionalized version of the band, a musical group of amateur superheroes, as they haphazardly defend the world from a variety of villains and monsters. Styled similarly to the campy aesthetics of 1960s and 1970s children's television and Japanese tokusatsu, Super Show! utilizes various mediums of visual styles and special effects, mixing live-action storylines with cartoon shorts, parody advertisements and musical interludes. The series' first season concluded on June 16, 2012 following a run of 13 episodes, having met with a largely positive critical reception, consistently high ratings for the channel and a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Children's Series. The series' second season consisted of an initial five episodes which aired through June 2013, with three additional episodes airing in late December and January 2014, receiving similar acclaim and a further seven Daytime Emmy nominations, ultimately winning one for Best Stunt Coordination. In June 2014, co-creator Jacobs officially announced the series' cancellation, following news of The Hub's financial losses which led to the network's rebranding as Discovery Family later that October. In July 2018, The Aquabats launched a successful Kickstarter to help independently finance new episodes of The Aquabats! Super Show!, promoting the campaign with a series of YouTube-exclusive mini-episodes continuing the original series' storyline. On September 28, 2019, The Aquabats premiered the first installment of these new episodes, now a biweekly YouTube series entitled The Aquabats! RadVentures!, though still retaining Super Show!s theme song and title card. Series overview Premise Chronicled in both live-action and animated segments, The Aquabats! Super Show! is centered around the adventures of The Aquabats, a group of superhero rock musicians who travel the countryside on a self-appointed mission to fight evil and "destroy boredom", protecting the world from the villains and creatures who threaten to destroy it while aiming to become a famous rock and roll band in their own right. The Aquabats consist of singer The MC Bat Commander (Christian Jacobs), the swaggering leader of the group; bassist Crash McLarson (Chad Larson), who can grow up to 100 feet in size; drummer Ricky Fitness (Richard Falomir), who has the power of super speed; guitarist EagleBones Falconhawk (Ian Fowles), who's armed with a laser-shooting electric guitar; and keyboardist Jimmy the Robot (James R. Briggs, Jr.), an android. Despite their superhuman strengths and abilities, The Aquabats are quite bumbling, disorganized, and sometimes cowardly when faced with danger; this has in fact led them to be labeled "the world's most inept superheroes". The band lives and travels by way of their "Battletram", a modified classic GMC motorhome which, despite its small exterior, has an implausibly massive interior (similar to the TARDIS from Doctor Who or The Big Bologna from The Kids From C.A.P.E.R.), which contains, among many things, a science lab, a command center, and a living room. The Aquabats' origin story was left intentionally vague throughout the series, a choice Jacobs explains was done for the sake of the viewer's imagination, as he felt kids were more accepting of the inherent absurdity of the premise than adults tend to be: "'There's five guys. This is what each of the five guys does. There are monsters. They're gonna try to fight them'. It's so simple. And I think that's why it's so awesome with kids—they just take it and run with it". In the first five episodes of season two, each member of The Aquabats shares their memory of how they joined the band via animated flashback sequences; however, all of these flashbacks directly and intentionally contradict each other, leaving it unknown which—if any—could be considered officially canonical. Format and influences The Aquabats! Super Show! juxtaposes both live-action and animated segments starring The Aquabats, interwoven with various tangential skits and cartoon interstitials. The live-action storylines are the primary focus of each episode, following a self-contained villain of the week formula. In the first season, each episode featured brief anime-styled cartoon shorts which one of the characters would introduce at a random point of the show, often by finding "A Cartoon" (represented by a miniature television set) in an absurd location. Unlike the live-action segments, these cartoons followed a serialized story arc, with each installment ending in a cliffhanger to be resolved in the next episode. In season two, this format was replaced with a series of animated flashbacks recounting the origins of The Aquabats, each by a different animation studio and in a different animation style. Between these segments are pantomime cartoon shorts starring "Lil' Bat", The Aquabats' anthropomorphic bat mascot, and live-action parody commercials for outlandish fictional products, the latter of which has long been a staple of The Aquabats' multi-media stage shows. Jacobs says the concept behind Super Show! was something he had always dreamed of doing, making a "campy, live-action, funky kid's show" in the vein of the 1960s and 1970s television that he and the rest of the series' producers had grown up with. While the show pays homage to many facets of pop culture, Jacobs has named the 1960s Batman television series as the primary influence on Super Show!s "obviously silly" tone and visual style, ranging from set design to the trademark use of dutch angles for villain scenes. Other notable influences Jacobs has repeatedly mentioned include the works of Sid and Marty Krofft and Hanna-Barbera, Japanese tokusatsu series such as Ultraman and Johnny Sokko And His Flying Robot, the Shaw Brothers and Hong Kong cinema, and shows including Danger Island, Star Trek, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, and Pee-wee's Playhouse, noting "there's a good 30 years worth of television culture packed into these 22-minute episodes". Demographic As The Hub's key demographic were children aged 6 to 12, Super Show! was ostensibly targeted towards said age group, though Jacobs has stated that the series primarily aimed to appeal to an all-ages crowd, with the intent of creating entertainment that both kids and parents can watch and enjoy together or separately. In interviews prior to the series' premiere, he explained that this was merely an extension of The Aquabats' own family-friendly ethos: "There's just obviously something about the costumes and being superheroes that really appeals to younger kids, and I think we always knew that as a band...I think we'll want to put things in [the show] for an older audience, because we realize we have an older audience, but then also we want the young kids, to not have it go over their heads". Production history History and previous attempts at a series In 1994, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in Brea, California. Influenced as much by cartoons and camp television as theatrical bands like Devo and Oingo Boingo, The Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for their eccentric persona in which they claimed to be a band of superheroes on a quest to save the world and their elaborate stage shows which regularly featured scripted fights with costumed villains alongside similar stunts and comedy sketches. The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough for the group, charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs – a former child actor with ties in the industry – to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television. In 1998, Buena Vista Television helped produce a live-action mini-pilot directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait titled simply The Aquabats!, following the comic misadventures of the then-eight member band in an over-the-top camp style similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves. Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot the following year, using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death!. Independently directed and produced by Jacobs and his creative partner Scott Schultz, the result was a five-minute promo video entitled The Aquabats in Color!. In contrast to the wackier tone of the previous pilot, The Aquabats in Color! was a more action-oriented superhero series modeled after Japanese tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider. According to Jacobs, the Fox Family Channel reportedly expressed interest in the series and ordered production on a proper pilot episode, though following the channel's acquisition by Disney in 2001, the project was cancelled. The Aquabats! Super Show! pilot (2008) In 2005, Jacobs and Schultz formed the Orange County-based production company The Magic Store, focusing on creating family-oriented television entertainment. One of the company's independently produced pilots, the children's television series Yo Gabba Gabba!, was eventually picked up as a series by Viacoms Nick Jr. channel, premiering in August 2007 and ultimately becoming an award-winning and critically acclaimed international success. In the wake of the series' popularity, Jacobs and Schultz persuaded Yo Gabba Gabba!s joint production company Wild Brain to help produce a new pilot based around The Aquabats in conjuncture with The Magic Store. Again creatively spearheaded by Jacobs and Schultz, The Aquabats' third pilot, titled The Aquabats! Super Show!, was shot on location throughout southern California in late 2007 and early 2008. Part of this filming took place at a free invitation-only concert for members of the band's official fan club at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles on January 12, 2008. While The Aquabats' previous pilots were short, live-action promotional videos, The Aquabats! Super Show! was a fully realized 22-minute episode featuring two separate storylines based on the adventures of The Aquabats, one live-action and one animated, and interspersed with parody commercials and live footage of the band. Speaking on the decision to structure the show in such a varied format, Jacobs said "[w]e did that for a strategic reason – some networks like cartoons more than other networks. We wanted to say, 'this could be both shows'." Following a period of post-production, The Aquabats began widely self-promoting Super Show! in June 2008, redesigning their website to promote the pilot and releasing a teaser trailer and several exclusive clips through an official Super Show! YouTube channel. On July 25, 2008, the band screened the full pilot at a concert in San Diego held during the weekend of the San Diego Comic-Con, while a segment of the episode was hosted on Boing Boing the same day. In 2009, Cartoon Network allegedly picked the series up for a run of 22 episodes, though following major staff changes within the company—which, according to Jacobs, included the termination of the executives who had green-lighted Super Show!—the project was again cancelled. The Hub and season one After several more unsuccessful network pitches into the 2010s, The Aquabats! Super Show! was finally picked up as a series by family cable channel The Hub, a joint venture between Hasbro and Discovery which launched in 2010 as a replacement for Discovery Kids. The Hub formally announced the series in a press release on March 23, 2011, revealing Super Show! would be given a first season run of 13 episodes, produced in conjuncture with FremantleMedia. In promotion of the series, The Aquabats appeared as part of a panel at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con where they discussed their initial plans for the show, while The Hub sponsored an Aquabats concert held at the nearby House of Blues during the same weekend. Production on season one of Super Show! officially began in May 2011. The entirety of the first season was shot within and around The Aquabats' hometown of Orange County, California; according to the first season DVD audio commentary, episodes were shot on location in the cities of Irvine, Silverado, Yorba Linda, Huntington Beach and Fullerton, while a private sound stage in Santa Ana was used for interior shots of the Battletram. A public Aquabats concert held at The Glass House club in Pomona on November 5, 2011 was also filmed to provide live footage of the band which is featured in the series' opening credits montage and several individual episodes. Much of Super Show!s staff consist of friends and colleagues of The Aquabats who've previously worked with the band on various projects, ranging from members of Yo Gabba Gabba!s production team to fellow musicians within the southern California music scene. Among the more notable examples include Dallas McLaughlin and Matthew Gorney, both members of the San Diego hip hop band Bad Credit, who prominently served as writers, composers and performers, Warren Fitzgerald, guitarist for The Vandals, who was hired as a writer and music director, internet sketch comedy group Mega64 were commissioned to produce original material, primarily the series' parody commercials, and Japanese artist Pey, who had designed much of The Aquabats' promotional art and merchandise during the 2000s, was hired to design the season's animated segments. Additionally, several industry professionals were brought in to help work on the show: Dani Michaeli, a staff writer on SpongeBob SquarePants, was hired as the series' story editor, while Matt Chapman, co-creator of the internet Flash cartoon Homestar Runner, acted as a writer, director and actor on several episodes. As none of the members besides Jacobs had any previous acting experience, comedian Matt Walsh of the Upright Citizens Brigade was brought in to help teach The Aquabats comedic acting and timing. In further homage to the original Batman series, Super Show! features a variety of celebrity cameo appearances. The series' first season included appearances from actors Jon Heder, Lou Diamond Phillips and Samm Levine, comedians Rip Taylor, Paul Scheer and Paul Rust, and comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic, who appeared in two episodes as different characters. The first season also included several "Easter egg" cameos from original Aquabats members Corey "Chainsaw" Pollock and Boyd "Catboy" Terry, as well as from fellow musicians Warren Fitzgerald and Art Mitchell of the band Supernova. Despite having been originally announced as part of The Hub's 2011 Fall line-up, production delays postponed Super Show!s premiere to early 2012. The series' marketing campaign began in December 2011, with a later announcement of an official premiere date confirmed for March 3, 2012. Following a non-consecutive run of 13 episodes, the first-season finale aired on June 16, 2012. Season two On October 16, 2012, The Aquabats and The Hub confirmed production on new episodes of Super Show! through the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, announcing a tentative debut date of Spring 2013. Principal photography on season two began on October 22 and wrapped on December 1. Unlike the first season, the majority of season two was shot in and around Salt Lake City, Utah, which Jacobs explained was considerably less expensive than shooting in California. While no changes were made to Super Shows creative team, in December 2012 it was announced that season two would introduce the series' first guest director, musician and comic book writer Gerard Way, who co-directed and co-wrote the season finale "The AntiBats!" with Jacobs and deVilliers. Way's involvement with the series was heavily covered by the music press in the wake of the March 2013 break-up of his popular alternative rock band My Chemical Romance. Among the guest stars featured in season two were professional skateboarders Tony Hawk and Eric Koston, Devo frontman and Yo Gabba Gabba! cast member Mark Mothersbaugh, internet celebrity Leslie Hall, actor Martin Starr and My Chemical Romance bassist Mikey Way. On December 2, 2012, deVilliers revealed on his Twitter account that the upcoming season would consist of only five new episodes, in what he called more "season 1.5" than a "season 2", though mentioned the possibility of more being made in the future. On May 1, 2013, it was announced through Entertainment Weekly that the series' second season would begin airing on June 1. After a run of only five episodes, the season concluded on June 29, 2013. 2013–2014 specials On August 22, 2013, series performer Chad Larson confirmed via Twitter that three additional episodes of Super Show! were being filmed near the end of the year, "and maybe more next". Principal photography on these episodes eventually began in Utah in early October. Throughout the month, The Aquabats posted numerous pictures of production on the new episodes on their Twitter and Instagram accounts, some of which revealed production code numbers of 301, 302 and 303, ostensibly indicating what would be a third season. Though these numbers were later verified by the Internet Movie Database, a November press release from The Hub explicitly referred to these three episodes as "specials". The first of these specials, "Christmas with The Aquabats!", aired on December 21, featuring comedians Robert Smigel and Matt Walsh in guest roles. The second of these episodes, "The Shark Fighter!" (based on The Aquabats' song of the same name), featuring comedian Rhys Darby, aired the following week on December 28, while the final special "Kitty Litter!" aired on January 18, 2014. "Kitty Litter!" was helmed by another guest director, Munn Powell, best known for his work as cinematographer on the Jared and Jerusha Hess films Napoleon Dynamite and Gentlemen Broncos. Following this short run of episodes, there was no confirmation by either The Hub or The Aquabats as to the production of any future episodes. In a December 2013 interview, Christian Jacobs acknowledged the network's unusually small order of episodes but didn't elaborate on any possible reasoning. In the same interview, he stated that the band had initially prepared for another order of 13 episodes, having written as many scripts for potential future episodes. On May 1, 2014, the nominees for the 2014 Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, revealing that Super Show! had been nominated for five awards in four categories, including the award for Best Writing in a Children's Series for the episode "The AntiBats!". The awards ceremony was held on June 22, 2014, where the series ultimately won the award for Best Stunt Coordination for stuntman Skip Carlson. Cancellation by The Hub and hiatus In mid-2014, it was announced in entertainment press that Hasbro and Discovery had been in the process of rebranding The Hub following what they saw to be disappointing returns for the channel, changes which included the departure of CEO Margaret Loesch, who was instrumental in acquiring Super Show! as a series. In a Huffington Post feature about The Aquabats prior to the band's appearance at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, it was revealed that The Hub had opted not to renew Super Show! for a third season, effectively cancelling the series. Jacobs admitted he was surprised by this turn of events, noting "Everything we heard was that the show has been a real Cinderella story for the Hub and that it was rating really well with viewers. We just assumed that we'd eventually go back into production or at least get picked up for Season 3", but ultimately concluded "it is what it is" in regard to the network's decision. Despite this, Jacobs remained optimistic about the series' future, saying "Given that we now live in a world where people are streaming TV shows directly onto their iPhones & computers, and given that companies like Netflix & Yahoo! are now picking up so much new content for their customers...I just find it hard to believe that The Aquabats! Super Show! is really over. I mean, we haven't even made any toys yet". He concluded by stating "It took us almost 15 years to get that TV series made. And even though we've got a bunch more concert dates lined up for the rest of this year, our first priority is to find a new home for The Aquabats! Super Show!". On March 31, 2015, the nominees for the 42nd annual Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, with Super Show! earning nominations for Best SFX Mixer (Blaine Stewart) and Best Stunt Coordinator (Braxton McAllister). On June 27, 2015, The Aquabats screened the entire first season of Super Show! before a sold-out crowd at The Frida Cinema in downtown Santa Ana, which was accompanied by a live performance by the band and Q&A sessions with The Aquabats and numerous members of the cast and crew. A similar presentation of the entire second season – including the three additional specials – took place at The Art Theater in Long Beach on December 16, 2017, coinciding with the release of the second season Blu-ray. Bring Back The Aquabats! Kickstarter campaign Following weeks of teasing a major announcement, The Aquabats launched a Kickstarter campaign on July 31, 2018 to help finance the return of The Aquabats! Super Show! as well as new studio albums from the band at a minimum projected cost of $1.1 million. The Aquabats promoted their campaign with a video featuring a slew of celebrity cameos, including Super Show! guest stars "Weird Al" Yankovic, Robert Smigel (as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog), Matt Chapman (as Homestar Runner and Strong Bad), former Aquabats member Travis Barker, Tony Kanal, Tom Dumont, Oscar Nunez, Kate Micucci, Blake Anderson, Imagine Dragons, Felicia Day and Tom Lennon, all of whom appeared in The Aquabats' trademark uniforms and spoke the Kickstarter's promotional slogan "I am The Aquabats"/"We are The Aquabats". Most prominently featured, however, was comedian Jack Black, who was later confirmed by the campaign's press releases to act as executive producer for the series' return. Along with their Kickstarter, the band began releasing a series of Super Show! "mini-episodes", depicting the MC Bat Commander's metafictional quest to reunite the estranged Aquabats following the series' cancellation. The band confirmed that as the Kickstarter progresses, further "mini-episodes" will be released to both promote the campaign as well as act as a continuation of Super Show!. By August 28, mere days before the campaign's end date of September 1, The Aquabats' Kickstarter had raised only $601,629 of its projected $1.1 million goal. The funding was subsequently cancelled and the campaign was rebooted the same day with a smaller goal of $100,000 to instead finance one new album and the continued production of the Super Show!! "mini-episodes". The project's goal was met within minutes. Music Original music for The Aquabats! Super Show! was primarily composed and performed by The Aquabats themselves, with additional scoring on most episodes provided by Matthew Gorney, Warren Fitzgerald or individual credits for Aquabats members James R. Briggs, Jr., Richard Falomir and Ian Fowles. Fitzgerald, guitarist for punk rock band The Vandals and former member of Oingo Boingo, acted as the series' music supervisor. The theme song to Super Show!, "Super Show Theme Song!", was co-written by The Aquabats and Fitzgerald. Whereas most musically oriented shows like The Monkees typically break the narrative of an episode for a music video performance of a standalone song, each episode of Super Show! typically features one or two unique songs that tied directly into the plot, usually about and performed during the events of a particular scene. Most of these songs are rather brief, averaging a running time of just under a minute; Jacobs stated that many of the show's original songs were recorded as full-length pieces but trimmed down for inclusion in an episode, simply due to the show "trying to pack so much into 22 minutes". Shortly after Super Show!s premiere, Jacobs confirmed plans to eventually release the series' original full-length songs as a soundtrack album. However, these plans wouldn't fully come to fruition until 2019; in a 2018 interview, Jacobs retrospectively revealed that the album had been long completed but the band "hadn't had all the rights tied up" until then. The first original and full-length recordings from the series' first season debuted in July 2017, when "Burger Rain" and "Beat Fishin'" were released as a tour-exclusive 7" single. Songs from the series' first season were eventually compiled as The Aquabats! Super Show! Television Soundtrack: Volume One, which was released digitally in March 2019 and then onto physical media the following June, where it became The Aquabats' highest-charting album to date, debuting at the top of Billboards Top Heatseekers chart and at 165 on the Billboard 200. Cast and characters See: List of The Aquabats! Super Show! characters The Aquabats! Super Show! stars and is based upon fictionalized versions of the then-current (since 2006) line-up of the California comedy rock band The Aquabats. Adapting the backstory the band has used for the entirety of their professional career, Super Show! depicts The Aquabats as a group of bumbling, out-of-shape superheroes on a self-appointed mission to fight the forces of evil, presented in both live-action and animated segments. The five members of The Aquabats are: The MC Bat Commander (played and voiced by Christian Jacobs) – The Aquabats' singer and de facto leader of the team. Though he doesn't have any superpowers of his own and is often quite stubborn and naive, the Commander is shown to be an effective strategist whose sharp leadership skills, bravery and determination regularly drive the band towards victory. Crash McLarson (played and voiced by Chad Larson) – The band's bass guitarist, who has the frequently uncontrollable ability to grow upwards of 100 feet in size when under emotional stress. Despite being the largest and strongest of The Aquabats, Crash has a gentle, childlike demeanor bordering on slight dim-wittedness, and as such is usually the most cowardly member of the team. Jimmy the Robot (played and voiced by James R. Briggs, Jr.) – The Aquabats' keyboardist. As his name implies, Jimmy is an android whose mechanical body houses a variety of built-in gadgets and weaponry, plus a comprehensive knowledge database which earns him the position of the group's resident scientist. Being a robot, Jimmy is generally perplexed by human emotions and behavior. Ricky Fitness (played and voiced by Richard Falomir) – the band's drummer, Ricky possesses the power of super speed. Being the most physically fit and health-conscious member of The Aquabats, some of the series' running gags revolve around Ricky's status as a handsome ladies' man and his fondness for "fresh, healthy veggies" in contrast to the rest of the team's voracious affinity for junk food. EagleBones Falconhawk (played and voiced by Ian Fowles) – The Aquabats' guitarist. The cocky and boyish maverick of the team, EagleBones is highly proficient on his custom weaponized electric guitar which shoots lasers from its headstock. Following a spiritual encounter early in season one, EagleBones also has the gift of second sight and is accompanied by "The Dude", an invisible spirit eagle whom he summons to aide The Aquabats in battle. Voice actor and writer Mr. Lawrence provided the minimal narration for both seasons of Super Show!s live-action segments, while staff writer Kyle McCulloch narrated the first season's animated segments. Guest stars and recurring characters Though each episode of the series introduced a new villain, ally and/or celebrity cameo, Super Show! never featured any major recurring characters throughout its run. However, every episode of the show included a very brief appearance by a character fans dubbed the "Fox Man", a man in a cheap-looking fox costume played by visual effects supervisor Joel Fox, who would appear hidden in the background of a random scene as an Easter egg for viewers to spot, although his character was never explained within the context of the series. Comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic and comedian Paul Rust were the only two guest actors to appear in two episodes: Yankovic played two different roles as the President of the United States and superhero SuperMagic PowerMan! (in a 2012 interview, Jacobs alluded to the two possibly being the same character, though this isn't implied within the series), while Rust played a boorish slacker named Ronmark, first appearing in live-action in a first-season episode and subsequently lending his voice to a mutated monster version of the character in part of a second-season episode. Episodes Distribution International broadcast Outside of North America, The Aquabats! Super Show! broadcast in Australia on the children's public broadcasting channel ABC3 and in the United Kingdom on the children's network CITV. Home media Coinciding with the run of the first season, each new episode of The Aquabats! Super Show! was released through the iTunes Store for digital download. Prior to the series debut, a season pass was made available for purchase to enable viewers to automatically receive a download of each new episode on its airdate. The first season of Super Show! was added to the video streaming service Netflix on December 1, 2012, later being added to Hulu on December 21. Unlike the first season, the series' second season was not made available for iTunes pre-order, nor were episodes released for purchase. Though each episode was briefly streamed on The Hub's official website, none of the seasons' episodes were made available on Hulu, Netflix or similar streaming services. Shout! Factory had the DVD publishing rights for The Aquabats! Super Show! within Region 1 for release of the first season. The company first announced their acquisition of the series and plans for a future DVD in a press release dated August 6, 2012, though did not initially confirm a set release date until several months later. On May 21, 2013, the first season of Super Show! was released on a two-disc DVD set. On November 22, 2017, in conjunction with their announcement of a season two theatrical screening, The Aquabats confirmed an independent Blu-ray release for season two, including the three specials often considered a "season three". On December 5, pre-orders were launched on The Aquabats' merchandising site for an official release date of December 22, though copies were first made for public sale at the second season theatrical screening on December 16. Starting in December 2014, The Aquabats gradually began uploading the series' full episodes onto their official YouTube channel. As of August 2019, all 21 episodes of Super Show! and its pilot episode have been publicly uploaded to their account. Critical reception Critical response to The Aquabats! Super Show! was predominantly positive, with most reviewers praising the series' intentionally campy tone and offbeat humor. The Onions The A.V. Club gave the series premiere an A− rating, describing it as "a loving homage to basically everything ever done by the brothers Krofft": "the show adeptly flips from humor to melodrama to action, providing some awesomely cheap special effects, goofy songs, and gags that range from slapstick to sublime", summarizing "there's so much here that both kids and parents will be able to enjoy the proceedings on their own respective levels and rarely find themselves bored". Brian Lowry of Variety wrote "you don't have to laugh at everything to admire the effort and sheer silliness", calling the show a "goofy and nostalgic" throwback to the "children's TV of baby boomers' youth, down to crappy production values and awful-looking 'monsters' that work to its advantage". He summarized "Although this Hub series at times feels like an SNL skit stretched to a half-hour, its sly mix of music, live-action crime-fighting, cartoons and mock ads ought to develop a cult following—and might be more popular with parents, at least those with the geek gene, than their kids". Technology magazine Wired was consistently positive towards the series, calling it both "wonderfully strange" and "delightfully deranged", writing "[f]illed with self-deprecating music videos, toon interludes and ludicrous villains, The Aquabats! Super Show! has become one of television's strangely comforting finds". Common Sense Media, who review shows based on age-appropriate content, gave Super Show! a rating of 4 out of 5 stars, calling it "demented and manic...fun by sheer dint of how many jokes, visual and otherwise, are thrown at the screen, both those calculated to appeal to kids and adults". The site praised the series for its lighter and sillier tone in comparison to more violent live-action superhero fare, and considered the "kind-hearted" Aquabats to be relatively positive role models. However, the reviewer suggested the show's violence and creatures may be too intense for very young children, and pointed out a distinct lack of central female characters. Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times offered a more indifferent opinion, calling The Aquabats "indescribably odd" and the series "frenetic, semicoherent and generally harmless. Also somewhat hallucinogenic", noting Super Show!s writing "may be over the heads of the 2-to-12 set", suggesting its most receptive audience might be "the college drinking-game crowd". Awards and nominations The Aquabats! Super Show! was nominated for the following awards: Daytime Emmy Award References External links Official website of The Aquabats The Aquabats 2010s American children's television series 2010s American musical comedy television series 2010s American satirical television series 2010s American sketch comedy television series 2010s American superhero comedy television series 2012 American television series debuts 2014 American television series endings American children's adventure television series American children's musical television series American television series with live action and animation Children's sketch comedy English-language television shows Television series by Fremantle (company) Television shows set in Orange County, California American television shows featuring puppetry Discovery Family original programming

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What did they do after this?

What did the Aquabats do after the second pilot of the Aquabats! Super Show! was cancelled?

The Aquabats! Super Show!

In 1994, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in Brea, California. Influenced as much by cartoons and camp television as theatrical bands like Devo and Oingo Boingo, The Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for their eccentric persona in which they claimed to be a band of superheroes on a quest to save the world and their elaborate stage shows which regularly featured scripted fights with costumed villains alongside similar stunts and comedy sketches. The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough for the group, charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs - a former child actor with ties in the industry - to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television. In 1998, Buena Vista Television helped produce a live-action mini-pilot directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait titled simply The Aquabats!, following the comic misadventures of the then-eight member band in an over-the-top camp style similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves. Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot the following year, using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death!. Independently directed and produced by Jacobs and his creative partner Scott Schultz, the result was a five-minute promo video entitled The Aquabats in Color!. In contrast to the wackier tone of the previous pilot, The Aquabats in Color! was a more action-oriented superhero series modeled after Japanese tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider. According to Jacobs, the Fox Family Channel reportedly expressed interest in the series and ordered production on a proper pilot episode, though following the channel's acquisition by Disney in 2001, the project was cancelled. CANNOTANSWER

Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot

The Aquabats! Super Show! is an American action-comedy musical television series which aired from March 3, 2012 to January 8, 2014 on The Hub Network and resumed as an independent YouTube web series in September 2019. The series was created by Christian Jacobs, and Scott Schultz, both the creators of the Nick Jr. show Yo Gabba Gabba!, and Jason deVilliers. Based on the superhero mythology of The Aquabats, a real-life comedy rock band which series co-creator and lead singer Jacobs formed in 1994, The Aquabats! Super Show! follows the comic adventures of a fictionalized version of the band, a musical group of amateur superheroes, as they haphazardly defend the world from a variety of villains and monsters. Styled similarly to the campy aesthetics of 1960s and 1970s children's television and Japanese tokusatsu, Super Show! utilizes various mediums of visual styles and special effects, mixing live-action storylines with cartoon shorts, parody advertisements and musical interludes. The series' first season concluded on June 16, 2012 following a run of 13 episodes, having met with a largely positive critical reception, consistently high ratings for the channel and a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Children's Series. The series' second season consisted of an initial five episodes which aired through June 2013, with three additional episodes airing in late December and January 2014, receiving similar acclaim and a further seven Daytime Emmy nominations, ultimately winning one for Best Stunt Coordination. In June 2014, co-creator Jacobs officially announced the series' cancellation, following news of The Hub's financial losses which led to the network's rebranding as Discovery Family later that October. In July 2018, The Aquabats launched a successful Kickstarter to help independently finance new episodes of The Aquabats! Super Show!, promoting the campaign with a series of YouTube-exclusive mini-episodes continuing the original series' storyline. On September 28, 2019, The Aquabats premiered the first installment of these new episodes, now a biweekly YouTube series entitled The Aquabats! RadVentures!, though still retaining Super Show!s theme song and title card. Series overview Premise Chronicled in both live-action and animated segments, The Aquabats! Super Show! is centered around the adventures of The Aquabats, a group of superhero rock musicians who travel the countryside on a self-appointed mission to fight evil and "destroy boredom", protecting the world from the villains and creatures who threaten to destroy it while aiming to become a famous rock and roll band in their own right. The Aquabats consist of singer The MC Bat Commander (Christian Jacobs), the swaggering leader of the group; bassist Crash McLarson (Chad Larson), who can grow up to 100 feet in size; drummer Ricky Fitness (Richard Falomir), who has the power of super speed; guitarist EagleBones Falconhawk (Ian Fowles), who's armed with a laser-shooting electric guitar; and keyboardist Jimmy the Robot (James R. Briggs, Jr.), an android. Despite their superhuman strengths and abilities, The Aquabats are quite bumbling, disorganized, and sometimes cowardly when faced with danger; this has in fact led them to be labeled "the world's most inept superheroes". The band lives and travels by way of their "Battletram", a modified classic GMC motorhome which, despite its small exterior, has an implausibly massive interior (similar to the TARDIS from Doctor Who or The Big Bologna from The Kids From C.A.P.E.R.), which contains, among many things, a science lab, a command center, and a living room. The Aquabats' origin story was left intentionally vague throughout the series, a choice Jacobs explains was done for the sake of the viewer's imagination, as he felt kids were more accepting of the inherent absurdity of the premise than adults tend to be: "'There's five guys. This is what each of the five guys does. There are monsters. They're gonna try to fight them'. It's so simple. And I think that's why it's so awesome with kids—they just take it and run with it". In the first five episodes of season two, each member of The Aquabats shares their memory of how they joined the band via animated flashback sequences; however, all of these flashbacks directly and intentionally contradict each other, leaving it unknown which—if any—could be considered officially canonical. Format and influences The Aquabats! Super Show! juxtaposes both live-action and animated segments starring The Aquabats, interwoven with various tangential skits and cartoon interstitials. The live-action storylines are the primary focus of each episode, following a self-contained villain of the week formula. In the first season, each episode featured brief anime-styled cartoon shorts which one of the characters would introduce at a random point of the show, often by finding "A Cartoon" (represented by a miniature television set) in an absurd location. Unlike the live-action segments, these cartoons followed a serialized story arc, with each installment ending in a cliffhanger to be resolved in the next episode. In season two, this format was replaced with a series of animated flashbacks recounting the origins of The Aquabats, each by a different animation studio and in a different animation style. Between these segments are pantomime cartoon shorts starring "Lil' Bat", The Aquabats' anthropomorphic bat mascot, and live-action parody commercials for outlandish fictional products, the latter of which has long been a staple of The Aquabats' multi-media stage shows. Jacobs says the concept behind Super Show! was something he had always dreamed of doing, making a "campy, live-action, funky kid's show" in the vein of the 1960s and 1970s television that he and the rest of the series' producers had grown up with. While the show pays homage to many facets of pop culture, Jacobs has named the 1960s Batman television series as the primary influence on Super Show!s "obviously silly" tone and visual style, ranging from set design to the trademark use of dutch angles for villain scenes. Other notable influences Jacobs has repeatedly mentioned include the works of Sid and Marty Krofft and Hanna-Barbera, Japanese tokusatsu series such as Ultraman and Johnny Sokko And His Flying Robot, the Shaw Brothers and Hong Kong cinema, and shows including Danger Island, Star Trek, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, and Pee-wee's Playhouse, noting "there's a good 30 years worth of television culture packed into these 22-minute episodes". Demographic As The Hub's key demographic were children aged 6 to 12, Super Show! was ostensibly targeted towards said age group, though Jacobs has stated that the series primarily aimed to appeal to an all-ages crowd, with the intent of creating entertainment that both kids and parents can watch and enjoy together or separately. In interviews prior to the series' premiere, he explained that this was merely an extension of The Aquabats' own family-friendly ethos: "There's just obviously something about the costumes and being superheroes that really appeals to younger kids, and I think we always knew that as a band...I think we'll want to put things in [the show] for an older audience, because we realize we have an older audience, but then also we want the young kids, to not have it go over their heads". Production history History and previous attempts at a series In 1994, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in Brea, California. Influenced as much by cartoons and camp television as theatrical bands like Devo and Oingo Boingo, The Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for their eccentric persona in which they claimed to be a band of superheroes on a quest to save the world and their elaborate stage shows which regularly featured scripted fights with costumed villains alongside similar stunts and comedy sketches. The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough for the group, charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs – a former child actor with ties in the industry – to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television. In 1998, Buena Vista Television helped produce a live-action mini-pilot directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait titled simply The Aquabats!, following the comic misadventures of the then-eight member band in an over-the-top camp style similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves. Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot the following year, using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death!. Independently directed and produced by Jacobs and his creative partner Scott Schultz, the result was a five-minute promo video entitled The Aquabats in Color!. In contrast to the wackier tone of the previous pilot, The Aquabats in Color! was a more action-oriented superhero series modeled after Japanese tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider. According to Jacobs, the Fox Family Channel reportedly expressed interest in the series and ordered production on a proper pilot episode, though following the channel's acquisition by Disney in 2001, the project was cancelled. The Aquabats! Super Show! pilot (2008) In 2005, Jacobs and Schultz formed the Orange County-based production company The Magic Store, focusing on creating family-oriented television entertainment. One of the company's independently produced pilots, the children's television series Yo Gabba Gabba!, was eventually picked up as a series by Viacoms Nick Jr. channel, premiering in August 2007 and ultimately becoming an award-winning and critically acclaimed international success. In the wake of the series' popularity, Jacobs and Schultz persuaded Yo Gabba Gabba!s joint production company Wild Brain to help produce a new pilot based around The Aquabats in conjuncture with The Magic Store. Again creatively spearheaded by Jacobs and Schultz, The Aquabats' third pilot, titled The Aquabats! Super Show!, was shot on location throughout southern California in late 2007 and early 2008. Part of this filming took place at a free invitation-only concert for members of the band's official fan club at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles on January 12, 2008. While The Aquabats' previous pilots were short, live-action promotional videos, The Aquabats! Super Show! was a fully realized 22-minute episode featuring two separate storylines based on the adventures of The Aquabats, one live-action and one animated, and interspersed with parody commercials and live footage of the band. Speaking on the decision to structure the show in such a varied format, Jacobs said "[w]e did that for a strategic reason – some networks like cartoons more than other networks. We wanted to say, 'this could be both shows'." Following a period of post-production, The Aquabats began widely self-promoting Super Show! in June 2008, redesigning their website to promote the pilot and releasing a teaser trailer and several exclusive clips through an official Super Show! YouTube channel. On July 25, 2008, the band screened the full pilot at a concert in San Diego held during the weekend of the San Diego Comic-Con, while a segment of the episode was hosted on Boing Boing the same day. In 2009, Cartoon Network allegedly picked the series up for a run of 22 episodes, though following major staff changes within the company—which, according to Jacobs, included the termination of the executives who had green-lighted Super Show!—the project was again cancelled. The Hub and season one After several more unsuccessful network pitches into the 2010s, The Aquabats! Super Show! was finally picked up as a series by family cable channel The Hub, a joint venture between Hasbro and Discovery which launched in 2010 as a replacement for Discovery Kids. The Hub formally announced the series in a press release on March 23, 2011, revealing Super Show! would be given a first season run of 13 episodes, produced in conjuncture with FremantleMedia. In promotion of the series, The Aquabats appeared as part of a panel at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con where they discussed their initial plans for the show, while The Hub sponsored an Aquabats concert held at the nearby House of Blues during the same weekend. Production on season one of Super Show! officially began in May 2011. The entirety of the first season was shot within and around The Aquabats' hometown of Orange County, California; according to the first season DVD audio commentary, episodes were shot on location in the cities of Irvine, Silverado, Yorba Linda, Huntington Beach and Fullerton, while a private sound stage in Santa Ana was used for interior shots of the Battletram. A public Aquabats concert held at The Glass House club in Pomona on November 5, 2011 was also filmed to provide live footage of the band which is featured in the series' opening credits montage and several individual episodes. Much of Super Show!s staff consist of friends and colleagues of The Aquabats who've previously worked with the band on various projects, ranging from members of Yo Gabba Gabba!s production team to fellow musicians within the southern California music scene. Among the more notable examples include Dallas McLaughlin and Matthew Gorney, both members of the San Diego hip hop band Bad Credit, who prominently served as writers, composers and performers, Warren Fitzgerald, guitarist for The Vandals, who was hired as a writer and music director, internet sketch comedy group Mega64 were commissioned to produce original material, primarily the series' parody commercials, and Japanese artist Pey, who had designed much of The Aquabats' promotional art and merchandise during the 2000s, was hired to design the season's animated segments. Additionally, several industry professionals were brought in to help work on the show: Dani Michaeli, a staff writer on SpongeBob SquarePants, was hired as the series' story editor, while Matt Chapman, co-creator of the internet Flash cartoon Homestar Runner, acted as a writer, director and actor on several episodes. As none of the members besides Jacobs had any previous acting experience, comedian Matt Walsh of the Upright Citizens Brigade was brought in to help teach The Aquabats comedic acting and timing. In further homage to the original Batman series, Super Show! features a variety of celebrity cameo appearances. The series' first season included appearances from actors Jon Heder, Lou Diamond Phillips and Samm Levine, comedians Rip Taylor, Paul Scheer and Paul Rust, and comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic, who appeared in two episodes as different characters. The first season also included several "Easter egg" cameos from original Aquabats members Corey "Chainsaw" Pollock and Boyd "Catboy" Terry, as well as from fellow musicians Warren Fitzgerald and Art Mitchell of the band Supernova. Despite having been originally announced as part of The Hub's 2011 Fall line-up, production delays postponed Super Show!s premiere to early 2012. The series' marketing campaign began in December 2011, with a later announcement of an official premiere date confirmed for March 3, 2012. Following a non-consecutive run of 13 episodes, the first-season finale aired on June 16, 2012. Season two On October 16, 2012, The Aquabats and The Hub confirmed production on new episodes of Super Show! through the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, announcing a tentative debut date of Spring 2013. Principal photography on season two began on October 22 and wrapped on December 1. Unlike the first season, the majority of season two was shot in and around Salt Lake City, Utah, which Jacobs explained was considerably less expensive than shooting in California. While no changes were made to Super Shows creative team, in December 2012 it was announced that season two would introduce the series' first guest director, musician and comic book writer Gerard Way, who co-directed and co-wrote the season finale "The AntiBats!" with Jacobs and deVilliers. Way's involvement with the series was heavily covered by the music press in the wake of the March 2013 break-up of his popular alternative rock band My Chemical Romance. Among the guest stars featured in season two were professional skateboarders Tony Hawk and Eric Koston, Devo frontman and Yo Gabba Gabba! cast member Mark Mothersbaugh, internet celebrity Leslie Hall, actor Martin Starr and My Chemical Romance bassist Mikey Way. On December 2, 2012, deVilliers revealed on his Twitter account that the upcoming season would consist of only five new episodes, in what he called more "season 1.5" than a "season 2", though mentioned the possibility of more being made in the future. On May 1, 2013, it was announced through Entertainment Weekly that the series' second season would begin airing on June 1. After a run of only five episodes, the season concluded on June 29, 2013. 2013–2014 specials On August 22, 2013, series performer Chad Larson confirmed via Twitter that three additional episodes of Super Show! were being filmed near the end of the year, "and maybe more next". Principal photography on these episodes eventually began in Utah in early October. Throughout the month, The Aquabats posted numerous pictures of production on the new episodes on their Twitter and Instagram accounts, some of which revealed production code numbers of 301, 302 and 303, ostensibly indicating what would be a third season. Though these numbers were later verified by the Internet Movie Database, a November press release from The Hub explicitly referred to these three episodes as "specials". The first of these specials, "Christmas with The Aquabats!", aired on December 21, featuring comedians Robert Smigel and Matt Walsh in guest roles. The second of these episodes, "The Shark Fighter!" (based on The Aquabats' song of the same name), featuring comedian Rhys Darby, aired the following week on December 28, while the final special "Kitty Litter!" aired on January 18, 2014. "Kitty Litter!" was helmed by another guest director, Munn Powell, best known for his work as cinematographer on the Jared and Jerusha Hess films Napoleon Dynamite and Gentlemen Broncos. Following this short run of episodes, there was no confirmation by either The Hub or The Aquabats as to the production of any future episodes. In a December 2013 interview, Christian Jacobs acknowledged the network's unusually small order of episodes but didn't elaborate on any possible reasoning. In the same interview, he stated that the band had initially prepared for another order of 13 episodes, having written as many scripts for potential future episodes. On May 1, 2014, the nominees for the 2014 Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, revealing that Super Show! had been nominated for five awards in four categories, including the award for Best Writing in a Children's Series for the episode "The AntiBats!". The awards ceremony was held on June 22, 2014, where the series ultimately won the award for Best Stunt Coordination for stuntman Skip Carlson. Cancellation by The Hub and hiatus In mid-2014, it was announced in entertainment press that Hasbro and Discovery had been in the process of rebranding The Hub following what they saw to be disappointing returns for the channel, changes which included the departure of CEO Margaret Loesch, who was instrumental in acquiring Super Show! as a series. In a Huffington Post feature about The Aquabats prior to the band's appearance at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, it was revealed that The Hub had opted not to renew Super Show! for a third season, effectively cancelling the series. Jacobs admitted he was surprised by this turn of events, noting "Everything we heard was that the show has been a real Cinderella story for the Hub and that it was rating really well with viewers. We just assumed that we'd eventually go back into production or at least get picked up for Season 3", but ultimately concluded "it is what it is" in regard to the network's decision. Despite this, Jacobs remained optimistic about the series' future, saying "Given that we now live in a world where people are streaming TV shows directly onto their iPhones & computers, and given that companies like Netflix & Yahoo! are now picking up so much new content for their customers...I just find it hard to believe that The Aquabats! Super Show! is really over. I mean, we haven't even made any toys yet". He concluded by stating "It took us almost 15 years to get that TV series made. And even though we've got a bunch more concert dates lined up for the rest of this year, our first priority is to find a new home for The Aquabats! Super Show!". On March 31, 2015, the nominees for the 42nd annual Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, with Super Show! earning nominations for Best SFX Mixer (Blaine Stewart) and Best Stunt Coordinator (Braxton McAllister). On June 27, 2015, The Aquabats screened the entire first season of Super Show! before a sold-out crowd at The Frida Cinema in downtown Santa Ana, which was accompanied by a live performance by the band and Q&A sessions with The Aquabats and numerous members of the cast and crew. A similar presentation of the entire second season – including the three additional specials – took place at The Art Theater in Long Beach on December 16, 2017, coinciding with the release of the second season Blu-ray. Bring Back The Aquabats! Kickstarter campaign Following weeks of teasing a major announcement, The Aquabats launched a Kickstarter campaign on July 31, 2018 to help finance the return of The Aquabats! Super Show! as well as new studio albums from the band at a minimum projected cost of $1.1 million. The Aquabats promoted their campaign with a video featuring a slew of celebrity cameos, including Super Show! guest stars "Weird Al" Yankovic, Robert Smigel (as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog), Matt Chapman (as Homestar Runner and Strong Bad), former Aquabats member Travis Barker, Tony Kanal, Tom Dumont, Oscar Nunez, Kate Micucci, Blake Anderson, Imagine Dragons, Felicia Day and Tom Lennon, all of whom appeared in The Aquabats' trademark uniforms and spoke the Kickstarter's promotional slogan "I am The Aquabats"/"We are The Aquabats". Most prominently featured, however, was comedian Jack Black, who was later confirmed by the campaign's press releases to act as executive producer for the series' return. Along with their Kickstarter, the band began releasing a series of Super Show! "mini-episodes", depicting the MC Bat Commander's metafictional quest to reunite the estranged Aquabats following the series' cancellation. The band confirmed that as the Kickstarter progresses, further "mini-episodes" will be released to both promote the campaign as well as act as a continuation of Super Show!. By August 28, mere days before the campaign's end date of September 1, The Aquabats' Kickstarter had raised only $601,629 of its projected $1.1 million goal. The funding was subsequently cancelled and the campaign was rebooted the same day with a smaller goal of $100,000 to instead finance one new album and the continued production of the Super Show!! "mini-episodes". The project's goal was met within minutes. Music Original music for The Aquabats! Super Show! was primarily composed and performed by The Aquabats themselves, with additional scoring on most episodes provided by Matthew Gorney, Warren Fitzgerald or individual credits for Aquabats members James R. Briggs, Jr., Richard Falomir and Ian Fowles. Fitzgerald, guitarist for punk rock band The Vandals and former member of Oingo Boingo, acted as the series' music supervisor. The theme song to Super Show!, "Super Show Theme Song!", was co-written by The Aquabats and Fitzgerald. Whereas most musically oriented shows like The Monkees typically break the narrative of an episode for a music video performance of a standalone song, each episode of Super Show! typically features one or two unique songs that tied directly into the plot, usually about and performed during the events of a particular scene. Most of these songs are rather brief, averaging a running time of just under a minute; Jacobs stated that many of the show's original songs were recorded as full-length pieces but trimmed down for inclusion in an episode, simply due to the show "trying to pack so much into 22 minutes". Shortly after Super Show!s premiere, Jacobs confirmed plans to eventually release the series' original full-length songs as a soundtrack album. However, these plans wouldn't fully come to fruition until 2019; in a 2018 interview, Jacobs retrospectively revealed that the album had been long completed but the band "hadn't had all the rights tied up" until then. The first original and full-length recordings from the series' first season debuted in July 2017, when "Burger Rain" and "Beat Fishin'" were released as a tour-exclusive 7" single. Songs from the series' first season were eventually compiled as The Aquabats! Super Show! Television Soundtrack: Volume One, which was released digitally in March 2019 and then onto physical media the following June, where it became The Aquabats' highest-charting album to date, debuting at the top of Billboards Top Heatseekers chart and at 165 on the Billboard 200. Cast and characters See: List of The Aquabats! Super Show! characters The Aquabats! Super Show! stars and is based upon fictionalized versions of the then-current (since 2006) line-up of the California comedy rock band The Aquabats. Adapting the backstory the band has used for the entirety of their professional career, Super Show! depicts The Aquabats as a group of bumbling, out-of-shape superheroes on a self-appointed mission to fight the forces of evil, presented in both live-action and animated segments. The five members of The Aquabats are: The MC Bat Commander (played and voiced by Christian Jacobs) – The Aquabats' singer and de facto leader of the team. Though he doesn't have any superpowers of his own and is often quite stubborn and naive, the Commander is shown to be an effective strategist whose sharp leadership skills, bravery and determination regularly drive the band towards victory. Crash McLarson (played and voiced by Chad Larson) – The band's bass guitarist, who has the frequently uncontrollable ability to grow upwards of 100 feet in size when under emotional stress. Despite being the largest and strongest of The Aquabats, Crash has a gentle, childlike demeanor bordering on slight dim-wittedness, and as such is usually the most cowardly member of the team. Jimmy the Robot (played and voiced by James R. Briggs, Jr.) – The Aquabats' keyboardist. As his name implies, Jimmy is an android whose mechanical body houses a variety of built-in gadgets and weaponry, plus a comprehensive knowledge database which earns him the position of the group's resident scientist. Being a robot, Jimmy is generally perplexed by human emotions and behavior. Ricky Fitness (played and voiced by Richard Falomir) – the band's drummer, Ricky possesses the power of super speed. Being the most physically fit and health-conscious member of The Aquabats, some of the series' running gags revolve around Ricky's status as a handsome ladies' man and his fondness for "fresh, healthy veggies" in contrast to the rest of the team's voracious affinity for junk food. EagleBones Falconhawk (played and voiced by Ian Fowles) – The Aquabats' guitarist. The cocky and boyish maverick of the team, EagleBones is highly proficient on his custom weaponized electric guitar which shoots lasers from its headstock. Following a spiritual encounter early in season one, EagleBones also has the gift of second sight and is accompanied by "The Dude", an invisible spirit eagle whom he summons to aide The Aquabats in battle. Voice actor and writer Mr. Lawrence provided the minimal narration for both seasons of Super Show!s live-action segments, while staff writer Kyle McCulloch narrated the first season's animated segments. Guest stars and recurring characters Though each episode of the series introduced a new villain, ally and/or celebrity cameo, Super Show! never featured any major recurring characters throughout its run. However, every episode of the show included a very brief appearance by a character fans dubbed the "Fox Man", a man in a cheap-looking fox costume played by visual effects supervisor Joel Fox, who would appear hidden in the background of a random scene as an Easter egg for viewers to spot, although his character was never explained within the context of the series. Comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic and comedian Paul Rust were the only two guest actors to appear in two episodes: Yankovic played two different roles as the President of the United States and superhero SuperMagic PowerMan! (in a 2012 interview, Jacobs alluded to the two possibly being the same character, though this isn't implied within the series), while Rust played a boorish slacker named Ronmark, first appearing in live-action in a first-season episode and subsequently lending his voice to a mutated monster version of the character in part of a second-season episode. Episodes Distribution International broadcast Outside of North America, The Aquabats! Super Show! broadcast in Australia on the children's public broadcasting channel ABC3 and in the United Kingdom on the children's network CITV. Home media Coinciding with the run of the first season, each new episode of The Aquabats! Super Show! was released through the iTunes Store for digital download. Prior to the series debut, a season pass was made available for purchase to enable viewers to automatically receive a download of each new episode on its airdate. The first season of Super Show! was added to the video streaming service Netflix on December 1, 2012, later being added to Hulu on December 21. Unlike the first season, the series' second season was not made available for iTunes pre-order, nor were episodes released for purchase. Though each episode was briefly streamed on The Hub's official website, none of the seasons' episodes were made available on Hulu, Netflix or similar streaming services. Shout! Factory had the DVD publishing rights for The Aquabats! Super Show! within Region 1 for release of the first season. The company first announced their acquisition of the series and plans for a future DVD in a press release dated August 6, 2012, though did not initially confirm a set release date until several months later. On May 21, 2013, the first season of Super Show! was released on a two-disc DVD set. On November 22, 2017, in conjunction with their announcement of a season two theatrical screening, The Aquabats confirmed an independent Blu-ray release for season two, including the three specials often considered a "season three". On December 5, pre-orders were launched on The Aquabats' merchandising site for an official release date of December 22, though copies were first made for public sale at the second season theatrical screening on December 16. Starting in December 2014, The Aquabats gradually began uploading the series' full episodes onto their official YouTube channel. As of August 2019, all 21 episodes of Super Show! and its pilot episode have been publicly uploaded to their account. Critical reception Critical response to The Aquabats! Super Show! was predominantly positive, with most reviewers praising the series' intentionally campy tone and offbeat humor. The Onions The A.V. Club gave the series premiere an A− rating, describing it as "a loving homage to basically everything ever done by the brothers Krofft": "the show adeptly flips from humor to melodrama to action, providing some awesomely cheap special effects, goofy songs, and gags that range from slapstick to sublime", summarizing "there's so much here that both kids and parents will be able to enjoy the proceedings on their own respective levels and rarely find themselves bored". Brian Lowry of Variety wrote "you don't have to laugh at everything to admire the effort and sheer silliness", calling the show a "goofy and nostalgic" throwback to the "children's TV of baby boomers' youth, down to crappy production values and awful-looking 'monsters' that work to its advantage". He summarized "Although this Hub series at times feels like an SNL skit stretched to a half-hour, its sly mix of music, live-action crime-fighting, cartoons and mock ads ought to develop a cult following—and might be more popular with parents, at least those with the geek gene, than their kids". Technology magazine Wired was consistently positive towards the series, calling it both "wonderfully strange" and "delightfully deranged", writing "[f]illed with self-deprecating music videos, toon interludes and ludicrous villains, The Aquabats! Super Show! has become one of television's strangely comforting finds". Common Sense Media, who review shows based on age-appropriate content, gave Super Show! a rating of 4 out of 5 stars, calling it "demented and manic...fun by sheer dint of how many jokes, visual and otherwise, are thrown at the screen, both those calculated to appeal to kids and adults". The site praised the series for its lighter and sillier tone in comparison to more violent live-action superhero fare, and considered the "kind-hearted" Aquabats to be relatively positive role models. However, the reviewer suggested the show's violence and creatures may be too intense for very young children, and pointed out a distinct lack of central female characters. Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times offered a more indifferent opinion, calling The Aquabats "indescribably odd" and the series "frenetic, semicoherent and generally harmless. Also somewhat hallucinogenic", noting Super Show!s writing "may be over the heads of the 2-to-12 set", suggesting its most receptive audience might be "the college drinking-game crowd". Awards and nominations The Aquabats! Super Show! was nominated for the following awards: Daytime Emmy Award References External links Official website of The Aquabats The Aquabats 2010s American children's television series 2010s American musical comedy television series 2010s American satirical television series 2010s American sketch comedy television series 2010s American superhero comedy television series 2012 American television series debuts 2014 American television series endings American children's adventure television series American children's musical television series American television series with live action and animation Children's sketch comedy English-language television shows Television series by Fremantle (company) Television shows set in Orange County, California American television shows featuring puppetry Discovery Family original programming

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What else is significant about this time?

Besides the two pilots failing, what else is significant about the history of the Aquabats! Super Show!?

The Aquabats! Super Show!

In 1994, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in Brea, California. Influenced as much by cartoons and camp television as theatrical bands like Devo and Oingo Boingo, The Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for their eccentric persona in which they claimed to be a band of superheroes on a quest to save the world and their elaborate stage shows which regularly featured scripted fights with costumed villains alongside similar stunts and comedy sketches. The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough for the group, charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs - a former child actor with ties in the industry - to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television. In 1998, Buena Vista Television helped produce a live-action mini-pilot directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait titled simply The Aquabats!, following the comic misadventures of the then-eight member band in an over-the-top camp style similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves. Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot the following year, using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death!. Independently directed and produced by Jacobs and his creative partner Scott Schultz, the result was a five-minute promo video entitled The Aquabats in Color!. In contrast to the wackier tone of the previous pilot, The Aquabats in Color! was a more action-oriented superhero series modeled after Japanese tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider. According to Jacobs, the Fox Family Channel reportedly expressed interest in the series and ordered production on a proper pilot episode, though following the channel's acquisition by Disney in 2001, the project was cancelled. CANNOTANSWER

The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough

The Aquabats! Super Show! is an American action-comedy musical television series which aired from March 3, 2012 to January 8, 2014 on The Hub Network and resumed as an independent YouTube web series in September 2019. The series was created by Christian Jacobs, and Scott Schultz, both the creators of the Nick Jr. show Yo Gabba Gabba!, and Jason deVilliers. Based on the superhero mythology of The Aquabats, a real-life comedy rock band which series co-creator and lead singer Jacobs formed in 1994, The Aquabats! Super Show! follows the comic adventures of a fictionalized version of the band, a musical group of amateur superheroes, as they haphazardly defend the world from a variety of villains and monsters. Styled similarly to the campy aesthetics of 1960s and 1970s children's television and Japanese tokusatsu, Super Show! utilizes various mediums of visual styles and special effects, mixing live-action storylines with cartoon shorts, parody advertisements and musical interludes. The series' first season concluded on June 16, 2012 following a run of 13 episodes, having met with a largely positive critical reception, consistently high ratings for the channel and a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Children's Series. The series' second season consisted of an initial five episodes which aired through June 2013, with three additional episodes airing in late December and January 2014, receiving similar acclaim and a further seven Daytime Emmy nominations, ultimately winning one for Best Stunt Coordination. In June 2014, co-creator Jacobs officially announced the series' cancellation, following news of The Hub's financial losses which led to the network's rebranding as Discovery Family later that October. In July 2018, The Aquabats launched a successful Kickstarter to help independently finance new episodes of The Aquabats! Super Show!, promoting the campaign with a series of YouTube-exclusive mini-episodes continuing the original series' storyline. On September 28, 2019, The Aquabats premiered the first installment of these new episodes, now a biweekly YouTube series entitled The Aquabats! RadVentures!, though still retaining Super Show!s theme song and title card. Series overview Premise Chronicled in both live-action and animated segments, The Aquabats! Super Show! is centered around the adventures of The Aquabats, a group of superhero rock musicians who travel the countryside on a self-appointed mission to fight evil and "destroy boredom", protecting the world from the villains and creatures who threaten to destroy it while aiming to become a famous rock and roll band in their own right. The Aquabats consist of singer The MC Bat Commander (Christian Jacobs), the swaggering leader of the group; bassist Crash McLarson (Chad Larson), who can grow up to 100 feet in size; drummer Ricky Fitness (Richard Falomir), who has the power of super speed; guitarist EagleBones Falconhawk (Ian Fowles), who's armed with a laser-shooting electric guitar; and keyboardist Jimmy the Robot (James R. Briggs, Jr.), an android. Despite their superhuman strengths and abilities, The Aquabats are quite bumbling, disorganized, and sometimes cowardly when faced with danger; this has in fact led them to be labeled "the world's most inept superheroes". The band lives and travels by way of their "Battletram", a modified classic GMC motorhome which, despite its small exterior, has an implausibly massive interior (similar to the TARDIS from Doctor Who or The Big Bologna from The Kids From C.A.P.E.R.), which contains, among many things, a science lab, a command center, and a living room. The Aquabats' origin story was left intentionally vague throughout the series, a choice Jacobs explains was done for the sake of the viewer's imagination, as he felt kids were more accepting of the inherent absurdity of the premise than adults tend to be: "'There's five guys. This is what each of the five guys does. There are monsters. They're gonna try to fight them'. It's so simple. And I think that's why it's so awesome with kids—they just take it and run with it". In the first five episodes of season two, each member of The Aquabats shares their memory of how they joined the band via animated flashback sequences; however, all of these flashbacks directly and intentionally contradict each other, leaving it unknown which—if any—could be considered officially canonical. Format and influences The Aquabats! Super Show! juxtaposes both live-action and animated segments starring The Aquabats, interwoven with various tangential skits and cartoon interstitials. The live-action storylines are the primary focus of each episode, following a self-contained villain of the week formula. In the first season, each episode featured brief anime-styled cartoon shorts which one of the characters would introduce at a random point of the show, often by finding "A Cartoon" (represented by a miniature television set) in an absurd location. Unlike the live-action segments, these cartoons followed a serialized story arc, with each installment ending in a cliffhanger to be resolved in the next episode. In season two, this format was replaced with a series of animated flashbacks recounting the origins of The Aquabats, each by a different animation studio and in a different animation style. Between these segments are pantomime cartoon shorts starring "Lil' Bat", The Aquabats' anthropomorphic bat mascot, and live-action parody commercials for outlandish fictional products, the latter of which has long been a staple of The Aquabats' multi-media stage shows. Jacobs says the concept behind Super Show! was something he had always dreamed of doing, making a "campy, live-action, funky kid's show" in the vein of the 1960s and 1970s television that he and the rest of the series' producers had grown up with. While the show pays homage to many facets of pop culture, Jacobs has named the 1960s Batman television series as the primary influence on Super Show!s "obviously silly" tone and visual style, ranging from set design to the trademark use of dutch angles for villain scenes. Other notable influences Jacobs has repeatedly mentioned include the works of Sid and Marty Krofft and Hanna-Barbera, Japanese tokusatsu series such as Ultraman and Johnny Sokko And His Flying Robot, the Shaw Brothers and Hong Kong cinema, and shows including Danger Island, Star Trek, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, and Pee-wee's Playhouse, noting "there's a good 30 years worth of television culture packed into these 22-minute episodes". Demographic As The Hub's key demographic were children aged 6 to 12, Super Show! was ostensibly targeted towards said age group, though Jacobs has stated that the series primarily aimed to appeal to an all-ages crowd, with the intent of creating entertainment that both kids and parents can watch and enjoy together or separately. In interviews prior to the series' premiere, he explained that this was merely an extension of The Aquabats' own family-friendly ethos: "There's just obviously something about the costumes and being superheroes that really appeals to younger kids, and I think we always knew that as a band...I think we'll want to put things in [the show] for an older audience, because we realize we have an older audience, but then also we want the young kids, to not have it go over their heads". Production history History and previous attempts at a series In 1994, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in Brea, California. Influenced as much by cartoons and camp television as theatrical bands like Devo and Oingo Boingo, The Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for their eccentric persona in which they claimed to be a band of superheroes on a quest to save the world and their elaborate stage shows which regularly featured scripted fights with costumed villains alongside similar stunts and comedy sketches. The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough for the group, charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs – a former child actor with ties in the industry – to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television. In 1998, Buena Vista Television helped produce a live-action mini-pilot directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait titled simply The Aquabats!, following the comic misadventures of the then-eight member band in an over-the-top camp style similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves. Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot the following year, using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death!. Independently directed and produced by Jacobs and his creative partner Scott Schultz, the result was a five-minute promo video entitled The Aquabats in Color!. In contrast to the wackier tone of the previous pilot, The Aquabats in Color! was a more action-oriented superhero series modeled after Japanese tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider. According to Jacobs, the Fox Family Channel reportedly expressed interest in the series and ordered production on a proper pilot episode, though following the channel's acquisition by Disney in 2001, the project was cancelled. The Aquabats! Super Show! pilot (2008) In 2005, Jacobs and Schultz formed the Orange County-based production company The Magic Store, focusing on creating family-oriented television entertainment. One of the company's independently produced pilots, the children's television series Yo Gabba Gabba!, was eventually picked up as a series by Viacoms Nick Jr. channel, premiering in August 2007 and ultimately becoming an award-winning and critically acclaimed international success. In the wake of the series' popularity, Jacobs and Schultz persuaded Yo Gabba Gabba!s joint production company Wild Brain to help produce a new pilot based around The Aquabats in conjuncture with The Magic Store. Again creatively spearheaded by Jacobs and Schultz, The Aquabats' third pilot, titled The Aquabats! Super Show!, was shot on location throughout southern California in late 2007 and early 2008. Part of this filming took place at a free invitation-only concert for members of the band's official fan club at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles on January 12, 2008. While The Aquabats' previous pilots were short, live-action promotional videos, The Aquabats! Super Show! was a fully realized 22-minute episode featuring two separate storylines based on the adventures of The Aquabats, one live-action and one animated, and interspersed with parody commercials and live footage of the band. Speaking on the decision to structure the show in such a varied format, Jacobs said "[w]e did that for a strategic reason – some networks like cartoons more than other networks. We wanted to say, 'this could be both shows'." Following a period of post-production, The Aquabats began widely self-promoting Super Show! in June 2008, redesigning their website to promote the pilot and releasing a teaser trailer and several exclusive clips through an official Super Show! YouTube channel. On July 25, 2008, the band screened the full pilot at a concert in San Diego held during the weekend of the San Diego Comic-Con, while a segment of the episode was hosted on Boing Boing the same day. In 2009, Cartoon Network allegedly picked the series up for a run of 22 episodes, though following major staff changes within the company—which, according to Jacobs, included the termination of the executives who had green-lighted Super Show!—the project was again cancelled. The Hub and season one After several more unsuccessful network pitches into the 2010s, The Aquabats! Super Show! was finally picked up as a series by family cable channel The Hub, a joint venture between Hasbro and Discovery which launched in 2010 as a replacement for Discovery Kids. The Hub formally announced the series in a press release on March 23, 2011, revealing Super Show! would be given a first season run of 13 episodes, produced in conjuncture with FremantleMedia. In promotion of the series, The Aquabats appeared as part of a panel at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con where they discussed their initial plans for the show, while The Hub sponsored an Aquabats concert held at the nearby House of Blues during the same weekend. Production on season one of Super Show! officially began in May 2011. The entirety of the first season was shot within and around The Aquabats' hometown of Orange County, California; according to the first season DVD audio commentary, episodes were shot on location in the cities of Irvine, Silverado, Yorba Linda, Huntington Beach and Fullerton, while a private sound stage in Santa Ana was used for interior shots of the Battletram. A public Aquabats concert held at The Glass House club in Pomona on November 5, 2011 was also filmed to provide live footage of the band which is featured in the series' opening credits montage and several individual episodes. Much of Super Show!s staff consist of friends and colleagues of The Aquabats who've previously worked with the band on various projects, ranging from members of Yo Gabba Gabba!s production team to fellow musicians within the southern California music scene. Among the more notable examples include Dallas McLaughlin and Matthew Gorney, both members of the San Diego hip hop band Bad Credit, who prominently served as writers, composers and performers, Warren Fitzgerald, guitarist for The Vandals, who was hired as a writer and music director, internet sketch comedy group Mega64 were commissioned to produce original material, primarily the series' parody commercials, and Japanese artist Pey, who had designed much of The Aquabats' promotional art and merchandise during the 2000s, was hired to design the season's animated segments. Additionally, several industry professionals were brought in to help work on the show: Dani Michaeli, a staff writer on SpongeBob SquarePants, was hired as the series' story editor, while Matt Chapman, co-creator of the internet Flash cartoon Homestar Runner, acted as a writer, director and actor on several episodes. As none of the members besides Jacobs had any previous acting experience, comedian Matt Walsh of the Upright Citizens Brigade was brought in to help teach The Aquabats comedic acting and timing. In further homage to the original Batman series, Super Show! features a variety of celebrity cameo appearances. The series' first season included appearances from actors Jon Heder, Lou Diamond Phillips and Samm Levine, comedians Rip Taylor, Paul Scheer and Paul Rust, and comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic, who appeared in two episodes as different characters. The first season also included several "Easter egg" cameos from original Aquabats members Corey "Chainsaw" Pollock and Boyd "Catboy" Terry, as well as from fellow musicians Warren Fitzgerald and Art Mitchell of the band Supernova. Despite having been originally announced as part of The Hub's 2011 Fall line-up, production delays postponed Super Show!s premiere to early 2012. The series' marketing campaign began in December 2011, with a later announcement of an official premiere date confirmed for March 3, 2012. Following a non-consecutive run of 13 episodes, the first-season finale aired on June 16, 2012. Season two On October 16, 2012, The Aquabats and The Hub confirmed production on new episodes of Super Show! through the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, announcing a tentative debut date of Spring 2013. Principal photography on season two began on October 22 and wrapped on December 1. Unlike the first season, the majority of season two was shot in and around Salt Lake City, Utah, which Jacobs explained was considerably less expensive than shooting in California. While no changes were made to Super Shows creative team, in December 2012 it was announced that season two would introduce the series' first guest director, musician and comic book writer Gerard Way, who co-directed and co-wrote the season finale "The AntiBats!" with Jacobs and deVilliers. Way's involvement with the series was heavily covered by the music press in the wake of the March 2013 break-up of his popular alternative rock band My Chemical Romance. Among the guest stars featured in season two were professional skateboarders Tony Hawk and Eric Koston, Devo frontman and Yo Gabba Gabba! cast member Mark Mothersbaugh, internet celebrity Leslie Hall, actor Martin Starr and My Chemical Romance bassist Mikey Way. On December 2, 2012, deVilliers revealed on his Twitter account that the upcoming season would consist of only five new episodes, in what he called more "season 1.5" than a "season 2", though mentioned the possibility of more being made in the future. On May 1, 2013, it was announced through Entertainment Weekly that the series' second season would begin airing on June 1. After a run of only five episodes, the season concluded on June 29, 2013. 2013–2014 specials On August 22, 2013, series performer Chad Larson confirmed via Twitter that three additional episodes of Super Show! were being filmed near the end of the year, "and maybe more next". Principal photography on these episodes eventually began in Utah in early October. Throughout the month, The Aquabats posted numerous pictures of production on the new episodes on their Twitter and Instagram accounts, some of which revealed production code numbers of 301, 302 and 303, ostensibly indicating what would be a third season. Though these numbers were later verified by the Internet Movie Database, a November press release from The Hub explicitly referred to these three episodes as "specials". The first of these specials, "Christmas with The Aquabats!", aired on December 21, featuring comedians Robert Smigel and Matt Walsh in guest roles. The second of these episodes, "The Shark Fighter!" (based on The Aquabats' song of the same name), featuring comedian Rhys Darby, aired the following week on December 28, while the final special "Kitty Litter!" aired on January 18, 2014. "Kitty Litter!" was helmed by another guest director, Munn Powell, best known for his work as cinematographer on the Jared and Jerusha Hess films Napoleon Dynamite and Gentlemen Broncos. Following this short run of episodes, there was no confirmation by either The Hub or The Aquabats as to the production of any future episodes. In a December 2013 interview, Christian Jacobs acknowledged the network's unusually small order of episodes but didn't elaborate on any possible reasoning. In the same interview, he stated that the band had initially prepared for another order of 13 episodes, having written as many scripts for potential future episodes. On May 1, 2014, the nominees for the 2014 Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, revealing that Super Show! had been nominated for five awards in four categories, including the award for Best Writing in a Children's Series for the episode "The AntiBats!". The awards ceremony was held on June 22, 2014, where the series ultimately won the award for Best Stunt Coordination for stuntman Skip Carlson. Cancellation by The Hub and hiatus In mid-2014, it was announced in entertainment press that Hasbro and Discovery had been in the process of rebranding The Hub following what they saw to be disappointing returns for the channel, changes which included the departure of CEO Margaret Loesch, who was instrumental in acquiring Super Show! as a series. In a Huffington Post feature about The Aquabats prior to the band's appearance at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, it was revealed that The Hub had opted not to renew Super Show! for a third season, effectively cancelling the series. Jacobs admitted he was surprised by this turn of events, noting "Everything we heard was that the show has been a real Cinderella story for the Hub and that it was rating really well with viewers. We just assumed that we'd eventually go back into production or at least get picked up for Season 3", but ultimately concluded "it is what it is" in regard to the network's decision. Despite this, Jacobs remained optimistic about the series' future, saying "Given that we now live in a world where people are streaming TV shows directly onto their iPhones & computers, and given that companies like Netflix & Yahoo! are now picking up so much new content for their customers...I just find it hard to believe that The Aquabats! Super Show! is really over. I mean, we haven't even made any toys yet". He concluded by stating "It took us almost 15 years to get that TV series made. And even though we've got a bunch more concert dates lined up for the rest of this year, our first priority is to find a new home for The Aquabats! Super Show!". On March 31, 2015, the nominees for the 42nd annual Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, with Super Show! earning nominations for Best SFX Mixer (Blaine Stewart) and Best Stunt Coordinator (Braxton McAllister). On June 27, 2015, The Aquabats screened the entire first season of Super Show! before a sold-out crowd at The Frida Cinema in downtown Santa Ana, which was accompanied by a live performance by the band and Q&A sessions with The Aquabats and numerous members of the cast and crew. A similar presentation of the entire second season – including the three additional specials – took place at The Art Theater in Long Beach on December 16, 2017, coinciding with the release of the second season Blu-ray. Bring Back The Aquabats! Kickstarter campaign Following weeks of teasing a major announcement, The Aquabats launched a Kickstarter campaign on July 31, 2018 to help finance the return of The Aquabats! Super Show! as well as new studio albums from the band at a minimum projected cost of $1.1 million. The Aquabats promoted their campaign with a video featuring a slew of celebrity cameos, including Super Show! guest stars "Weird Al" Yankovic, Robert Smigel (as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog), Matt Chapman (as Homestar Runner and Strong Bad), former Aquabats member Travis Barker, Tony Kanal, Tom Dumont, Oscar Nunez, Kate Micucci, Blake Anderson, Imagine Dragons, Felicia Day and Tom Lennon, all of whom appeared in The Aquabats' trademark uniforms and spoke the Kickstarter's promotional slogan "I am The Aquabats"/"We are The Aquabats". Most prominently featured, however, was comedian Jack Black, who was later confirmed by the campaign's press releases to act as executive producer for the series' return. Along with their Kickstarter, the band began releasing a series of Super Show! "mini-episodes", depicting the MC Bat Commander's metafictional quest to reunite the estranged Aquabats following the series' cancellation. The band confirmed that as the Kickstarter progresses, further "mini-episodes" will be released to both promote the campaign as well as act as a continuation of Super Show!. By August 28, mere days before the campaign's end date of September 1, The Aquabats' Kickstarter had raised only $601,629 of its projected $1.1 million goal. The funding was subsequently cancelled and the campaign was rebooted the same day with a smaller goal of $100,000 to instead finance one new album and the continued production of the Super Show!! "mini-episodes". The project's goal was met within minutes. Music Original music for The Aquabats! Super Show! was primarily composed and performed by The Aquabats themselves, with additional scoring on most episodes provided by Matthew Gorney, Warren Fitzgerald or individual credits for Aquabats members James R. Briggs, Jr., Richard Falomir and Ian Fowles. Fitzgerald, guitarist for punk rock band The Vandals and former member of Oingo Boingo, acted as the series' music supervisor. The theme song to Super Show!, "Super Show Theme Song!", was co-written by The Aquabats and Fitzgerald. Whereas most musically oriented shows like The Monkees typically break the narrative of an episode for a music video performance of a standalone song, each episode of Super Show! typically features one or two unique songs that tied directly into the plot, usually about and performed during the events of a particular scene. Most of these songs are rather brief, averaging a running time of just under a minute; Jacobs stated that many of the show's original songs were recorded as full-length pieces but trimmed down for inclusion in an episode, simply due to the show "trying to pack so much into 22 minutes". Shortly after Super Show!s premiere, Jacobs confirmed plans to eventually release the series' original full-length songs as a soundtrack album. However, these plans wouldn't fully come to fruition until 2019; in a 2018 interview, Jacobs retrospectively revealed that the album had been long completed but the band "hadn't had all the rights tied up" until then. The first original and full-length recordings from the series' first season debuted in July 2017, when "Burger Rain" and "Beat Fishin'" were released as a tour-exclusive 7" single. Songs from the series' first season were eventually compiled as The Aquabats! Super Show! Television Soundtrack: Volume One, which was released digitally in March 2019 and then onto physical media the following June, where it became The Aquabats' highest-charting album to date, debuting at the top of Billboards Top Heatseekers chart and at 165 on the Billboard 200. Cast and characters See: List of The Aquabats! Super Show! characters The Aquabats! Super Show! stars and is based upon fictionalized versions of the then-current (since 2006) line-up of the California comedy rock band The Aquabats. Adapting the backstory the band has used for the entirety of their professional career, Super Show! depicts The Aquabats as a group of bumbling, out-of-shape superheroes on a self-appointed mission to fight the forces of evil, presented in both live-action and animated segments. The five members of The Aquabats are: The MC Bat Commander (played and voiced by Christian Jacobs) – The Aquabats' singer and de facto leader of the team. Though he doesn't have any superpowers of his own and is often quite stubborn and naive, the Commander is shown to be an effective strategist whose sharp leadership skills, bravery and determination regularly drive the band towards victory. Crash McLarson (played and voiced by Chad Larson) – The band's bass guitarist, who has the frequently uncontrollable ability to grow upwards of 100 feet in size when under emotional stress. Despite being the largest and strongest of The Aquabats, Crash has a gentle, childlike demeanor bordering on slight dim-wittedness, and as such is usually the most cowardly member of the team. Jimmy the Robot (played and voiced by James R. Briggs, Jr.) – The Aquabats' keyboardist. As his name implies, Jimmy is an android whose mechanical body houses a variety of built-in gadgets and weaponry, plus a comprehensive knowledge database which earns him the position of the group's resident scientist. Being a robot, Jimmy is generally perplexed by human emotions and behavior. Ricky Fitness (played and voiced by Richard Falomir) – the band's drummer, Ricky possesses the power of super speed. Being the most physically fit and health-conscious member of The Aquabats, some of the series' running gags revolve around Ricky's status as a handsome ladies' man and his fondness for "fresh, healthy veggies" in contrast to the rest of the team's voracious affinity for junk food. EagleBones Falconhawk (played and voiced by Ian Fowles) – The Aquabats' guitarist. The cocky and boyish maverick of the team, EagleBones is highly proficient on his custom weaponized electric guitar which shoots lasers from its headstock. Following a spiritual encounter early in season one, EagleBones also has the gift of second sight and is accompanied by "The Dude", an invisible spirit eagle whom he summons to aide The Aquabats in battle. Voice actor and writer Mr. Lawrence provided the minimal narration for both seasons of Super Show!s live-action segments, while staff writer Kyle McCulloch narrated the first season's animated segments. Guest stars and recurring characters Though each episode of the series introduced a new villain, ally and/or celebrity cameo, Super Show! never featured any major recurring characters throughout its run. However, every episode of the show included a very brief appearance by a character fans dubbed the "Fox Man", a man in a cheap-looking fox costume played by visual effects supervisor Joel Fox, who would appear hidden in the background of a random scene as an Easter egg for viewers to spot, although his character was never explained within the context of the series. Comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic and comedian Paul Rust were the only two guest actors to appear in two episodes: Yankovic played two different roles as the President of the United States and superhero SuperMagic PowerMan! (in a 2012 interview, Jacobs alluded to the two possibly being the same character, though this isn't implied within the series), while Rust played a boorish slacker named Ronmark, first appearing in live-action in a first-season episode and subsequently lending his voice to a mutated monster version of the character in part of a second-season episode. Episodes Distribution International broadcast Outside of North America, The Aquabats! Super Show! broadcast in Australia on the children's public broadcasting channel ABC3 and in the United Kingdom on the children's network CITV. Home media Coinciding with the run of the first season, each new episode of The Aquabats! Super Show! was released through the iTunes Store for digital download. Prior to the series debut, a season pass was made available for purchase to enable viewers to automatically receive a download of each new episode on its airdate. The first season of Super Show! was added to the video streaming service Netflix on December 1, 2012, later being added to Hulu on December 21. Unlike the first season, the series' second season was not made available for iTunes pre-order, nor were episodes released for purchase. Though each episode was briefly streamed on The Hub's official website, none of the seasons' episodes were made available on Hulu, Netflix or similar streaming services. Shout! Factory had the DVD publishing rights for The Aquabats! Super Show! within Region 1 for release of the first season. The company first announced their acquisition of the series and plans for a future DVD in a press release dated August 6, 2012, though did not initially confirm a set release date until several months later. On May 21, 2013, the first season of Super Show! was released on a two-disc DVD set. On November 22, 2017, in conjunction with their announcement of a season two theatrical screening, The Aquabats confirmed an independent Blu-ray release for season two, including the three specials often considered a "season three". On December 5, pre-orders were launched on The Aquabats' merchandising site for an official release date of December 22, though copies were first made for public sale at the second season theatrical screening on December 16. Starting in December 2014, The Aquabats gradually began uploading the series' full episodes onto their official YouTube channel. As of August 2019, all 21 episodes of Super Show! and its pilot episode have been publicly uploaded to their account. Critical reception Critical response to The Aquabats! Super Show! was predominantly positive, with most reviewers praising the series' intentionally campy tone and offbeat humor. The Onions The A.V. Club gave the series premiere an A− rating, describing it as "a loving homage to basically everything ever done by the brothers Krofft": "the show adeptly flips from humor to melodrama to action, providing some awesomely cheap special effects, goofy songs, and gags that range from slapstick to sublime", summarizing "there's so much here that both kids and parents will be able to enjoy the proceedings on their own respective levels and rarely find themselves bored". Brian Lowry of Variety wrote "you don't have to laugh at everything to admire the effort and sheer silliness", calling the show a "goofy and nostalgic" throwback to the "children's TV of baby boomers' youth, down to crappy production values and awful-looking 'monsters' that work to its advantage". He summarized "Although this Hub series at times feels like an SNL skit stretched to a half-hour, its sly mix of music, live-action crime-fighting, cartoons and mock ads ought to develop a cult following—and might be more popular with parents, at least those with the geek gene, than their kids". Technology magazine Wired was consistently positive towards the series, calling it both "wonderfully strange" and "delightfully deranged", writing "[f]illed with self-deprecating music videos, toon interludes and ludicrous villains, The Aquabats! Super Show! has become one of television's strangely comforting finds". Common Sense Media, who review shows based on age-appropriate content, gave Super Show! a rating of 4 out of 5 stars, calling it "demented and manic...fun by sheer dint of how many jokes, visual and otherwise, are thrown at the screen, both those calculated to appeal to kids and adults". The site praised the series for its lighter and sillier tone in comparison to more violent live-action superhero fare, and considered the "kind-hearted" Aquabats to be relatively positive role models. However, the reviewer suggested the show's violence and creatures may be too intense for very young children, and pointed out a distinct lack of central female characters. Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times offered a more indifferent opinion, calling The Aquabats "indescribably odd" and the series "frenetic, semicoherent and generally harmless. Also somewhat hallucinogenic", noting Super Show!s writing "may be over the heads of the 2-to-12 set", suggesting its most receptive audience might be "the college drinking-game crowd". Awards and nominations The Aquabats! Super Show! was nominated for the following awards: Daytime Emmy Award References External links Official website of The Aquabats The Aquabats 2010s American children's television series 2010s American musical comedy television series 2010s American satirical television series 2010s American sketch comedy television series 2010s American superhero comedy television series 2012 American television series debuts 2014 American television series endings American children's adventure television series American children's musical television series American television series with live action and animation Children's sketch comedy English-language television shows Television series by Fremantle (company) Television shows set in Orange County, California American television shows featuring puppetry Discovery Family original programming

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What happened as a result?

What happened as a result of the commercial success of The Fury of The Aquabats!?

The Aquabats! Super Show!

In 1994, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in Brea, California. Influenced as much by cartoons and camp television as theatrical bands like Devo and Oingo Boingo, The Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for their eccentric persona in which they claimed to be a band of superheroes on a quest to save the world and their elaborate stage shows which regularly featured scripted fights with costumed villains alongside similar stunts and comedy sketches. The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough for the group, charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs - a former child actor with ties in the industry - to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television. In 1998, Buena Vista Television helped produce a live-action mini-pilot directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait titled simply The Aquabats!, following the comic misadventures of the then-eight member band in an over-the-top camp style similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves. Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot the following year, using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death!. Independently directed and produced by Jacobs and his creative partner Scott Schultz, the result was a five-minute promo video entitled The Aquabats in Color!. In contrast to the wackier tone of the previous pilot, The Aquabats in Color! was a more action-oriented superhero series modeled after Japanese tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider. According to Jacobs, the Fox Family Channel reportedly expressed interest in the series and ordered production on a proper pilot episode, though following the channel's acquisition by Disney in 2001, the project was cancelled. CANNOTANSWER

charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs - a former child actor with ties in the industry -

The Aquabats! Super Show! is an American action-comedy musical television series which aired from March 3, 2012 to January 8, 2014 on The Hub Network and resumed as an independent YouTube web series in September 2019. The series was created by Christian Jacobs, and Scott Schultz, both the creators of the Nick Jr. show Yo Gabba Gabba!, and Jason deVilliers. Based on the superhero mythology of The Aquabats, a real-life comedy rock band which series co-creator and lead singer Jacobs formed in 1994, The Aquabats! Super Show! follows the comic adventures of a fictionalized version of the band, a musical group of amateur superheroes, as they haphazardly defend the world from a variety of villains and monsters. Styled similarly to the campy aesthetics of 1960s and 1970s children's television and Japanese tokusatsu, Super Show! utilizes various mediums of visual styles and special effects, mixing live-action storylines with cartoon shorts, parody advertisements and musical interludes. The series' first season concluded on June 16, 2012 following a run of 13 episodes, having met with a largely positive critical reception, consistently high ratings for the channel and a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Children's Series. The series' second season consisted of an initial five episodes which aired through June 2013, with three additional episodes airing in late December and January 2014, receiving similar acclaim and a further seven Daytime Emmy nominations, ultimately winning one for Best Stunt Coordination. In June 2014, co-creator Jacobs officially announced the series' cancellation, following news of The Hub's financial losses which led to the network's rebranding as Discovery Family later that October. In July 2018, The Aquabats launched a successful Kickstarter to help independently finance new episodes of The Aquabats! Super Show!, promoting the campaign with a series of YouTube-exclusive mini-episodes continuing the original series' storyline. On September 28, 2019, The Aquabats premiered the first installment of these new episodes, now a biweekly YouTube series entitled The Aquabats! RadVentures!, though still retaining Super Show!s theme song and title card. Series overview Premise Chronicled in both live-action and animated segments, The Aquabats! Super Show! is centered around the adventures of The Aquabats, a group of superhero rock musicians who travel the countryside on a self-appointed mission to fight evil and "destroy boredom", protecting the world from the villains and creatures who threaten to destroy it while aiming to become a famous rock and roll band in their own right. The Aquabats consist of singer The MC Bat Commander (Christian Jacobs), the swaggering leader of the group; bassist Crash McLarson (Chad Larson), who can grow up to 100 feet in size; drummer Ricky Fitness (Richard Falomir), who has the power of super speed; guitarist EagleBones Falconhawk (Ian Fowles), who's armed with a laser-shooting electric guitar; and keyboardist Jimmy the Robot (James R. Briggs, Jr.), an android. Despite their superhuman strengths and abilities, The Aquabats are quite bumbling, disorganized, and sometimes cowardly when faced with danger; this has in fact led them to be labeled "the world's most inept superheroes". The band lives and travels by way of their "Battletram", a modified classic GMC motorhome which, despite its small exterior, has an implausibly massive interior (similar to the TARDIS from Doctor Who or The Big Bologna from The Kids From C.A.P.E.R.), which contains, among many things, a science lab, a command center, and a living room. The Aquabats' origin story was left intentionally vague throughout the series, a choice Jacobs explains was done for the sake of the viewer's imagination, as he felt kids were more accepting of the inherent absurdity of the premise than adults tend to be: "'There's five guys. This is what each of the five guys does. There are monsters. They're gonna try to fight them'. It's so simple. And I think that's why it's so awesome with kids—they just take it and run with it". In the first five episodes of season two, each member of The Aquabats shares their memory of how they joined the band via animated flashback sequences; however, all of these flashbacks directly and intentionally contradict each other, leaving it unknown which—if any—could be considered officially canonical. Format and influences The Aquabats! Super Show! juxtaposes both live-action and animated segments starring The Aquabats, interwoven with various tangential skits and cartoon interstitials. The live-action storylines are the primary focus of each episode, following a self-contained villain of the week formula. In the first season, each episode featured brief anime-styled cartoon shorts which one of the characters would introduce at a random point of the show, often by finding "A Cartoon" (represented by a miniature television set) in an absurd location. Unlike the live-action segments, these cartoons followed a serialized story arc, with each installment ending in a cliffhanger to be resolved in the next episode. In season two, this format was replaced with a series of animated flashbacks recounting the origins of The Aquabats, each by a different animation studio and in a different animation style. Between these segments are pantomime cartoon shorts starring "Lil' Bat", The Aquabats' anthropomorphic bat mascot, and live-action parody commercials for outlandish fictional products, the latter of which has long been a staple of The Aquabats' multi-media stage shows. Jacobs says the concept behind Super Show! was something he had always dreamed of doing, making a "campy, live-action, funky kid's show" in the vein of the 1960s and 1970s television that he and the rest of the series' producers had grown up with. While the show pays homage to many facets of pop culture, Jacobs has named the 1960s Batman television series as the primary influence on Super Show!s "obviously silly" tone and visual style, ranging from set design to the trademark use of dutch angles for villain scenes. Other notable influences Jacobs has repeatedly mentioned include the works of Sid and Marty Krofft and Hanna-Barbera, Japanese tokusatsu series such as Ultraman and Johnny Sokko And His Flying Robot, the Shaw Brothers and Hong Kong cinema, and shows including Danger Island, Star Trek, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, and Pee-wee's Playhouse, noting "there's a good 30 years worth of television culture packed into these 22-minute episodes". Demographic As The Hub's key demographic were children aged 6 to 12, Super Show! was ostensibly targeted towards said age group, though Jacobs has stated that the series primarily aimed to appeal to an all-ages crowd, with the intent of creating entertainment that both kids and parents can watch and enjoy together or separately. In interviews prior to the series' premiere, he explained that this was merely an extension of The Aquabats' own family-friendly ethos: "There's just obviously something about the costumes and being superheroes that really appeals to younger kids, and I think we always knew that as a band...I think we'll want to put things in [the show] for an older audience, because we realize we have an older audience, but then also we want the young kids, to not have it go over their heads". Production history History and previous attempts at a series In 1994, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in Brea, California. Influenced as much by cartoons and camp television as theatrical bands like Devo and Oingo Boingo, The Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for their eccentric persona in which they claimed to be a band of superheroes on a quest to save the world and their elaborate stage shows which regularly featured scripted fights with costumed villains alongside similar stunts and comedy sketches. The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough for the group, charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs – a former child actor with ties in the industry – to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television. In 1998, Buena Vista Television helped produce a live-action mini-pilot directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait titled simply The Aquabats!, following the comic misadventures of the then-eight member band in an over-the-top camp style similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves. Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot the following year, using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death!. Independently directed and produced by Jacobs and his creative partner Scott Schultz, the result was a five-minute promo video entitled The Aquabats in Color!. In contrast to the wackier tone of the previous pilot, The Aquabats in Color! was a more action-oriented superhero series modeled after Japanese tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider. According to Jacobs, the Fox Family Channel reportedly expressed interest in the series and ordered production on a proper pilot episode, though following the channel's acquisition by Disney in 2001, the project was cancelled. The Aquabats! Super Show! pilot (2008) In 2005, Jacobs and Schultz formed the Orange County-based production company The Magic Store, focusing on creating family-oriented television entertainment. One of the company's independently produced pilots, the children's television series Yo Gabba Gabba!, was eventually picked up as a series by Viacoms Nick Jr. channel, premiering in August 2007 and ultimately becoming an award-winning and critically acclaimed international success. In the wake of the series' popularity, Jacobs and Schultz persuaded Yo Gabba Gabba!s joint production company Wild Brain to help produce a new pilot based around The Aquabats in conjuncture with The Magic Store. Again creatively spearheaded by Jacobs and Schultz, The Aquabats' third pilot, titled The Aquabats! Super Show!, was shot on location throughout southern California in late 2007 and early 2008. Part of this filming took place at a free invitation-only concert for members of the band's official fan club at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles on January 12, 2008. While The Aquabats' previous pilots were short, live-action promotional videos, The Aquabats! Super Show! was a fully realized 22-minute episode featuring two separate storylines based on the adventures of The Aquabats, one live-action and one animated, and interspersed with parody commercials and live footage of the band. Speaking on the decision to structure the show in such a varied format, Jacobs said "[w]e did that for a strategic reason – some networks like cartoons more than other networks. We wanted to say, 'this could be both shows'." Following a period of post-production, The Aquabats began widely self-promoting Super Show! in June 2008, redesigning their website to promote the pilot and releasing a teaser trailer and several exclusive clips through an official Super Show! YouTube channel. On July 25, 2008, the band screened the full pilot at a concert in San Diego held during the weekend of the San Diego Comic-Con, while a segment of the episode was hosted on Boing Boing the same day. In 2009, Cartoon Network allegedly picked the series up for a run of 22 episodes, though following major staff changes within the company—which, according to Jacobs, included the termination of the executives who had green-lighted Super Show!—the project was again cancelled. The Hub and season one After several more unsuccessful network pitches into the 2010s, The Aquabats! Super Show! was finally picked up as a series by family cable channel The Hub, a joint venture between Hasbro and Discovery which launched in 2010 as a replacement for Discovery Kids. The Hub formally announced the series in a press release on March 23, 2011, revealing Super Show! would be given a first season run of 13 episodes, produced in conjuncture with FremantleMedia. In promotion of the series, The Aquabats appeared as part of a panel at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con where they discussed their initial plans for the show, while The Hub sponsored an Aquabats concert held at the nearby House of Blues during the same weekend. Production on season one of Super Show! officially began in May 2011. The entirety of the first season was shot within and around The Aquabats' hometown of Orange County, California; according to the first season DVD audio commentary, episodes were shot on location in the cities of Irvine, Silverado, Yorba Linda, Huntington Beach and Fullerton, while a private sound stage in Santa Ana was used for interior shots of the Battletram. A public Aquabats concert held at The Glass House club in Pomona on November 5, 2011 was also filmed to provide live footage of the band which is featured in the series' opening credits montage and several individual episodes. Much of Super Show!s staff consist of friends and colleagues of The Aquabats who've previously worked with the band on various projects, ranging from members of Yo Gabba Gabba!s production team to fellow musicians within the southern California music scene. Among the more notable examples include Dallas McLaughlin and Matthew Gorney, both members of the San Diego hip hop band Bad Credit, who prominently served as writers, composers and performers, Warren Fitzgerald, guitarist for The Vandals, who was hired as a writer and music director, internet sketch comedy group Mega64 were commissioned to produce original material, primarily the series' parody commercials, and Japanese artist Pey, who had designed much of The Aquabats' promotional art and merchandise during the 2000s, was hired to design the season's animated segments. Additionally, several industry professionals were brought in to help work on the show: Dani Michaeli, a staff writer on SpongeBob SquarePants, was hired as the series' story editor, while Matt Chapman, co-creator of the internet Flash cartoon Homestar Runner, acted as a writer, director and actor on several episodes. As none of the members besides Jacobs had any previous acting experience, comedian Matt Walsh of the Upright Citizens Brigade was brought in to help teach The Aquabats comedic acting and timing. In further homage to the original Batman series, Super Show! features a variety of celebrity cameo appearances. The series' first season included appearances from actors Jon Heder, Lou Diamond Phillips and Samm Levine, comedians Rip Taylor, Paul Scheer and Paul Rust, and comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic, who appeared in two episodes as different characters. The first season also included several "Easter egg" cameos from original Aquabats members Corey "Chainsaw" Pollock and Boyd "Catboy" Terry, as well as from fellow musicians Warren Fitzgerald and Art Mitchell of the band Supernova. Despite having been originally announced as part of The Hub's 2011 Fall line-up, production delays postponed Super Show!s premiere to early 2012. The series' marketing campaign began in December 2011, with a later announcement of an official premiere date confirmed for March 3, 2012. Following a non-consecutive run of 13 episodes, the first-season finale aired on June 16, 2012. Season two On October 16, 2012, The Aquabats and The Hub confirmed production on new episodes of Super Show! through the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, announcing a tentative debut date of Spring 2013. Principal photography on season two began on October 22 and wrapped on December 1. Unlike the first season, the majority of season two was shot in and around Salt Lake City, Utah, which Jacobs explained was considerably less expensive than shooting in California. While no changes were made to Super Shows creative team, in December 2012 it was announced that season two would introduce the series' first guest director, musician and comic book writer Gerard Way, who co-directed and co-wrote the season finale "The AntiBats!" with Jacobs and deVilliers. Way's involvement with the series was heavily covered by the music press in the wake of the March 2013 break-up of his popular alternative rock band My Chemical Romance. Among the guest stars featured in season two were professional skateboarders Tony Hawk and Eric Koston, Devo frontman and Yo Gabba Gabba! cast member Mark Mothersbaugh, internet celebrity Leslie Hall, actor Martin Starr and My Chemical Romance bassist Mikey Way. On December 2, 2012, deVilliers revealed on his Twitter account that the upcoming season would consist of only five new episodes, in what he called more "season 1.5" than a "season 2", though mentioned the possibility of more being made in the future. On May 1, 2013, it was announced through Entertainment Weekly that the series' second season would begin airing on June 1. After a run of only five episodes, the season concluded on June 29, 2013. 2013–2014 specials On August 22, 2013, series performer Chad Larson confirmed via Twitter that three additional episodes of Super Show! were being filmed near the end of the year, "and maybe more next". Principal photography on these episodes eventually began in Utah in early October. Throughout the month, The Aquabats posted numerous pictures of production on the new episodes on their Twitter and Instagram accounts, some of which revealed production code numbers of 301, 302 and 303, ostensibly indicating what would be a third season. Though these numbers were later verified by the Internet Movie Database, a November press release from The Hub explicitly referred to these three episodes as "specials". The first of these specials, "Christmas with The Aquabats!", aired on December 21, featuring comedians Robert Smigel and Matt Walsh in guest roles. The second of these episodes, "The Shark Fighter!" (based on The Aquabats' song of the same name), featuring comedian Rhys Darby, aired the following week on December 28, while the final special "Kitty Litter!" aired on January 18, 2014. "Kitty Litter!" was helmed by another guest director, Munn Powell, best known for his work as cinematographer on the Jared and Jerusha Hess films Napoleon Dynamite and Gentlemen Broncos. Following this short run of episodes, there was no confirmation by either The Hub or The Aquabats as to the production of any future episodes. In a December 2013 interview, Christian Jacobs acknowledged the network's unusually small order of episodes but didn't elaborate on any possible reasoning. In the same interview, he stated that the band had initially prepared for another order of 13 episodes, having written as many scripts for potential future episodes. On May 1, 2014, the nominees for the 2014 Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, revealing that Super Show! had been nominated for five awards in four categories, including the award for Best Writing in a Children's Series for the episode "The AntiBats!". The awards ceremony was held on June 22, 2014, where the series ultimately won the award for Best Stunt Coordination for stuntman Skip Carlson. Cancellation by The Hub and hiatus In mid-2014, it was announced in entertainment press that Hasbro and Discovery had been in the process of rebranding The Hub following what they saw to be disappointing returns for the channel, changes which included the departure of CEO Margaret Loesch, who was instrumental in acquiring Super Show! as a series. In a Huffington Post feature about The Aquabats prior to the band's appearance at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, it was revealed that The Hub had opted not to renew Super Show! for a third season, effectively cancelling the series. Jacobs admitted he was surprised by this turn of events, noting "Everything we heard was that the show has been a real Cinderella story for the Hub and that it was rating really well with viewers. We just assumed that we'd eventually go back into production or at least get picked up for Season 3", but ultimately concluded "it is what it is" in regard to the network's decision. Despite this, Jacobs remained optimistic about the series' future, saying "Given that we now live in a world where people are streaming TV shows directly onto their iPhones & computers, and given that companies like Netflix & Yahoo! are now picking up so much new content for their customers...I just find it hard to believe that The Aquabats! Super Show! is really over. I mean, we haven't even made any toys yet". He concluded by stating "It took us almost 15 years to get that TV series made. And even though we've got a bunch more concert dates lined up for the rest of this year, our first priority is to find a new home for The Aquabats! Super Show!". On March 31, 2015, the nominees for the 42nd annual Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, with Super Show! earning nominations for Best SFX Mixer (Blaine Stewart) and Best Stunt Coordinator (Braxton McAllister). On June 27, 2015, The Aquabats screened the entire first season of Super Show! before a sold-out crowd at The Frida Cinema in downtown Santa Ana, which was accompanied by a live performance by the band and Q&A sessions with The Aquabats and numerous members of the cast and crew. A similar presentation of the entire second season – including the three additional specials – took place at The Art Theater in Long Beach on December 16, 2017, coinciding with the release of the second season Blu-ray. Bring Back The Aquabats! Kickstarter campaign Following weeks of teasing a major announcement, The Aquabats launched a Kickstarter campaign on July 31, 2018 to help finance the return of The Aquabats! Super Show! as well as new studio albums from the band at a minimum projected cost of $1.1 million. The Aquabats promoted their campaign with a video featuring a slew of celebrity cameos, including Super Show! guest stars "Weird Al" Yankovic, Robert Smigel (as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog), Matt Chapman (as Homestar Runner and Strong Bad), former Aquabats member Travis Barker, Tony Kanal, Tom Dumont, Oscar Nunez, Kate Micucci, Blake Anderson, Imagine Dragons, Felicia Day and Tom Lennon, all of whom appeared in The Aquabats' trademark uniforms and spoke the Kickstarter's promotional slogan "I am The Aquabats"/"We are The Aquabats". Most prominently featured, however, was comedian Jack Black, who was later confirmed by the campaign's press releases to act as executive producer for the series' return. Along with their Kickstarter, the band began releasing a series of Super Show! "mini-episodes", depicting the MC Bat Commander's metafictional quest to reunite the estranged Aquabats following the series' cancellation. The band confirmed that as the Kickstarter progresses, further "mini-episodes" will be released to both promote the campaign as well as act as a continuation of Super Show!. By August 28, mere days before the campaign's end date of September 1, The Aquabats' Kickstarter had raised only $601,629 of its projected $1.1 million goal. The funding was subsequently cancelled and the campaign was rebooted the same day with a smaller goal of $100,000 to instead finance one new album and the continued production of the Super Show!! "mini-episodes". The project's goal was met within minutes. Music Original music for The Aquabats! Super Show! was primarily composed and performed by The Aquabats themselves, with additional scoring on most episodes provided by Matthew Gorney, Warren Fitzgerald or individual credits for Aquabats members James R. Briggs, Jr., Richard Falomir and Ian Fowles. Fitzgerald, guitarist for punk rock band The Vandals and former member of Oingo Boingo, acted as the series' music supervisor. The theme song to Super Show!, "Super Show Theme Song!", was co-written by The Aquabats and Fitzgerald. Whereas most musically oriented shows like The Monkees typically break the narrative of an episode for a music video performance of a standalone song, each episode of Super Show! typically features one or two unique songs that tied directly into the plot, usually about and performed during the events of a particular scene. Most of these songs are rather brief, averaging a running time of just under a minute; Jacobs stated that many of the show's original songs were recorded as full-length pieces but trimmed down for inclusion in an episode, simply due to the show "trying to pack so much into 22 minutes". Shortly after Super Show!s premiere, Jacobs confirmed plans to eventually release the series' original full-length songs as a soundtrack album. However, these plans wouldn't fully come to fruition until 2019; in a 2018 interview, Jacobs retrospectively revealed that the album had been long completed but the band "hadn't had all the rights tied up" until then. The first original and full-length recordings from the series' first season debuted in July 2017, when "Burger Rain" and "Beat Fishin'" were released as a tour-exclusive 7" single. Songs from the series' first season were eventually compiled as The Aquabats! Super Show! Television Soundtrack: Volume One, which was released digitally in March 2019 and then onto physical media the following June, where it became The Aquabats' highest-charting album to date, debuting at the top of Billboards Top Heatseekers chart and at 165 on the Billboard 200. Cast and characters See: List of The Aquabats! Super Show! characters The Aquabats! Super Show! stars and is based upon fictionalized versions of the then-current (since 2006) line-up of the California comedy rock band The Aquabats. Adapting the backstory the band has used for the entirety of their professional career, Super Show! depicts The Aquabats as a group of bumbling, out-of-shape superheroes on a self-appointed mission to fight the forces of evil, presented in both live-action and animated segments. The five members of The Aquabats are: The MC Bat Commander (played and voiced by Christian Jacobs) – The Aquabats' singer and de facto leader of the team. Though he doesn't have any superpowers of his own and is often quite stubborn and naive, the Commander is shown to be an effective strategist whose sharp leadership skills, bravery and determination regularly drive the band towards victory. Crash McLarson (played and voiced by Chad Larson) – The band's bass guitarist, who has the frequently uncontrollable ability to grow upwards of 100 feet in size when under emotional stress. Despite being the largest and strongest of The Aquabats, Crash has a gentle, childlike demeanor bordering on slight dim-wittedness, and as such is usually the most cowardly member of the team. Jimmy the Robot (played and voiced by James R. Briggs, Jr.) – The Aquabats' keyboardist. As his name implies, Jimmy is an android whose mechanical body houses a variety of built-in gadgets and weaponry, plus a comprehensive knowledge database which earns him the position of the group's resident scientist. Being a robot, Jimmy is generally perplexed by human emotions and behavior. Ricky Fitness (played and voiced by Richard Falomir) – the band's drummer, Ricky possesses the power of super speed. Being the most physically fit and health-conscious member of The Aquabats, some of the series' running gags revolve around Ricky's status as a handsome ladies' man and his fondness for "fresh, healthy veggies" in contrast to the rest of the team's voracious affinity for junk food. EagleBones Falconhawk (played and voiced by Ian Fowles) – The Aquabats' guitarist. The cocky and boyish maverick of the team, EagleBones is highly proficient on his custom weaponized electric guitar which shoots lasers from its headstock. Following a spiritual encounter early in season one, EagleBones also has the gift of second sight and is accompanied by "The Dude", an invisible spirit eagle whom he summons to aide The Aquabats in battle. Voice actor and writer Mr. Lawrence provided the minimal narration for both seasons of Super Show!s live-action segments, while staff writer Kyle McCulloch narrated the first season's animated segments. Guest stars and recurring characters Though each episode of the series introduced a new villain, ally and/or celebrity cameo, Super Show! never featured any major recurring characters throughout its run. However, every episode of the show included a very brief appearance by a character fans dubbed the "Fox Man", a man in a cheap-looking fox costume played by visual effects supervisor Joel Fox, who would appear hidden in the background of a random scene as an Easter egg for viewers to spot, although his character was never explained within the context of the series. Comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic and comedian Paul Rust were the only two guest actors to appear in two episodes: Yankovic played two different roles as the President of the United States and superhero SuperMagic PowerMan! (in a 2012 interview, Jacobs alluded to the two possibly being the same character, though this isn't implied within the series), while Rust played a boorish slacker named Ronmark, first appearing in live-action in a first-season episode and subsequently lending his voice to a mutated monster version of the character in part of a second-season episode. Episodes Distribution International broadcast Outside of North America, The Aquabats! Super Show! broadcast in Australia on the children's public broadcasting channel ABC3 and in the United Kingdom on the children's network CITV. Home media Coinciding with the run of the first season, each new episode of The Aquabats! Super Show! was released through the iTunes Store for digital download. Prior to the series debut, a season pass was made available for purchase to enable viewers to automatically receive a download of each new episode on its airdate. The first season of Super Show! was added to the video streaming service Netflix on December 1, 2012, later being added to Hulu on December 21. Unlike the first season, the series' second season was not made available for iTunes pre-order, nor were episodes released for purchase. Though each episode was briefly streamed on The Hub's official website, none of the seasons' episodes were made available on Hulu, Netflix or similar streaming services. Shout! Factory had the DVD publishing rights for The Aquabats! Super Show! within Region 1 for release of the first season. The company first announced their acquisition of the series and plans for a future DVD in a press release dated August 6, 2012, though did not initially confirm a set release date until several months later. On May 21, 2013, the first season of Super Show! was released on a two-disc DVD set. On November 22, 2017, in conjunction with their announcement of a season two theatrical screening, The Aquabats confirmed an independent Blu-ray release for season two, including the three specials often considered a "season three". On December 5, pre-orders were launched on The Aquabats' merchandising site for an official release date of December 22, though copies were first made for public sale at the second season theatrical screening on December 16. Starting in December 2014, The Aquabats gradually began uploading the series' full episodes onto their official YouTube channel. As of August 2019, all 21 episodes of Super Show! and its pilot episode have been publicly uploaded to their account. Critical reception Critical response to The Aquabats! Super Show! was predominantly positive, with most reviewers praising the series' intentionally campy tone and offbeat humor. The Onions The A.V. Club gave the series premiere an A− rating, describing it as "a loving homage to basically everything ever done by the brothers Krofft": "the show adeptly flips from humor to melodrama to action, providing some awesomely cheap special effects, goofy songs, and gags that range from slapstick to sublime", summarizing "there's so much here that both kids and parents will be able to enjoy the proceedings on their own respective levels and rarely find themselves bored". Brian Lowry of Variety wrote "you don't have to laugh at everything to admire the effort and sheer silliness", calling the show a "goofy and nostalgic" throwback to the "children's TV of baby boomers' youth, down to crappy production values and awful-looking 'monsters' that work to its advantage". He summarized "Although this Hub series at times feels like an SNL skit stretched to a half-hour, its sly mix of music, live-action crime-fighting, cartoons and mock ads ought to develop a cult following—and might be more popular with parents, at least those with the geek gene, than their kids". Technology magazine Wired was consistently positive towards the series, calling it both "wonderfully strange" and "delightfully deranged", writing "[f]illed with self-deprecating music videos, toon interludes and ludicrous villains, The Aquabats! Super Show! has become one of television's strangely comforting finds". Common Sense Media, who review shows based on age-appropriate content, gave Super Show! a rating of 4 out of 5 stars, calling it "demented and manic...fun by sheer dint of how many jokes, visual and otherwise, are thrown at the screen, both those calculated to appeal to kids and adults". The site praised the series for its lighter and sillier tone in comparison to more violent live-action superhero fare, and considered the "kind-hearted" Aquabats to be relatively positive role models. However, the reviewer suggested the show's violence and creatures may be too intense for very young children, and pointed out a distinct lack of central female characters. Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times offered a more indifferent opinion, calling The Aquabats "indescribably odd" and the series "frenetic, semicoherent and generally harmless. Also somewhat hallucinogenic", noting Super Show!s writing "may be over the heads of the 2-to-12 set", suggesting its most receptive audience might be "the college drinking-game crowd". Awards and nominations The Aquabats! Super Show! was nominated for the following awards: Daytime Emmy Award References External links Official website of The Aquabats The Aquabats 2010s American children's television series 2010s American musical comedy television series 2010s American satirical television series 2010s American sketch comedy television series 2010s American superhero comedy television series 2012 American television series debuts 2014 American television series endings American children's adventure television series American children's musical television series American television series with live action and animation Children's sketch comedy English-language television shows Television series by Fremantle (company) Television shows set in Orange County, California American television shows featuring puppetry Discovery Family original programming

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What did Jacobs do?

What did Jacobs of the Aquabats! do?

The Aquabats! Super Show!

In 1994, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in Brea, California. Influenced as much by cartoons and camp television as theatrical bands like Devo and Oingo Boingo, The Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for their eccentric persona in which they claimed to be a band of superheroes on a quest to save the world and their elaborate stage shows which regularly featured scripted fights with costumed villains alongside similar stunts and comedy sketches. The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough for the group, charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs - a former child actor with ties in the industry - to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television. In 1998, Buena Vista Television helped produce a live-action mini-pilot directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait titled simply The Aquabats!, following the comic misadventures of the then-eight member band in an over-the-top camp style similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves. Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot the following year, using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death!. Independently directed and produced by Jacobs and his creative partner Scott Schultz, the result was a five-minute promo video entitled The Aquabats in Color!. In contrast to the wackier tone of the previous pilot, The Aquabats in Color! was a more action-oriented superhero series modeled after Japanese tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider. According to Jacobs, the Fox Family Channel reportedly expressed interest in the series and ordered production on a proper pilot episode, though following the channel's acquisition by Disney in 2001, the project was cancelled. CANNOTANSWER

to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television.

The Aquabats! Super Show! is an American action-comedy musical television series which aired from March 3, 2012 to January 8, 2014 on The Hub Network and resumed as an independent YouTube web series in September 2019. The series was created by Christian Jacobs, and Scott Schultz, both the creators of the Nick Jr. show Yo Gabba Gabba!, and Jason deVilliers. Based on the superhero mythology of The Aquabats, a real-life comedy rock band which series co-creator and lead singer Jacobs formed in 1994, The Aquabats! Super Show! follows the comic adventures of a fictionalized version of the band, a musical group of amateur superheroes, as they haphazardly defend the world from a variety of villains and monsters. Styled similarly to the campy aesthetics of 1960s and 1970s children's television and Japanese tokusatsu, Super Show! utilizes various mediums of visual styles and special effects, mixing live-action storylines with cartoon shorts, parody advertisements and musical interludes. The series' first season concluded on June 16, 2012 following a run of 13 episodes, having met with a largely positive critical reception, consistently high ratings for the channel and a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Children's Series. The series' second season consisted of an initial five episodes which aired through June 2013, with three additional episodes airing in late December and January 2014, receiving similar acclaim and a further seven Daytime Emmy nominations, ultimately winning one for Best Stunt Coordination. In June 2014, co-creator Jacobs officially announced the series' cancellation, following news of The Hub's financial losses which led to the network's rebranding as Discovery Family later that October. In July 2018, The Aquabats launched a successful Kickstarter to help independently finance new episodes of The Aquabats! Super Show!, promoting the campaign with a series of YouTube-exclusive mini-episodes continuing the original series' storyline. On September 28, 2019, The Aquabats premiered the first installment of these new episodes, now a biweekly YouTube series entitled The Aquabats! RadVentures!, though still retaining Super Show!s theme song and title card. Series overview Premise Chronicled in both live-action and animated segments, The Aquabats! Super Show! is centered around the adventures of The Aquabats, a group of superhero rock musicians who travel the countryside on a self-appointed mission to fight evil and "destroy boredom", protecting the world from the villains and creatures who threaten to destroy it while aiming to become a famous rock and roll band in their own right. The Aquabats consist of singer The MC Bat Commander (Christian Jacobs), the swaggering leader of the group; bassist Crash McLarson (Chad Larson), who can grow up to 100 feet in size; drummer Ricky Fitness (Richard Falomir), who has the power of super speed; guitarist EagleBones Falconhawk (Ian Fowles), who's armed with a laser-shooting electric guitar; and keyboardist Jimmy the Robot (James R. Briggs, Jr.), an android. Despite their superhuman strengths and abilities, The Aquabats are quite bumbling, disorganized, and sometimes cowardly when faced with danger; this has in fact led them to be labeled "the world's most inept superheroes". The band lives and travels by way of their "Battletram", a modified classic GMC motorhome which, despite its small exterior, has an implausibly massive interior (similar to the TARDIS from Doctor Who or The Big Bologna from The Kids From C.A.P.E.R.), which contains, among many things, a science lab, a command center, and a living room. The Aquabats' origin story was left intentionally vague throughout the series, a choice Jacobs explains was done for the sake of the viewer's imagination, as he felt kids were more accepting of the inherent absurdity of the premise than adults tend to be: "'There's five guys. This is what each of the five guys does. There are monsters. They're gonna try to fight them'. It's so simple. And I think that's why it's so awesome with kids—they just take it and run with it". In the first five episodes of season two, each member of The Aquabats shares their memory of how they joined the band via animated flashback sequences; however, all of these flashbacks directly and intentionally contradict each other, leaving it unknown which—if any—could be considered officially canonical. Format and influences The Aquabats! Super Show! juxtaposes both live-action and animated segments starring The Aquabats, interwoven with various tangential skits and cartoon interstitials. The live-action storylines are the primary focus of each episode, following a self-contained villain of the week formula. In the first season, each episode featured brief anime-styled cartoon shorts which one of the characters would introduce at a random point of the show, often by finding "A Cartoon" (represented by a miniature television set) in an absurd location. Unlike the live-action segments, these cartoons followed a serialized story arc, with each installment ending in a cliffhanger to be resolved in the next episode. In season two, this format was replaced with a series of animated flashbacks recounting the origins of The Aquabats, each by a different animation studio and in a different animation style. Between these segments are pantomime cartoon shorts starring "Lil' Bat", The Aquabats' anthropomorphic bat mascot, and live-action parody commercials for outlandish fictional products, the latter of which has long been a staple of The Aquabats' multi-media stage shows. Jacobs says the concept behind Super Show! was something he had always dreamed of doing, making a "campy, live-action, funky kid's show" in the vein of the 1960s and 1970s television that he and the rest of the series' producers had grown up with. While the show pays homage to many facets of pop culture, Jacobs has named the 1960s Batman television series as the primary influence on Super Show!s "obviously silly" tone and visual style, ranging from set design to the trademark use of dutch angles for villain scenes. Other notable influences Jacobs has repeatedly mentioned include the works of Sid and Marty Krofft and Hanna-Barbera, Japanese tokusatsu series such as Ultraman and Johnny Sokko And His Flying Robot, the Shaw Brothers and Hong Kong cinema, and shows including Danger Island, Star Trek, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, and Pee-wee's Playhouse, noting "there's a good 30 years worth of television culture packed into these 22-minute episodes". Demographic As The Hub's key demographic were children aged 6 to 12, Super Show! was ostensibly targeted towards said age group, though Jacobs has stated that the series primarily aimed to appeal to an all-ages crowd, with the intent of creating entertainment that both kids and parents can watch and enjoy together or separately. In interviews prior to the series' premiere, he explained that this was merely an extension of The Aquabats' own family-friendly ethos: "There's just obviously something about the costumes and being superheroes that really appeals to younger kids, and I think we always knew that as a band...I think we'll want to put things in [the show] for an older audience, because we realize we have an older audience, but then also we want the young kids, to not have it go over their heads". Production history History and previous attempts at a series In 1994, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in Brea, California. Influenced as much by cartoons and camp television as theatrical bands like Devo and Oingo Boingo, The Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for their eccentric persona in which they claimed to be a band of superheroes on a quest to save the world and their elaborate stage shows which regularly featured scripted fights with costumed villains alongside similar stunts and comedy sketches. The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough for the group, charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs – a former child actor with ties in the industry – to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television. In 1998, Buena Vista Television helped produce a live-action mini-pilot directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait titled simply The Aquabats!, following the comic misadventures of the then-eight member band in an over-the-top camp style similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves. Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot the following year, using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death!. Independently directed and produced by Jacobs and his creative partner Scott Schultz, the result was a five-minute promo video entitled The Aquabats in Color!. In contrast to the wackier tone of the previous pilot, The Aquabats in Color! was a more action-oriented superhero series modeled after Japanese tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider. According to Jacobs, the Fox Family Channel reportedly expressed interest in the series and ordered production on a proper pilot episode, though following the channel's acquisition by Disney in 2001, the project was cancelled. The Aquabats! Super Show! pilot (2008) In 2005, Jacobs and Schultz formed the Orange County-based production company The Magic Store, focusing on creating family-oriented television entertainment. One of the company's independently produced pilots, the children's television series Yo Gabba Gabba!, was eventually picked up as a series by Viacoms Nick Jr. channel, premiering in August 2007 and ultimately becoming an award-winning and critically acclaimed international success. In the wake of the series' popularity, Jacobs and Schultz persuaded Yo Gabba Gabba!s joint production company Wild Brain to help produce a new pilot based around The Aquabats in conjuncture with The Magic Store. Again creatively spearheaded by Jacobs and Schultz, The Aquabats' third pilot, titled The Aquabats! Super Show!, was shot on location throughout southern California in late 2007 and early 2008. Part of this filming took place at a free invitation-only concert for members of the band's official fan club at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles on January 12, 2008. While The Aquabats' previous pilots were short, live-action promotional videos, The Aquabats! Super Show! was a fully realized 22-minute episode featuring two separate storylines based on the adventures of The Aquabats, one live-action and one animated, and interspersed with parody commercials and live footage of the band. Speaking on the decision to structure the show in such a varied format, Jacobs said "[w]e did that for a strategic reason – some networks like cartoons more than other networks. We wanted to say, 'this could be both shows'." Following a period of post-production, The Aquabats began widely self-promoting Super Show! in June 2008, redesigning their website to promote the pilot and releasing a teaser trailer and several exclusive clips through an official Super Show! YouTube channel. On July 25, 2008, the band screened the full pilot at a concert in San Diego held during the weekend of the San Diego Comic-Con, while a segment of the episode was hosted on Boing Boing the same day. In 2009, Cartoon Network allegedly picked the series up for a run of 22 episodes, though following major staff changes within the company—which, according to Jacobs, included the termination of the executives who had green-lighted Super Show!—the project was again cancelled. The Hub and season one After several more unsuccessful network pitches into the 2010s, The Aquabats! Super Show! was finally picked up as a series by family cable channel The Hub, a joint venture between Hasbro and Discovery which launched in 2010 as a replacement for Discovery Kids. The Hub formally announced the series in a press release on March 23, 2011, revealing Super Show! would be given a first season run of 13 episodes, produced in conjuncture with FremantleMedia. In promotion of the series, The Aquabats appeared as part of a panel at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con where they discussed their initial plans for the show, while The Hub sponsored an Aquabats concert held at the nearby House of Blues during the same weekend. Production on season one of Super Show! officially began in May 2011. The entirety of the first season was shot within and around The Aquabats' hometown of Orange County, California; according to the first season DVD audio commentary, episodes were shot on location in the cities of Irvine, Silverado, Yorba Linda, Huntington Beach and Fullerton, while a private sound stage in Santa Ana was used for interior shots of the Battletram. A public Aquabats concert held at The Glass House club in Pomona on November 5, 2011 was also filmed to provide live footage of the band which is featured in the series' opening credits montage and several individual episodes. Much of Super Show!s staff consist of friends and colleagues of The Aquabats who've previously worked with the band on various projects, ranging from members of Yo Gabba Gabba!s production team to fellow musicians within the southern California music scene. Among the more notable examples include Dallas McLaughlin and Matthew Gorney, both members of the San Diego hip hop band Bad Credit, who prominently served as writers, composers and performers, Warren Fitzgerald, guitarist for The Vandals, who was hired as a writer and music director, internet sketch comedy group Mega64 were commissioned to produce original material, primarily the series' parody commercials, and Japanese artist Pey, who had designed much of The Aquabats' promotional art and merchandise during the 2000s, was hired to design the season's animated segments. Additionally, several industry professionals were brought in to help work on the show: Dani Michaeli, a staff writer on SpongeBob SquarePants, was hired as the series' story editor, while Matt Chapman, co-creator of the internet Flash cartoon Homestar Runner, acted as a writer, director and actor on several episodes. As none of the members besides Jacobs had any previous acting experience, comedian Matt Walsh of the Upright Citizens Brigade was brought in to help teach The Aquabats comedic acting and timing. In further homage to the original Batman series, Super Show! features a variety of celebrity cameo appearances. The series' first season included appearances from actors Jon Heder, Lou Diamond Phillips and Samm Levine, comedians Rip Taylor, Paul Scheer and Paul Rust, and comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic, who appeared in two episodes as different characters. The first season also included several "Easter egg" cameos from original Aquabats members Corey "Chainsaw" Pollock and Boyd "Catboy" Terry, as well as from fellow musicians Warren Fitzgerald and Art Mitchell of the band Supernova. Despite having been originally announced as part of The Hub's 2011 Fall line-up, production delays postponed Super Show!s premiere to early 2012. The series' marketing campaign began in December 2011, with a later announcement of an official premiere date confirmed for March 3, 2012. Following a non-consecutive run of 13 episodes, the first-season finale aired on June 16, 2012. Season two On October 16, 2012, The Aquabats and The Hub confirmed production on new episodes of Super Show! through the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, announcing a tentative debut date of Spring 2013. Principal photography on season two began on October 22 and wrapped on December 1. Unlike the first season, the majority of season two was shot in and around Salt Lake City, Utah, which Jacobs explained was considerably less expensive than shooting in California. While no changes were made to Super Shows creative team, in December 2012 it was announced that season two would introduce the series' first guest director, musician and comic book writer Gerard Way, who co-directed and co-wrote the season finale "The AntiBats!" with Jacobs and deVilliers. Way's involvement with the series was heavily covered by the music press in the wake of the March 2013 break-up of his popular alternative rock band My Chemical Romance. Among the guest stars featured in season two were professional skateboarders Tony Hawk and Eric Koston, Devo frontman and Yo Gabba Gabba! cast member Mark Mothersbaugh, internet celebrity Leslie Hall, actor Martin Starr and My Chemical Romance bassist Mikey Way. On December 2, 2012, deVilliers revealed on his Twitter account that the upcoming season would consist of only five new episodes, in what he called more "season 1.5" than a "season 2", though mentioned the possibility of more being made in the future. On May 1, 2013, it was announced through Entertainment Weekly that the series' second season would begin airing on June 1. After a run of only five episodes, the season concluded on June 29, 2013. 2013–2014 specials On August 22, 2013, series performer Chad Larson confirmed via Twitter that three additional episodes of Super Show! were being filmed near the end of the year, "and maybe more next". Principal photography on these episodes eventually began in Utah in early October. Throughout the month, The Aquabats posted numerous pictures of production on the new episodes on their Twitter and Instagram accounts, some of which revealed production code numbers of 301, 302 and 303, ostensibly indicating what would be a third season. Though these numbers were later verified by the Internet Movie Database, a November press release from The Hub explicitly referred to these three episodes as "specials". The first of these specials, "Christmas with The Aquabats!", aired on December 21, featuring comedians Robert Smigel and Matt Walsh in guest roles. The second of these episodes, "The Shark Fighter!" (based on The Aquabats' song of the same name), featuring comedian Rhys Darby, aired the following week on December 28, while the final special "Kitty Litter!" aired on January 18, 2014. "Kitty Litter!" was helmed by another guest director, Munn Powell, best known for his work as cinematographer on the Jared and Jerusha Hess films Napoleon Dynamite and Gentlemen Broncos. Following this short run of episodes, there was no confirmation by either The Hub or The Aquabats as to the production of any future episodes. In a December 2013 interview, Christian Jacobs acknowledged the network's unusually small order of episodes but didn't elaborate on any possible reasoning. In the same interview, he stated that the band had initially prepared for another order of 13 episodes, having written as many scripts for potential future episodes. On May 1, 2014, the nominees for the 2014 Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, revealing that Super Show! had been nominated for five awards in four categories, including the award for Best Writing in a Children's Series for the episode "The AntiBats!". The awards ceremony was held on June 22, 2014, where the series ultimately won the award for Best Stunt Coordination for stuntman Skip Carlson. Cancellation by The Hub and hiatus In mid-2014, it was announced in entertainment press that Hasbro and Discovery had been in the process of rebranding The Hub following what they saw to be disappointing returns for the channel, changes which included the departure of CEO Margaret Loesch, who was instrumental in acquiring Super Show! as a series. In a Huffington Post feature about The Aquabats prior to the band's appearance at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, it was revealed that The Hub had opted not to renew Super Show! for a third season, effectively cancelling the series. Jacobs admitted he was surprised by this turn of events, noting "Everything we heard was that the show has been a real Cinderella story for the Hub and that it was rating really well with viewers. We just assumed that we'd eventually go back into production or at least get picked up for Season 3", but ultimately concluded "it is what it is" in regard to the network's decision. Despite this, Jacobs remained optimistic about the series' future, saying "Given that we now live in a world where people are streaming TV shows directly onto their iPhones & computers, and given that companies like Netflix & Yahoo! are now picking up so much new content for their customers...I just find it hard to believe that The Aquabats! Super Show! is really over. I mean, we haven't even made any toys yet". He concluded by stating "It took us almost 15 years to get that TV series made. And even though we've got a bunch more concert dates lined up for the rest of this year, our first priority is to find a new home for The Aquabats! Super Show!". On March 31, 2015, the nominees for the 42nd annual Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, with Super Show! earning nominations for Best SFX Mixer (Blaine Stewart) and Best Stunt Coordinator (Braxton McAllister). On June 27, 2015, The Aquabats screened the entire first season of Super Show! before a sold-out crowd at The Frida Cinema in downtown Santa Ana, which was accompanied by a live performance by the band and Q&A sessions with The Aquabats and numerous members of the cast and crew. A similar presentation of the entire second season – including the three additional specials – took place at The Art Theater in Long Beach on December 16, 2017, coinciding with the release of the second season Blu-ray. Bring Back The Aquabats! Kickstarter campaign Following weeks of teasing a major announcement, The Aquabats launched a Kickstarter campaign on July 31, 2018 to help finance the return of The Aquabats! Super Show! as well as new studio albums from the band at a minimum projected cost of $1.1 million. The Aquabats promoted their campaign with a video featuring a slew of celebrity cameos, including Super Show! guest stars "Weird Al" Yankovic, Robert Smigel (as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog), Matt Chapman (as Homestar Runner and Strong Bad), former Aquabats member Travis Barker, Tony Kanal, Tom Dumont, Oscar Nunez, Kate Micucci, Blake Anderson, Imagine Dragons, Felicia Day and Tom Lennon, all of whom appeared in The Aquabats' trademark uniforms and spoke the Kickstarter's promotional slogan "I am The Aquabats"/"We are The Aquabats". Most prominently featured, however, was comedian Jack Black, who was later confirmed by the campaign's press releases to act as executive producer for the series' return. Along with their Kickstarter, the band began releasing a series of Super Show! "mini-episodes", depicting the MC Bat Commander's metafictional quest to reunite the estranged Aquabats following the series' cancellation. The band confirmed that as the Kickstarter progresses, further "mini-episodes" will be released to both promote the campaign as well as act as a continuation of Super Show!. By August 28, mere days before the campaign's end date of September 1, The Aquabats' Kickstarter had raised only $601,629 of its projected $1.1 million goal. The funding was subsequently cancelled and the campaign was rebooted the same day with a smaller goal of $100,000 to instead finance one new album and the continued production of the Super Show!! "mini-episodes". The project's goal was met within minutes. Music Original music for The Aquabats! Super Show! was primarily composed and performed by The Aquabats themselves, with additional scoring on most episodes provided by Matthew Gorney, Warren Fitzgerald or individual credits for Aquabats members James R. Briggs, Jr., Richard Falomir and Ian Fowles. Fitzgerald, guitarist for punk rock band The Vandals and former member of Oingo Boingo, acted as the series' music supervisor. The theme song to Super Show!, "Super Show Theme Song!", was co-written by The Aquabats and Fitzgerald. Whereas most musically oriented shows like The Monkees typically break the narrative of an episode for a music video performance of a standalone song, each episode of Super Show! typically features one or two unique songs that tied directly into the plot, usually about and performed during the events of a particular scene. Most of these songs are rather brief, averaging a running time of just under a minute; Jacobs stated that many of the show's original songs were recorded as full-length pieces but trimmed down for inclusion in an episode, simply due to the show "trying to pack so much into 22 minutes". Shortly after Super Show!s premiere, Jacobs confirmed plans to eventually release the series' original full-length songs as a soundtrack album. However, these plans wouldn't fully come to fruition until 2019; in a 2018 interview, Jacobs retrospectively revealed that the album had been long completed but the band "hadn't had all the rights tied up" until then. The first original and full-length recordings from the series' first season debuted in July 2017, when "Burger Rain" and "Beat Fishin'" were released as a tour-exclusive 7" single. Songs from the series' first season were eventually compiled as The Aquabats! Super Show! Television Soundtrack: Volume One, which was released digitally in March 2019 and then onto physical media the following June, where it became The Aquabats' highest-charting album to date, debuting at the top of Billboards Top Heatseekers chart and at 165 on the Billboard 200. Cast and characters See: List of The Aquabats! Super Show! characters The Aquabats! Super Show! stars and is based upon fictionalized versions of the then-current (since 2006) line-up of the California comedy rock band The Aquabats. Adapting the backstory the band has used for the entirety of their professional career, Super Show! depicts The Aquabats as a group of bumbling, out-of-shape superheroes on a self-appointed mission to fight the forces of evil, presented in both live-action and animated segments. The five members of The Aquabats are: The MC Bat Commander (played and voiced by Christian Jacobs) – The Aquabats' singer and de facto leader of the team. Though he doesn't have any superpowers of his own and is often quite stubborn and naive, the Commander is shown to be an effective strategist whose sharp leadership skills, bravery and determination regularly drive the band towards victory. Crash McLarson (played and voiced by Chad Larson) – The band's bass guitarist, who has the frequently uncontrollable ability to grow upwards of 100 feet in size when under emotional stress. Despite being the largest and strongest of The Aquabats, Crash has a gentle, childlike demeanor bordering on slight dim-wittedness, and as such is usually the most cowardly member of the team. Jimmy the Robot (played and voiced by James R. Briggs, Jr.) – The Aquabats' keyboardist. As his name implies, Jimmy is an android whose mechanical body houses a variety of built-in gadgets and weaponry, plus a comprehensive knowledge database which earns him the position of the group's resident scientist. Being a robot, Jimmy is generally perplexed by human emotions and behavior. Ricky Fitness (played and voiced by Richard Falomir) – the band's drummer, Ricky possesses the power of super speed. Being the most physically fit and health-conscious member of The Aquabats, some of the series' running gags revolve around Ricky's status as a handsome ladies' man and his fondness for "fresh, healthy veggies" in contrast to the rest of the team's voracious affinity for junk food. EagleBones Falconhawk (played and voiced by Ian Fowles) – The Aquabats' guitarist. The cocky and boyish maverick of the team, EagleBones is highly proficient on his custom weaponized electric guitar which shoots lasers from its headstock. Following a spiritual encounter early in season one, EagleBones also has the gift of second sight and is accompanied by "The Dude", an invisible spirit eagle whom he summons to aide The Aquabats in battle. Voice actor and writer Mr. Lawrence provided the minimal narration for both seasons of Super Show!s live-action segments, while staff writer Kyle McCulloch narrated the first season's animated segments. Guest stars and recurring characters Though each episode of the series introduced a new villain, ally and/or celebrity cameo, Super Show! never featured any major recurring characters throughout its run. However, every episode of the show included a very brief appearance by a character fans dubbed the "Fox Man", a man in a cheap-looking fox costume played by visual effects supervisor Joel Fox, who would appear hidden in the background of a random scene as an Easter egg for viewers to spot, although his character was never explained within the context of the series. Comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic and comedian Paul Rust were the only two guest actors to appear in two episodes: Yankovic played two different roles as the President of the United States and superhero SuperMagic PowerMan! (in a 2012 interview, Jacobs alluded to the two possibly being the same character, though this isn't implied within the series), while Rust played a boorish slacker named Ronmark, first appearing in live-action in a first-season episode and subsequently lending his voice to a mutated monster version of the character in part of a second-season episode. Episodes Distribution International broadcast Outside of North America, The Aquabats! Super Show! broadcast in Australia on the children's public broadcasting channel ABC3 and in the United Kingdom on the children's network CITV. Home media Coinciding with the run of the first season, each new episode of The Aquabats! Super Show! was released through the iTunes Store for digital download. Prior to the series debut, a season pass was made available for purchase to enable viewers to automatically receive a download of each new episode on its airdate. The first season of Super Show! was added to the video streaming service Netflix on December 1, 2012, later being added to Hulu on December 21. Unlike the first season, the series' second season was not made available for iTunes pre-order, nor were episodes released for purchase. Though each episode was briefly streamed on The Hub's official website, none of the seasons' episodes were made available on Hulu, Netflix or similar streaming services. Shout! Factory had the DVD publishing rights for The Aquabats! Super Show! within Region 1 for release of the first season. The company first announced their acquisition of the series and plans for a future DVD in a press release dated August 6, 2012, though did not initially confirm a set release date until several months later. On May 21, 2013, the first season of Super Show! was released on a two-disc DVD set. On November 22, 2017, in conjunction with their announcement of a season two theatrical screening, The Aquabats confirmed an independent Blu-ray release for season two, including the three specials often considered a "season three". On December 5, pre-orders were launched on The Aquabats' merchandising site for an official release date of December 22, though copies were first made for public sale at the second season theatrical screening on December 16. Starting in December 2014, The Aquabats gradually began uploading the series' full episodes onto their official YouTube channel. As of August 2019, all 21 episodes of Super Show! and its pilot episode have been publicly uploaded to their account. Critical reception Critical response to The Aquabats! Super Show! was predominantly positive, with most reviewers praising the series' intentionally campy tone and offbeat humor. The Onions The A.V. Club gave the series premiere an A− rating, describing it as "a loving homage to basically everything ever done by the brothers Krofft": "the show adeptly flips from humor to melodrama to action, providing some awesomely cheap special effects, goofy songs, and gags that range from slapstick to sublime", summarizing "there's so much here that both kids and parents will be able to enjoy the proceedings on their own respective levels and rarely find themselves bored". Brian Lowry of Variety wrote "you don't have to laugh at everything to admire the effort and sheer silliness", calling the show a "goofy and nostalgic" throwback to the "children's TV of baby boomers' youth, down to crappy production values and awful-looking 'monsters' that work to its advantage". He summarized "Although this Hub series at times feels like an SNL skit stretched to a half-hour, its sly mix of music, live-action crime-fighting, cartoons and mock ads ought to develop a cult following—and might be more popular with parents, at least those with the geek gene, than their kids". Technology magazine Wired was consistently positive towards the series, calling it both "wonderfully strange" and "delightfully deranged", writing "[f]illed with self-deprecating music videos, toon interludes and ludicrous villains, The Aquabats! Super Show! has become one of television's strangely comforting finds". Common Sense Media, who review shows based on age-appropriate content, gave Super Show! a rating of 4 out of 5 stars, calling it "demented and manic...fun by sheer dint of how many jokes, visual and otherwise, are thrown at the screen, both those calculated to appeal to kids and adults". The site praised the series for its lighter and sillier tone in comparison to more violent live-action superhero fare, and considered the "kind-hearted" Aquabats to be relatively positive role models. However, the reviewer suggested the show's violence and creatures may be too intense for very young children, and pointed out a distinct lack of central female characters. Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times offered a more indifferent opinion, calling The Aquabats "indescribably odd" and the series "frenetic, semicoherent and generally harmless. Also somewhat hallucinogenic", noting Super Show!s writing "may be over the heads of the 2-to-12 set", suggesting its most receptive audience might be "the college drinking-game crowd". Awards and nominations The Aquabats! Super Show! was nominated for the following awards: Daytime Emmy Award References External links Official website of The Aquabats The Aquabats 2010s American children's television series 2010s American musical comedy television series 2010s American satirical television series 2010s American sketch comedy television series 2010s American superhero comedy television series 2012 American television series debuts 2014 American television series endings American children's adventure television series American children's musical television series American television series with live action and animation Children's sketch comedy English-language television shows Television series by Fremantle (company) Television shows set in Orange County, California American television shows featuring puppetry Discovery Family original programming

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Did they achieve anything else during this time?

Did the Aquabats! achieve anything else during the history of the Aquabats! Super Show! besides having the Fury of The Aquabats! chart on the Billboard 200?

The Aquabats! Super Show!

In 1994, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in Brea, California. Influenced as much by cartoons and camp television as theatrical bands like Devo and Oingo Boingo, The Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for their eccentric persona in which they claimed to be a band of superheroes on a quest to save the world and their elaborate stage shows which regularly featured scripted fights with costumed villains alongside similar stunts and comedy sketches. The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough for the group, charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs - a former child actor with ties in the industry - to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television. In 1998, Buena Vista Television helped produce a live-action mini-pilot directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait titled simply The Aquabats!, following the comic misadventures of the then-eight member band in an over-the-top camp style similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves. Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot the following year, using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death!. Independently directed and produced by Jacobs and his creative partner Scott Schultz, the result was a five-minute promo video entitled The Aquabats in Color!. In contrast to the wackier tone of the previous pilot, The Aquabats in Color! was a more action-oriented superhero series modeled after Japanese tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider. According to Jacobs, the Fox Family Channel reportedly expressed interest in the series and ordered production on a proper pilot episode, though following the channel's acquisition by Disney in 2001, the project was cancelled. CANNOTANSWER

Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for

The Aquabats! Super Show! is an American action-comedy musical television series which aired from March 3, 2012 to January 8, 2014 on The Hub Network and resumed as an independent YouTube web series in September 2019. The series was created by Christian Jacobs, and Scott Schultz, both the creators of the Nick Jr. show Yo Gabba Gabba!, and Jason deVilliers. Based on the superhero mythology of The Aquabats, a real-life comedy rock band which series co-creator and lead singer Jacobs formed in 1994, The Aquabats! Super Show! follows the comic adventures of a fictionalized version of the band, a musical group of amateur superheroes, as they haphazardly defend the world from a variety of villains and monsters. Styled similarly to the campy aesthetics of 1960s and 1970s children's television and Japanese tokusatsu, Super Show! utilizes various mediums of visual styles and special effects, mixing live-action storylines with cartoon shorts, parody advertisements and musical interludes. The series' first season concluded on June 16, 2012 following a run of 13 episodes, having met with a largely positive critical reception, consistently high ratings for the channel and a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Children's Series. The series' second season consisted of an initial five episodes which aired through June 2013, with three additional episodes airing in late December and January 2014, receiving similar acclaim and a further seven Daytime Emmy nominations, ultimately winning one for Best Stunt Coordination. In June 2014, co-creator Jacobs officially announced the series' cancellation, following news of The Hub's financial losses which led to the network's rebranding as Discovery Family later that October. In July 2018, The Aquabats launched a successful Kickstarter to help independently finance new episodes of The Aquabats! Super Show!, promoting the campaign with a series of YouTube-exclusive mini-episodes continuing the original series' storyline. On September 28, 2019, The Aquabats premiered the first installment of these new episodes, now a biweekly YouTube series entitled The Aquabats! RadVentures!, though still retaining Super Show!s theme song and title card. Series overview Premise Chronicled in both live-action and animated segments, The Aquabats! Super Show! is centered around the adventures of The Aquabats, a group of superhero rock musicians who travel the countryside on a self-appointed mission to fight evil and "destroy boredom", protecting the world from the villains and creatures who threaten to destroy it while aiming to become a famous rock and roll band in their own right. The Aquabats consist of singer The MC Bat Commander (Christian Jacobs), the swaggering leader of the group; bassist Crash McLarson (Chad Larson), who can grow up to 100 feet in size; drummer Ricky Fitness (Richard Falomir), who has the power of super speed; guitarist EagleBones Falconhawk (Ian Fowles), who's armed with a laser-shooting electric guitar; and keyboardist Jimmy the Robot (James R. Briggs, Jr.), an android. Despite their superhuman strengths and abilities, The Aquabats are quite bumbling, disorganized, and sometimes cowardly when faced with danger; this has in fact led them to be labeled "the world's most inept superheroes". The band lives and travels by way of their "Battletram", a modified classic GMC motorhome which, despite its small exterior, has an implausibly massive interior (similar to the TARDIS from Doctor Who or The Big Bologna from The Kids From C.A.P.E.R.), which contains, among many things, a science lab, a command center, and a living room. The Aquabats' origin story was left intentionally vague throughout the series, a choice Jacobs explains was done for the sake of the viewer's imagination, as he felt kids were more accepting of the inherent absurdity of the premise than adults tend to be: "'There's five guys. This is what each of the five guys does. There are monsters. They're gonna try to fight them'. It's so simple. And I think that's why it's so awesome with kids—they just take it and run with it". In the first five episodes of season two, each member of The Aquabats shares their memory of how they joined the band via animated flashback sequences; however, all of these flashbacks directly and intentionally contradict each other, leaving it unknown which—if any—could be considered officially canonical. Format and influences The Aquabats! Super Show! juxtaposes both live-action and animated segments starring The Aquabats, interwoven with various tangential skits and cartoon interstitials. The live-action storylines are the primary focus of each episode, following a self-contained villain of the week formula. In the first season, each episode featured brief anime-styled cartoon shorts which one of the characters would introduce at a random point of the show, often by finding "A Cartoon" (represented by a miniature television set) in an absurd location. Unlike the live-action segments, these cartoons followed a serialized story arc, with each installment ending in a cliffhanger to be resolved in the next episode. In season two, this format was replaced with a series of animated flashbacks recounting the origins of The Aquabats, each by a different animation studio and in a different animation style. Between these segments are pantomime cartoon shorts starring "Lil' Bat", The Aquabats' anthropomorphic bat mascot, and live-action parody commercials for outlandish fictional products, the latter of which has long been a staple of The Aquabats' multi-media stage shows. Jacobs says the concept behind Super Show! was something he had always dreamed of doing, making a "campy, live-action, funky kid's show" in the vein of the 1960s and 1970s television that he and the rest of the series' producers had grown up with. While the show pays homage to many facets of pop culture, Jacobs has named the 1960s Batman television series as the primary influence on Super Show!s "obviously silly" tone and visual style, ranging from set design to the trademark use of dutch angles for villain scenes. Other notable influences Jacobs has repeatedly mentioned include the works of Sid and Marty Krofft and Hanna-Barbera, Japanese tokusatsu series such as Ultraman and Johnny Sokko And His Flying Robot, the Shaw Brothers and Hong Kong cinema, and shows including Danger Island, Star Trek, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, and Pee-wee's Playhouse, noting "there's a good 30 years worth of television culture packed into these 22-minute episodes". Demographic As The Hub's key demographic were children aged 6 to 12, Super Show! was ostensibly targeted towards said age group, though Jacobs has stated that the series primarily aimed to appeal to an all-ages crowd, with the intent of creating entertainment that both kids and parents can watch and enjoy together or separately. In interviews prior to the series' premiere, he explained that this was merely an extension of The Aquabats' own family-friendly ethos: "There's just obviously something about the costumes and being superheroes that really appeals to younger kids, and I think we always knew that as a band...I think we'll want to put things in [the show] for an older audience, because we realize we have an older audience, but then also we want the young kids, to not have it go over their heads". Production history History and previous attempts at a series In 1994, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in Brea, California. Influenced as much by cartoons and camp television as theatrical bands like Devo and Oingo Boingo, The Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for their eccentric persona in which they claimed to be a band of superheroes on a quest to save the world and their elaborate stage shows which regularly featured scripted fights with costumed villains alongside similar stunts and comedy sketches. The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough for the group, charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs – a former child actor with ties in the industry – to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television. In 1998, Buena Vista Television helped produce a live-action mini-pilot directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait titled simply The Aquabats!, following the comic misadventures of the then-eight member band in an over-the-top camp style similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves. Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot the following year, using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death!. Independently directed and produced by Jacobs and his creative partner Scott Schultz, the result was a five-minute promo video entitled The Aquabats in Color!. In contrast to the wackier tone of the previous pilot, The Aquabats in Color! was a more action-oriented superhero series modeled after Japanese tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider. According to Jacobs, the Fox Family Channel reportedly expressed interest in the series and ordered production on a proper pilot episode, though following the channel's acquisition by Disney in 2001, the project was cancelled. The Aquabats! Super Show! pilot (2008) In 2005, Jacobs and Schultz formed the Orange County-based production company The Magic Store, focusing on creating family-oriented television entertainment. One of the company's independently produced pilots, the children's television series Yo Gabba Gabba!, was eventually picked up as a series by Viacoms Nick Jr. channel, premiering in August 2007 and ultimately becoming an award-winning and critically acclaimed international success. In the wake of the series' popularity, Jacobs and Schultz persuaded Yo Gabba Gabba!s joint production company Wild Brain to help produce a new pilot based around The Aquabats in conjuncture with The Magic Store. Again creatively spearheaded by Jacobs and Schultz, The Aquabats' third pilot, titled The Aquabats! Super Show!, was shot on location throughout southern California in late 2007 and early 2008. Part of this filming took place at a free invitation-only concert for members of the band's official fan club at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles on January 12, 2008. While The Aquabats' previous pilots were short, live-action promotional videos, The Aquabats! Super Show! was a fully realized 22-minute episode featuring two separate storylines based on the adventures of The Aquabats, one live-action and one animated, and interspersed with parody commercials and live footage of the band. Speaking on the decision to structure the show in such a varied format, Jacobs said "[w]e did that for a strategic reason – some networks like cartoons more than other networks. We wanted to say, 'this could be both shows'." Following a period of post-production, The Aquabats began widely self-promoting Super Show! in June 2008, redesigning their website to promote the pilot and releasing a teaser trailer and several exclusive clips through an official Super Show! YouTube channel. On July 25, 2008, the band screened the full pilot at a concert in San Diego held during the weekend of the San Diego Comic-Con, while a segment of the episode was hosted on Boing Boing the same day. In 2009, Cartoon Network allegedly picked the series up for a run of 22 episodes, though following major staff changes within the company—which, according to Jacobs, included the termination of the executives who had green-lighted Super Show!—the project was again cancelled. The Hub and season one After several more unsuccessful network pitches into the 2010s, The Aquabats! Super Show! was finally picked up as a series by family cable channel The Hub, a joint venture between Hasbro and Discovery which launched in 2010 as a replacement for Discovery Kids. The Hub formally announced the series in a press release on March 23, 2011, revealing Super Show! would be given a first season run of 13 episodes, produced in conjuncture with FremantleMedia. In promotion of the series, The Aquabats appeared as part of a panel at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con where they discussed their initial plans for the show, while The Hub sponsored an Aquabats concert held at the nearby House of Blues during the same weekend. Production on season one of Super Show! officially began in May 2011. The entirety of the first season was shot within and around The Aquabats' hometown of Orange County, California; according to the first season DVD audio commentary, episodes were shot on location in the cities of Irvine, Silverado, Yorba Linda, Huntington Beach and Fullerton, while a private sound stage in Santa Ana was used for interior shots of the Battletram. A public Aquabats concert held at The Glass House club in Pomona on November 5, 2011 was also filmed to provide live footage of the band which is featured in the series' opening credits montage and several individual episodes. Much of Super Show!s staff consist of friends and colleagues of The Aquabats who've previously worked with the band on various projects, ranging from members of Yo Gabba Gabba!s production team to fellow musicians within the southern California music scene. Among the more notable examples include Dallas McLaughlin and Matthew Gorney, both members of the San Diego hip hop band Bad Credit, who prominently served as writers, composers and performers, Warren Fitzgerald, guitarist for The Vandals, who was hired as a writer and music director, internet sketch comedy group Mega64 were commissioned to produce original material, primarily the series' parody commercials, and Japanese artist Pey, who had designed much of The Aquabats' promotional art and merchandise during the 2000s, was hired to design the season's animated segments. Additionally, several industry professionals were brought in to help work on the show: Dani Michaeli, a staff writer on SpongeBob SquarePants, was hired as the series' story editor, while Matt Chapman, co-creator of the internet Flash cartoon Homestar Runner, acted as a writer, director and actor on several episodes. As none of the members besides Jacobs had any previous acting experience, comedian Matt Walsh of the Upright Citizens Brigade was brought in to help teach The Aquabats comedic acting and timing. In further homage to the original Batman series, Super Show! features a variety of celebrity cameo appearances. The series' first season included appearances from actors Jon Heder, Lou Diamond Phillips and Samm Levine, comedians Rip Taylor, Paul Scheer and Paul Rust, and comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic, who appeared in two episodes as different characters. The first season also included several "Easter egg" cameos from original Aquabats members Corey "Chainsaw" Pollock and Boyd "Catboy" Terry, as well as from fellow musicians Warren Fitzgerald and Art Mitchell of the band Supernova. Despite having been originally announced as part of The Hub's 2011 Fall line-up, production delays postponed Super Show!s premiere to early 2012. The series' marketing campaign began in December 2011, with a later announcement of an official premiere date confirmed for March 3, 2012. Following a non-consecutive run of 13 episodes, the first-season finale aired on June 16, 2012. Season two On October 16, 2012, The Aquabats and The Hub confirmed production on new episodes of Super Show! through the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, announcing a tentative debut date of Spring 2013. Principal photography on season two began on October 22 and wrapped on December 1. Unlike the first season, the majority of season two was shot in and around Salt Lake City, Utah, which Jacobs explained was considerably less expensive than shooting in California. While no changes were made to Super Shows creative team, in December 2012 it was announced that season two would introduce the series' first guest director, musician and comic book writer Gerard Way, who co-directed and co-wrote the season finale "The AntiBats!" with Jacobs and deVilliers. Way's involvement with the series was heavily covered by the music press in the wake of the March 2013 break-up of his popular alternative rock band My Chemical Romance. Among the guest stars featured in season two were professional skateboarders Tony Hawk and Eric Koston, Devo frontman and Yo Gabba Gabba! cast member Mark Mothersbaugh, internet celebrity Leslie Hall, actor Martin Starr and My Chemical Romance bassist Mikey Way. On December 2, 2012, deVilliers revealed on his Twitter account that the upcoming season would consist of only five new episodes, in what he called more "season 1.5" than a "season 2", though mentioned the possibility of more being made in the future. On May 1, 2013, it was announced through Entertainment Weekly that the series' second season would begin airing on June 1. After a run of only five episodes, the season concluded on June 29, 2013. 2013–2014 specials On August 22, 2013, series performer Chad Larson confirmed via Twitter that three additional episodes of Super Show! were being filmed near the end of the year, "and maybe more next". Principal photography on these episodes eventually began in Utah in early October. Throughout the month, The Aquabats posted numerous pictures of production on the new episodes on their Twitter and Instagram accounts, some of which revealed production code numbers of 301, 302 and 303, ostensibly indicating what would be a third season. Though these numbers were later verified by the Internet Movie Database, a November press release from The Hub explicitly referred to these three episodes as "specials". The first of these specials, "Christmas with The Aquabats!", aired on December 21, featuring comedians Robert Smigel and Matt Walsh in guest roles. The second of these episodes, "The Shark Fighter!" (based on The Aquabats' song of the same name), featuring comedian Rhys Darby, aired the following week on December 28, while the final special "Kitty Litter!" aired on January 18, 2014. "Kitty Litter!" was helmed by another guest director, Munn Powell, best known for his work as cinematographer on the Jared and Jerusha Hess films Napoleon Dynamite and Gentlemen Broncos. Following this short run of episodes, there was no confirmation by either The Hub or The Aquabats as to the production of any future episodes. In a December 2013 interview, Christian Jacobs acknowledged the network's unusually small order of episodes but didn't elaborate on any possible reasoning. In the same interview, he stated that the band had initially prepared for another order of 13 episodes, having written as many scripts for potential future episodes. On May 1, 2014, the nominees for the 2014 Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, revealing that Super Show! had been nominated for five awards in four categories, including the award for Best Writing in a Children's Series for the episode "The AntiBats!". The awards ceremony was held on June 22, 2014, where the series ultimately won the award for Best Stunt Coordination for stuntman Skip Carlson. Cancellation by The Hub and hiatus In mid-2014, it was announced in entertainment press that Hasbro and Discovery had been in the process of rebranding The Hub following what they saw to be disappointing returns for the channel, changes which included the departure of CEO Margaret Loesch, who was instrumental in acquiring Super Show! as a series. In a Huffington Post feature about The Aquabats prior to the band's appearance at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, it was revealed that The Hub had opted not to renew Super Show! for a third season, effectively cancelling the series. Jacobs admitted he was surprised by this turn of events, noting "Everything we heard was that the show has been a real Cinderella story for the Hub and that it was rating really well with viewers. We just assumed that we'd eventually go back into production or at least get picked up for Season 3", but ultimately concluded "it is what it is" in regard to the network's decision. Despite this, Jacobs remained optimistic about the series' future, saying "Given that we now live in a world where people are streaming TV shows directly onto their iPhones & computers, and given that companies like Netflix & Yahoo! are now picking up so much new content for their customers...I just find it hard to believe that The Aquabats! Super Show! is really over. I mean, we haven't even made any toys yet". He concluded by stating "It took us almost 15 years to get that TV series made. And even though we've got a bunch more concert dates lined up for the rest of this year, our first priority is to find a new home for The Aquabats! Super Show!". On March 31, 2015, the nominees for the 42nd annual Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, with Super Show! earning nominations for Best SFX Mixer (Blaine Stewart) and Best Stunt Coordinator (Braxton McAllister). On June 27, 2015, The Aquabats screened the entire first season of Super Show! before a sold-out crowd at The Frida Cinema in downtown Santa Ana, which was accompanied by a live performance by the band and Q&A sessions with The Aquabats and numerous members of the cast and crew. A similar presentation of the entire second season – including the three additional specials – took place at The Art Theater in Long Beach on December 16, 2017, coinciding with the release of the second season Blu-ray. Bring Back The Aquabats! Kickstarter campaign Following weeks of teasing a major announcement, The Aquabats launched a Kickstarter campaign on July 31, 2018 to help finance the return of The Aquabats! Super Show! as well as new studio albums from the band at a minimum projected cost of $1.1 million. The Aquabats promoted their campaign with a video featuring a slew of celebrity cameos, including Super Show! guest stars "Weird Al" Yankovic, Robert Smigel (as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog), Matt Chapman (as Homestar Runner and Strong Bad), former Aquabats member Travis Barker, Tony Kanal, Tom Dumont, Oscar Nunez, Kate Micucci, Blake Anderson, Imagine Dragons, Felicia Day and Tom Lennon, all of whom appeared in The Aquabats' trademark uniforms and spoke the Kickstarter's promotional slogan "I am The Aquabats"/"We are The Aquabats". Most prominently featured, however, was comedian Jack Black, who was later confirmed by the campaign's press releases to act as executive producer for the series' return. Along with their Kickstarter, the band began releasing a series of Super Show! "mini-episodes", depicting the MC Bat Commander's metafictional quest to reunite the estranged Aquabats following the series' cancellation. The band confirmed that as the Kickstarter progresses, further "mini-episodes" will be released to both promote the campaign as well as act as a continuation of Super Show!. By August 28, mere days before the campaign's end date of September 1, The Aquabats' Kickstarter had raised only $601,629 of its projected $1.1 million goal. The funding was subsequently cancelled and the campaign was rebooted the same day with a smaller goal of $100,000 to instead finance one new album and the continued production of the Super Show!! "mini-episodes". The project's goal was met within minutes. Music Original music for The Aquabats! Super Show! was primarily composed and performed by The Aquabats themselves, with additional scoring on most episodes provided by Matthew Gorney, Warren Fitzgerald or individual credits for Aquabats members James R. Briggs, Jr., Richard Falomir and Ian Fowles. Fitzgerald, guitarist for punk rock band The Vandals and former member of Oingo Boingo, acted as the series' music supervisor. The theme song to Super Show!, "Super Show Theme Song!", was co-written by The Aquabats and Fitzgerald. Whereas most musically oriented shows like The Monkees typically break the narrative of an episode for a music video performance of a standalone song, each episode of Super Show! typically features one or two unique songs that tied directly into the plot, usually about and performed during the events of a particular scene. Most of these songs are rather brief, averaging a running time of just under a minute; Jacobs stated that many of the show's original songs were recorded as full-length pieces but trimmed down for inclusion in an episode, simply due to the show "trying to pack so much into 22 minutes". Shortly after Super Show!s premiere, Jacobs confirmed plans to eventually release the series' original full-length songs as a soundtrack album. However, these plans wouldn't fully come to fruition until 2019; in a 2018 interview, Jacobs retrospectively revealed that the album had been long completed but the band "hadn't had all the rights tied up" until then. The first original and full-length recordings from the series' first season debuted in July 2017, when "Burger Rain" and "Beat Fishin'" were released as a tour-exclusive 7" single. Songs from the series' first season were eventually compiled as The Aquabats! Super Show! Television Soundtrack: Volume One, which was released digitally in March 2019 and then onto physical media the following June, where it became The Aquabats' highest-charting album to date, debuting at the top of Billboards Top Heatseekers chart and at 165 on the Billboard 200. Cast and characters See: List of The Aquabats! Super Show! characters The Aquabats! Super Show! stars and is based upon fictionalized versions of the then-current (since 2006) line-up of the California comedy rock band The Aquabats. Adapting the backstory the band has used for the entirety of their professional career, Super Show! depicts The Aquabats as a group of bumbling, out-of-shape superheroes on a self-appointed mission to fight the forces of evil, presented in both live-action and animated segments. The five members of The Aquabats are: The MC Bat Commander (played and voiced by Christian Jacobs) – The Aquabats' singer and de facto leader of the team. Though he doesn't have any superpowers of his own and is often quite stubborn and naive, the Commander is shown to be an effective strategist whose sharp leadership skills, bravery and determination regularly drive the band towards victory. Crash McLarson (played and voiced by Chad Larson) – The band's bass guitarist, who has the frequently uncontrollable ability to grow upwards of 100 feet in size when under emotional stress. Despite being the largest and strongest of The Aquabats, Crash has a gentle, childlike demeanor bordering on slight dim-wittedness, and as such is usually the most cowardly member of the team. Jimmy the Robot (played and voiced by James R. Briggs, Jr.) – The Aquabats' keyboardist. As his name implies, Jimmy is an android whose mechanical body houses a variety of built-in gadgets and weaponry, plus a comprehensive knowledge database which earns him the position of the group's resident scientist. Being a robot, Jimmy is generally perplexed by human emotions and behavior. Ricky Fitness (played and voiced by Richard Falomir) – the band's drummer, Ricky possesses the power of super speed. Being the most physically fit and health-conscious member of The Aquabats, some of the series' running gags revolve around Ricky's status as a handsome ladies' man and his fondness for "fresh, healthy veggies" in contrast to the rest of the team's voracious affinity for junk food. EagleBones Falconhawk (played and voiced by Ian Fowles) – The Aquabats' guitarist. The cocky and boyish maverick of the team, EagleBones is highly proficient on his custom weaponized electric guitar which shoots lasers from its headstock. Following a spiritual encounter early in season one, EagleBones also has the gift of second sight and is accompanied by "The Dude", an invisible spirit eagle whom he summons to aide The Aquabats in battle. Voice actor and writer Mr. Lawrence provided the minimal narration for both seasons of Super Show!s live-action segments, while staff writer Kyle McCulloch narrated the first season's animated segments. Guest stars and recurring characters Though each episode of the series introduced a new villain, ally and/or celebrity cameo, Super Show! never featured any major recurring characters throughout its run. However, every episode of the show included a very brief appearance by a character fans dubbed the "Fox Man", a man in a cheap-looking fox costume played by visual effects supervisor Joel Fox, who would appear hidden in the background of a random scene as an Easter egg for viewers to spot, although his character was never explained within the context of the series. Comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic and comedian Paul Rust were the only two guest actors to appear in two episodes: Yankovic played two different roles as the President of the United States and superhero SuperMagic PowerMan! (in a 2012 interview, Jacobs alluded to the two possibly being the same character, though this isn't implied within the series), while Rust played a boorish slacker named Ronmark, first appearing in live-action in a first-season episode and subsequently lending his voice to a mutated monster version of the character in part of a second-season episode. Episodes Distribution International broadcast Outside of North America, The Aquabats! Super Show! broadcast in Australia on the children's public broadcasting channel ABC3 and in the United Kingdom on the children's network CITV. Home media Coinciding with the run of the first season, each new episode of The Aquabats! Super Show! was released through the iTunes Store for digital download. Prior to the series debut, a season pass was made available for purchase to enable viewers to automatically receive a download of each new episode on its airdate. The first season of Super Show! was added to the video streaming service Netflix on December 1, 2012, later being added to Hulu on December 21. Unlike the first season, the series' second season was not made available for iTunes pre-order, nor were episodes released for purchase. Though each episode was briefly streamed on The Hub's official website, none of the seasons' episodes were made available on Hulu, Netflix or similar streaming services. Shout! Factory had the DVD publishing rights for The Aquabats! Super Show! within Region 1 for release of the first season. The company first announced their acquisition of the series and plans for a future DVD in a press release dated August 6, 2012, though did not initially confirm a set release date until several months later. On May 21, 2013, the first season of Super Show! was released on a two-disc DVD set. On November 22, 2017, in conjunction with their announcement of a season two theatrical screening, The Aquabats confirmed an independent Blu-ray release for season two, including the three specials often considered a "season three". On December 5, pre-orders were launched on The Aquabats' merchandising site for an official release date of December 22, though copies were first made for public sale at the second season theatrical screening on December 16. Starting in December 2014, The Aquabats gradually began uploading the series' full episodes onto their official YouTube channel. As of August 2019, all 21 episodes of Super Show! and its pilot episode have been publicly uploaded to their account. Critical reception Critical response to The Aquabats! Super Show! was predominantly positive, with most reviewers praising the series' intentionally campy tone and offbeat humor. The Onions The A.V. Club gave the series premiere an A− rating, describing it as "a loving homage to basically everything ever done by the brothers Krofft": "the show adeptly flips from humor to melodrama to action, providing some awesomely cheap special effects, goofy songs, and gags that range from slapstick to sublime", summarizing "there's so much here that both kids and parents will be able to enjoy the proceedings on their own respective levels and rarely find themselves bored". Brian Lowry of Variety wrote "you don't have to laugh at everything to admire the effort and sheer silliness", calling the show a "goofy and nostalgic" throwback to the "children's TV of baby boomers' youth, down to crappy production values and awful-looking 'monsters' that work to its advantage". He summarized "Although this Hub series at times feels like an SNL skit stretched to a half-hour, its sly mix of music, live-action crime-fighting, cartoons and mock ads ought to develop a cult following—and might be more popular with parents, at least those with the geek gene, than their kids". Technology magazine Wired was consistently positive towards the series, calling it both "wonderfully strange" and "delightfully deranged", writing "[f]illed with self-deprecating music videos, toon interludes and ludicrous villains, The Aquabats! Super Show! has become one of television's strangely comforting finds". Common Sense Media, who review shows based on age-appropriate content, gave Super Show! a rating of 4 out of 5 stars, calling it "demented and manic...fun by sheer dint of how many jokes, visual and otherwise, are thrown at the screen, both those calculated to appeal to kids and adults". The site praised the series for its lighter and sillier tone in comparison to more violent live-action superhero fare, and considered the "kind-hearted" Aquabats to be relatively positive role models. However, the reviewer suggested the show's violence and creatures may be too intense for very young children, and pointed out a distinct lack of central female characters. Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times offered a more indifferent opinion, calling The Aquabats "indescribably odd" and the series "frenetic, semicoherent and generally harmless. Also somewhat hallucinogenic", noting Super Show!s writing "may be over the heads of the 2-to-12 set", suggesting its most receptive audience might be "the college drinking-game crowd". Awards and nominations The Aquabats! Super Show! was nominated for the following awards: Daytime Emmy Award References External links Official website of The Aquabats The Aquabats 2010s American children's television series 2010s American musical comedy television series 2010s American satirical television series 2010s American sketch comedy television series 2010s American superhero comedy television series 2012 American television series debuts 2014 American television series endings American children's adventure television series American children's musical television series American television series with live action and animation Children's sketch comedy English-language television shows Television series by Fremantle (company) Television shows set in Orange County, California American television shows featuring puppetry Discovery Family original programming

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What stations did Palmer work for in his early broadcasting days?

What stations did Jim Palmer work for in his early broadcasting days?

Jim Palmer

While still an active player, Palmer did color commentary for ABC for their coverage of the 1978, 1980 and 1982 American League Championship Series, 1981 American League Division Series between Oakland and Kansas City, and the 1981 World Series. From 1985 to 1989, Palmer formed an announcing team with Al Michaels and Tim McCarver at ABC. Palmer announced the 1985 World Series, where he was supposed to team with Michaels and Howard Cosell, whom Palmer had worked with on the previous year's ALCS. McCarver replaced Cosell for the World Series at the last minute after Cosell released a book (I Never Played the Game) that was critical of the ABC Sports team. The team of Palmer, Michaels and McCarver would subsequently go on to call the 1986 All-Star Game (that year, Palmer worked with Michaels on the ALCS while McCarver teamed with Keith Jackson on ABC's coverage of the National League Championship Series), the 1987 World Series, and 1988 All-Star Game as well as that year's NLCS. Palmer was present at San Francisco's Candlestick Park on October 17, 1989, when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit prior to Game 3 of the World Series. After the 1989 season, ABC lost its contract to broadcast baseball to CBS. Palmer had earned $350,000 from ABC that year for appearing on around ten regular season broadcasts and making a few postseason appearances. In 1990, the Los Angeles Times reported that Palmer was thinking of pursuing work as a major league manager. Instead, Palmer worked as an analyst for ESPN and as a broadcaster for Orioles games on their local telecasts over WMAR-TV and Home Team Sports. CANNOTANSWER

While still an active player, Palmer did color commentary for ABC

James Alvin Palmer (born October 15, 1945) is an American former professional baseball pitcher who played 19 years in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Baltimore Orioles (1965–1967, 1969–1984). Palmer was the winningest MLB pitcher in the 1970s, totaling 186 wins. He also won at least 20 games in eight different seasons and won three Cy Young Awards and four Gold Gloves during the decade. His 268 career victories are currently an Orioles record. A six-time American League (AL) All-Star, he was also one of the rare pitchers who never allowed a grand slam in any major league contest. Palmer appeared in the postseason eight times and was a vital member of three World Series Champions, six AL pennant winners and seven Eastern Division titleholders. He is the only pitcher in history to earn a win in a World Series game in three different decades. He is also the youngest to pitch a complete-game shutout in a World Series, doing so nine days before his 21st birthday in 1966, in which he defeated Sandy Koufax in Koufax's last appearance. He was one of the starters on the last rotation to feature four 20-game winners in a single season in 1971. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1990. Since his retirement as an active player in 1984, Palmer has worked as a color commentator on telecasts of MLB games for ABC and ESPN and for the Orioles on Home Team Sports (HTS), Comcast SportsNet (CSN) Mid-Atlantic and the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN). He has also been a popular spokesman, most famously for Jockey International for almost 20 years. He was nicknamed "Cakes" in the 1960s because of his habit of eating pancakes for breakfast on the days he pitched. Early life James Alvin Palmer was born in Manhattan, New York City on October 15, 1945. Research conducted by his third wife Susan in 2017 revealed that his biological father and mother were Michael Joseph Geheran and Mary Ann Moroney, both Irish immigrants from Counties Leitrim and Clare respectively. Joe was a married 41-year-old man about town, while Mary Ann was an unmarried 37-year-old domestic worker for the Feinstein family which was prominent in the garment industry. Moroney gave up her infant for adoption and concealed information in the New York City birth registry, where Palmer is listed as Baby Boy Kennedy, whose father was Maroney and mother was Kennedy. Maroney was the incorrect spelling of her surname as listed when she registered at Ellis Island, while Kennedy was her sister Katharine's married name. Moroney eventually married John Lane and the couple had a daughter, Patricia, Palmer's biological half-sister, who died of leukemia at age 40 in 1987. (As of May 2018, the Palmers were still searching for Patricia Lane's daughter, whose married name is Kimberly Hughes and who would be Jim Palmer's half-niece.) Geheran died in 1959 and Moroney in 1979. Two days after his birth, Palmer was adopted by Moe Wiesen and his wife Polly, a wealthy Manhattan dress designer and a boutique owner respectively, who lived on Park Avenue. His sister Bonnie was also adopted by the Wiesens. The family's butler taught the young Jim to throw a baseball in Central Park. After his adoptive father died of a heart attack in 1955, the nine-year-old Jim, his mother and his sister moved to Beverly Hills, California where he began playing in youth-league baseball. In 1956, his mother married actor Max Palmer, but Jim continued to go under the name Jim Wiesen until a year later. At a Little League banquet, just before being presented with an award, he asked the coaches to identify him as "James Alvin Palmer." "Through all these years, that night was the highlight of my entire life," Max recalled. Max was a character actor and there were two men who shared that name who worked in show business during similar time periods. The Max who was Jim's second dad worked mostly on TV on such programs as Dragnet, Bat Masterson and The Colgate Comedy Hour. He was Jewish, and he also earned a living by selling shoes. The other Max Palmer, often erroneously credited as Jim's father, worked in several movies as a monster. He was 8'2" tall and later became a professional wrestler and eventually a Christian evangelist. Jim played baseball for the Beverly Hills Yankees, where he pitched and also hit home runs as an outfielder. The family eventually moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, where Jim played baseball, basketball, and football at Scottsdale High School. He earned All-State honors in each of these sports, also graduating with a 3.4 grade-point average in 1963. Palmer also showed his prowess at American Legion Baseball. The University of Southern California, UCLA, and Arizona State University each offered him full scholarships; Stanford University offered a partial scholarship as well. Bobby Winkles of Arizona State suggested that Palmer get more experience playing collegiate summer baseball, so Palmer went to South Dakota to join the Winner Pheasants of the Basin League. The team advanced all the way to the league finals, and Palmer caught the attention of Baltimore Orioles scout Harry Dalton while pitching in the second game of the championship. According to Palmer, 13 Major League Baseball (MLB) teams recruited him after the season wrapped up, but Jim Russo (the scout who also signed Dave McNally and Boog Powell) and Jim Wilson of the Orioles made the best impression on his parents with their polite manners. Palmer signed with Baltimore for $50,000. Career in baseball 1960s A high-kicking pitcher known for an exceptionally smooth delivery, Palmer picked up his first major-league win on May 16, , beating the Yankees in relief at home. He hit the first of his three career major-league home runs, a two-run shot, in the fourth inning of that game, off Yankees starter Jim Bouton. Palmer finished the season with a 5–4 record. In , Palmer joined the starting rotation. Baltimore won the pennant behind Frank Robinson's MVP and Triple Crown season. Palmer won his final game, against the Kansas City Athletics, to clinch the AL pennant. In Game 2 of that World Series, at Dodger Stadium, he became the youngest pitcher (20 years, 11 months) to pitch a shutout, defeating the defending world champion Dodgers 6–0. The underdog Orioles swept the series over a Los Angeles team that featured Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale and Claude Osteen. The shutout was part of a World Series record-setting consecutive shutout innings by Orioles pitchers. The Dodgers' last run was against Moe Drabowsky in the third inning of Game 1. Palmer, Wally Bunker and Dave McNally pitched shutouts in the next three games. During the next two seasons, Palmer struggled with arm injuries. He had injured his arm in 1966 while using a paint roller in his new house in Baltimore. Cortisone injections allowed him to pitch through the rest of the season and the World Series, but in 1967, his arm continued to feel heavy. He threw a one-hit game against the New York Yankees on May 12 but was sent to the minor leagues after a poor start against the Boston Red Sox five days later. While trying to make it back with the Rochester Red Wings in Niagara Falls, New York that Palmer surrendered the only grand slam in his entire professional career which was hit by the Buffalo Bisons' Johnny Bench. He only pitched three more games for the Orioles in 1967. In 1968, he was limited to 10 minor league games, with no appearances for the Orioles. The outlook on his career was so bleak, Palmer considered quitting baseball to attend college or trying to be a position player. He had been placed on waivers in September 1968 and was left unprotected for the Kansas City Royals and Seattle Pilots in the expansion draft one month later, but was not claimed. After he pitched for an Instructional League team, the Orioles sent him to pitch for the Santurce Crabbers in the Puerto Rican Winter League. Before he left for Santurce, however, Palmer attended a Baltimore Bullets game and sat next to Marv Foxxman, a pharmaceutical representative who suggested he try Indocin. In Santurce, Palmer's arm stopped hurting, and his fastball began hitting 95 mph again. "It was a miracle as far as I was concerned," said Palmer. Palmer returned healthy in 1969, rejoining an Orioles rotation that included 20-game winners Dave McNally and Mike Cuellar. He missed July with a six-week stint on the disabled list, but it was for a torn back muscle, not because of arm trouble. That August 13, Palmer threw a no-hitter against Oakland, just four days after coming off the disabled list. It was the only no-hitter of his career. He finished the season with a mark of 16–4, 123 strikeouts, a 2.34 ERA, and .800 winning percentage. The heavily favored Orioles were beaten in the 1969 World Series by the New York Mets with Palmer taking the loss in Game 3. 1970s In , Cuellar went 24–8, McNally 24–9, Palmer 20–10; in the trio went 20–9, 21–5 and 20–9, respectively, with Pat Dobson going 20–8. Only one other team in MLB history, the Chicago White Sox, has had four 20-game winners. Palmer won 21 games in , and went 22–9, 158, 2.40 in , walking off with his first Cy Young Award. His success was interrupted in when his arm started giving him trouble in spring training. Eventually, he was downed for eight weeks with elbow problems. Palmer had lost seven games in a row by the time he went on the disabled list on June 20. He was diagnosed with an ulnar nerve injury and orthopedic surgeon Robert Kerlan prescribed rest, hot and cold water therapy and medication. Surgery was considered, but Palmer's pain lessened and he was able to return to play in August. He finished 7–12. Palmer was at his peak again in , winning 23 games, throwing 10 shutouts (allowing just 44 hits in those games), and fashioning a 2.09 ERA—all tops in the American League. He completed 25 games, even saved one, and limited opposing hitters to a .216 batting average. On July 28, 1976, he received a fine from AL president Lee MacPhail after hitting Mickey Rivers with a pitch the day before. Palmer said it was in retaliation for Dock Ellis hitting Reggie Jackson with a pitch earlier in the game, then complained when Ellis (who did not admit to throwing at Jackson) was not fined. Palmer won his second Cy Young Award, and repeated his feat in (22–13, 2.51). During the latter year, he won the first of four consecutive Gold Glove Awards. (Jim Kaat, who had won the award 14 years in a row, moved to the National League, where he won the award that year and in .) After making $185,000 in 1976, Palmer hoped for a raise in 1977. The Orioles offered $200,000 initially, but Palmer wanted $275,000. They finally agreed on a $260,000 salary, with a bonus for a "significant contribution." In 1977 and 1978, Palmer won 20 and 21 games, respectively. Despite the 20 wins in 1977, the Orioles almost refused to give him a bonus. After the Major League Baseball Players Association filed a grievance in Palmer's dispute and threatened to go to arbitration (which likely would have resulted in Palmer becoming a free agent), GM Hank Peters relented and gave him the bonus. During the period spanning 1970 to 1978, Palmer had won 20 games in every season except for 1974. During those eight 20-win seasons, he pitched between and 319 innings per year, leading the league in innings pitched four times and earned run average twice. During that span, he threw between 17 and 25 complete games each year. Frustrated that pitchers who had become free agents like Vida Blue and Bert Blyleven were making more money than him in 1979, Palmer told a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press "I'm going to aggravate [the Orioles] until they trade me." Weaver responded by pinning a note to his locker that said, "Happy Father's Day. Now grow up." "He's right he's underpaid...He's worth a million dollars when he's pitching but he signed for $260,000." Palmer eventually got over being discontent, and the team won the AL pennant. Weaver tabbed Palmer to start Game 1 of the ALCS against the Angels; though Palmer asked him to start Mike Flanagan, the 1979 Cy Young Award winner, instead, Weaver valued Palmer's experience. Matched up against Ryan, Palmer allowed three runs in nine innings, taking a no-decision as he left with the game tied. The Orioles won in the 10th on a John Lowenstein home run and won the series 3–1. 1980s From 1980 through 1985, Palmer was hampered by arm fatigue and myriad minor injuries. Even so, he brought a stabilizing veteran presence to the pitching staff. In 1981, Palmer got into a feud with Doug DeCinces after DeCinces missed a line drive hit by Alan Trammell in a game against the Tigers. According to DeCinces, Palmer "was cussing me out and throwing his hands in the air" after the play. "Those balls have to be caught," Palmer told a paper. "Doug is reluctant to get in front of a ball." "I'd like to know where Jim Palmer gets off criticizing others," DeCinces responded. "Ask anybody–they're all sick of it. We're a twenty-four man team–and one prima donna. He thinks it's always someone else's fault." The feud simmered until June, when Weaver said, "I see no cause for concern. The third baseman wants the pitcher to do a little better and the pitcher wants the third baseman to do a little better. I hope we can all do better and kiss and make up...The judge gave me custody of both of them." Palmer ultimately blamed Brooks Robinson for the dispute: "If Brooks hadn't been the best third-baseman of all time, the rest of the Orioles wouldn't have taken it for granted that any ball hit anywhere within the same county as Brooks would be judged perfectly, fielded perfectly, and thrown perfectly, nailing (perfectly) what seemed like every single opposing batter." After Palmer posted a 6.84 ERA in five starts, GM Hank Peters announced that "Palmer is never, ever, ever going to start another game in an Orioles uniform. I've had it." Weaver moved Palmer to the bullpen, but with the team needing another starter, he put Palmer back in the rotation in June. Shortly thereafter, Palmer went on an 11-game winning streak. Palmer's final major-league victory was noteworthy: pitching in relief of Mike Flanagan in the third game of the 1983 World Series, he faced the Phillies' celebrity-studded batting order and gave up no runs in a close Oriole win. The 17 years between Palmer's first World Series win in 1966 and the 1983 win is the longest period of time between first and last pitching victories in the World Series for an individual pitcher in major league history. He also became the only pitcher in major league baseball history to have won World Series games in three decades. Also, Palmer became the only player in Orioles history to appear in all six (1966, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1979, 1983) of their World Series appearances to date. Palmer was the only Orioles player on the 1983 championship team to have previously won a World Series. He retired after being released by Baltimore during the season. He retired with a 268–152 win-loss record and a 2.86 ERA. Palmer was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1990, his first year of eligibility. Early broadcasting career While still an active player, Palmer did color commentary for ABC for their coverage of the 1978, 1980 and 1982 American League Championship Series, 1981 American League Division Series between Oakland and Kansas City, and the 1981 World Series. From to , Palmer formed an announcing team with Al Michaels and Tim McCarver at ABC. Palmer announced the 1985 World Series, where he was supposed to team with Michaels and Howard Cosell, whom Palmer had worked with on the previous year's ALCS. McCarver replaced Cosell for the World Series at the last minute after Cosell released a book (I Never Played the Game) that was critical of the ABC Sports team. The team of Palmer, Michaels and McCarver would subsequently go on to call the 1986 All-Star Game (that year, Palmer worked with Michaels on the ALCS while McCarver teamed with Keith Jackson on ABC's coverage of the National League Championship Series), the 1987 World Series, and 1988 All-Star Game as well as that year's NLCS. Palmer was present at San Francisco's Candlestick Park on October 17, , when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit prior to Game 3 of the World Series. After the 1989 season, ABC lost its contract to broadcast baseball to CBS. Palmer had earned $350,000 from ABC that year for appearing on around ten regular season broadcasts and making a few postseason appearances. In 1990, the Los Angeles Times reported that Palmer was thinking of pursuing work as a major league manager. Instead, Palmer worked as an analyst for ESPN and as a broadcaster for Orioles games on their local telecasts over WMAR-TV and Home Team Sports. Comeback attempt In , Palmer attempted a comeback with the Orioles. He explained in his 1996 book, "I wanted to see if I could be like Nolan Ryan was to the game or what George Blanda was to football." ESPN, which was trying to cut expenses, had asked him to take a pay cut and to sign a three-year contract. Palmer said he would sign a one-year contract for less pay, but ESPN refused. "I wouldn't be here today if the broadcasting climate had been more to my liking. That was really my prime motivation, the fact that I no longer had that obligation", Palmer said during spring training. Covering Palmer's spring training workouts, Richard Hoffer of Sports Illustrated said that Palmer's comeback was not entirely about money. He wrote that "it is fair to suspect that a certain vanity is involved." Hoffer said that Palmer "has failed to excite either ridicule or astonishment. He's in fabulous condition, no question. But no matter whom he lines up with on the row of practice mounds, there is more pop in the gloves of catchers other than his." "I couldn't throw ninety-five miles an hour anymore," Palmer later reflected. "The best I could do was eighty." While working out at the University of Miami during his comeback attempt, Palmer was approached by Miami assistant coach Lazaro Collazo. Collazo reportedly told him, "You'll never get into the Hall of Fame with those mechanics." "I'm already in the Hall of Fame", Palmer replied. To help Palmer's pitching motion, Collazo and Palmer completed unusual drills that involved Palmer placing a knee or foot on a chair as he tossed the ball. After giving up five hits and two runs in two innings of a spring training game, he retired permanently. Palmer said that he tore his hamstring while warming up for the game, commenting, "I'm not saying I wouldn't like to continue, but I can't", he said. "I heard something pop in my leg yesterday. It wasn't a nice sound. I don't know what that means, but I think it's going to play havoc with my tennis game." Return to broadcasting From to , Palmer returned to ABC (this time, via a revenue-sharing joint venture between Major League Baseball, ABC and NBC called The Baseball Network) to once again broadcast with Tim McCarver and Al Michaels. In 1995, the reunited team of Palmer, McCarver and Michaels would call the All-Star Game, Game 3 of that NLDS between Cincinnati and Los Angeles, Game 4 of the NLDS between Atlanta and Colorado, Games 1–2 of the NLCS, and Games 1, 4–5 of the World Series. Palmer, McCarver and Michaels were also intended to call the previous year's World Series for ABC, but were denied the opportunity when the entire postseason was canceled due to a strike. He is currently a color commentator on MASN's television broadcasts of Oriole games. In July 2012, Palmer put up for auction his three Cy Young Award trophies and two of his four Gold Glove Awards. "At this point in my life, I would rather concern myself with the education of my grandchildren", he said. Palmer also noted that his autistic teenage stepson would require special care and that "my priorities have changed." Palmer had put up for auction one of his Cy Young Award trophies on behalf of a fundraising event for cystic fibrosis in years past, although he stated the winning bidder "had paid $39,000 for that and never ever took it. It was for the cause." Legacy Palmer has been considered one of the best pitchers in major-league history. Palmer is the only pitcher in big-league history to win World Series games in three decades (1960s, 1970s, and 1980s). During his 19-year major league career of 575 games (including 17 postseason games), he never surrendered a grand slam, nor did he ever allow back-to-back homers. Palmer's career earned run average (2.856) is the third-lowest among starting pitchers whose careers began after the advent of the live-ball era in 1920. In six ALCS and six World Series, he posted an 8–3 record with 90 strikeouts, and an ERA of 2.61 and two shutouts in 17 games. He was a mainstay in the rotation during Baltimore's six pennant-winning teams in the 1960s (1966 and 1969), 1970s (1970, 1971 and 1979) and 1980s (1983). With the passing of Mike Cuellar in 2010, Palmer became the last surviving member of the 1971 Baltimore starting rotation that included four 20-game winners. Palmer won spots on six All-Star teams, received four Gold Glove Awards and won three Cy Young Awards. He led the league in ERA twice and in wins three times. Sometimes, Palmer would shift fielders around during games. He never meddled with the best fielders, such as the Robinsons or Paul Blair, but he would do so for less experienced players. "They might not know...that if they're playing a step or two to the opposite field and you're behind the batter two balls and no strikes...and you have a big lead...you're probably going to take a little off the pitch...and the fielders have to know to shift a couple of steps and play for the batter to pull." In , he ranked No. 64 on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, and was nominated as a finalist for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. Endorsements During the late 1970s, Palmer was a spokesman and underwear model for Jockey brand men's briefs. He appeared in the company's national print and television advertisements as well as on billboards at Times Square in New York City and other major cities. He donated all proceeds from the sale of his underwear poster to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. From 1992 until 1999, he was frequently seen on television throughout the United States in commercials for The Money Store, a national home equity and mortgage lender. He has periodically appeared in ads and commercials for vitamins and other health-related products. Palmer also represents Cosamin DS, a joint health supplement made by Nutramax Laboratories in Edgewood, Maryland. He was also the spokesperson for Nationwide Motors Corp., which is a regional chain of car dealerships located in the Middle Atlantic region. He is currently a spokesman for the national "Strike Out High Cholesterol" campaign. Additionally, Palmer serves as a member of the advisory board of the Baseball Assistance Team, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to helping former Major League, Minor League, and Negro league players through financial and medical difficulties. Personal life Shortly after graduating from high school in 1963, Palmer married the former Susan Ryan in 1964. He has two daughters with Ryan, named Jamie and Kelly. Ryan was not a huge baseball fan, as Palmer recalled: "She used to bring her knitting and/or a friend, who usually liked baseball even less, to the games." In 2007, Palmer married the former Susan Earle, who has an adult son with autism. The Palmers have homes in Palm Beach, Florida, and in Corona Del Mar, California. In 2006, Palmer also acquired a penthouse condominium in Little Italy, Baltimore, which he uses while in Baltimore for Orioles' broadcasts. See also List of Major League Baseball career wins leaders List of Major League Baseball annual ERA leaders List of Major League Baseball annual wins leaders List of Major League Baseball career strikeout leaders Major League Baseball titles leaders List of Major League Baseball no-hitters List of Major League Baseball players who spent their entire career with one franchise References External links Jim Palmer at SABR (Baseball BioProject) 1945 births Living people Aberdeen Pheasants players American adoptees American League All-Stars American League ERA champions American League wins champions American people of Irish descent Baltimore Orioles announcers Baltimore Orioles players Baseball players from New York (state) Cy Young Award winners Elmira Pioneers players Gold Glove Award winners Hagerstown Suns players Major League Baseball broadcasters Major League Baseball pitchers Major League Baseball players with retired numbers Male models from New York (state) Miami Marlins (FSL) players Mid-Atlantic Sports Network Models from New York City National Baseball Hall of Fame inductees Rochester Red Wings players Sportspeople from New York City

C_596dc3da71fb4978952c538497aaa136_1

What other stations has Palmer worked for?

What other stations has Jim Palmer worked for, other than ABC?

Jim Palmer

While still an active player, Palmer did color commentary for ABC for their coverage of the 1978, 1980 and 1982 American League Championship Series, 1981 American League Division Series between Oakland and Kansas City, and the 1981 World Series. From 1985 to 1989, Palmer formed an announcing team with Al Michaels and Tim McCarver at ABC. Palmer announced the 1985 World Series, where he was supposed to team with Michaels and Howard Cosell, whom Palmer had worked with on the previous year's ALCS. McCarver replaced Cosell for the World Series at the last minute after Cosell released a book (I Never Played the Game) that was critical of the ABC Sports team. The team of Palmer, Michaels and McCarver would subsequently go on to call the 1986 All-Star Game (that year, Palmer worked with Michaels on the ALCS while McCarver teamed with Keith Jackson on ABC's coverage of the National League Championship Series), the 1987 World Series, and 1988 All-Star Game as well as that year's NLCS. Palmer was present at San Francisco's Candlestick Park on October 17, 1989, when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit prior to Game 3 of the World Series. After the 1989 season, ABC lost its contract to broadcast baseball to CBS. Palmer had earned $350,000 from ABC that year for appearing on around ten regular season broadcasts and making a few postseason appearances. In 1990, the Los Angeles Times reported that Palmer was thinking of pursuing work as a major league manager. Instead, Palmer worked as an analyst for ESPN and as a broadcaster for Orioles games on their local telecasts over WMAR-TV and Home Team Sports. CANNOTANSWER

Palmer worked as an analyst for ESPN

James Alvin Palmer (born October 15, 1945) is an American former professional baseball pitcher who played 19 years in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Baltimore Orioles (1965–1967, 1969–1984). Palmer was the winningest MLB pitcher in the 1970s, totaling 186 wins. He also won at least 20 games in eight different seasons and won three Cy Young Awards and four Gold Gloves during the decade. His 268 career victories are currently an Orioles record. A six-time American League (AL) All-Star, he was also one of the rare pitchers who never allowed a grand slam in any major league contest. Palmer appeared in the postseason eight times and was a vital member of three World Series Champions, six AL pennant winners and seven Eastern Division titleholders. He is the only pitcher in history to earn a win in a World Series game in three different decades. He is also the youngest to pitch a complete-game shutout in a World Series, doing so nine days before his 21st birthday in 1966, in which he defeated Sandy Koufax in Koufax's last appearance. He was one of the starters on the last rotation to feature four 20-game winners in a single season in 1971. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1990. Since his retirement as an active player in 1984, Palmer has worked as a color commentator on telecasts of MLB games for ABC and ESPN and for the Orioles on Home Team Sports (HTS), Comcast SportsNet (CSN) Mid-Atlantic and the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN). He has also been a popular spokesman, most famously for Jockey International for almost 20 years. He was nicknamed "Cakes" in the 1960s because of his habit of eating pancakes for breakfast on the days he pitched. Early life James Alvin Palmer was born in Manhattan, New York City on October 15, 1945. Research conducted by his third wife Susan in 2017 revealed that his biological father and mother were Michael Joseph Geheran and Mary Ann Moroney, both Irish immigrants from Counties Leitrim and Clare respectively. Joe was a married 41-year-old man about town, while Mary Ann was an unmarried 37-year-old domestic worker for the Feinstein family which was prominent in the garment industry. Moroney gave up her infant for adoption and concealed information in the New York City birth registry, where Palmer is listed as Baby Boy Kennedy, whose father was Maroney and mother was Kennedy. Maroney was the incorrect spelling of her surname as listed when she registered at Ellis Island, while Kennedy was her sister Katharine's married name. Moroney eventually married John Lane and the couple had a daughter, Patricia, Palmer's biological half-sister, who died of leukemia at age 40 in 1987. (As of May 2018, the Palmers were still searching for Patricia Lane's daughter, whose married name is Kimberly Hughes and who would be Jim Palmer's half-niece.) Geheran died in 1959 and Moroney in 1979. Two days after his birth, Palmer was adopted by Moe Wiesen and his wife Polly, a wealthy Manhattan dress designer and a boutique owner respectively, who lived on Park Avenue. His sister Bonnie was also adopted by the Wiesens. The family's butler taught the young Jim to throw a baseball in Central Park. After his adoptive father died of a heart attack in 1955, the nine-year-old Jim, his mother and his sister moved to Beverly Hills, California where he began playing in youth-league baseball. In 1956, his mother married actor Max Palmer, but Jim continued to go under the name Jim Wiesen until a year later. At a Little League banquet, just before being presented with an award, he asked the coaches to identify him as "James Alvin Palmer." "Through all these years, that night was the highlight of my entire life," Max recalled. Max was a character actor and there were two men who shared that name who worked in show business during similar time periods. The Max who was Jim's second dad worked mostly on TV on such programs as Dragnet, Bat Masterson and The Colgate Comedy Hour. He was Jewish, and he also earned a living by selling shoes. The other Max Palmer, often erroneously credited as Jim's father, worked in several movies as a monster. He was 8'2" tall and later became a professional wrestler and eventually a Christian evangelist. Jim played baseball for the Beverly Hills Yankees, where he pitched and also hit home runs as an outfielder. The family eventually moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, where Jim played baseball, basketball, and football at Scottsdale High School. He earned All-State honors in each of these sports, also graduating with a 3.4 grade-point average in 1963. Palmer also showed his prowess at American Legion Baseball. The University of Southern California, UCLA, and Arizona State University each offered him full scholarships; Stanford University offered a partial scholarship as well. Bobby Winkles of Arizona State suggested that Palmer get more experience playing collegiate summer baseball, so Palmer went to South Dakota to join the Winner Pheasants of the Basin League. The team advanced all the way to the league finals, and Palmer caught the attention of Baltimore Orioles scout Harry Dalton while pitching in the second game of the championship. According to Palmer, 13 Major League Baseball (MLB) teams recruited him after the season wrapped up, but Jim Russo (the scout who also signed Dave McNally and Boog Powell) and Jim Wilson of the Orioles made the best impression on his parents with their polite manners. Palmer signed with Baltimore for $50,000. Career in baseball 1960s A high-kicking pitcher known for an exceptionally smooth delivery, Palmer picked up his first major-league win on May 16, , beating the Yankees in relief at home. He hit the first of his three career major-league home runs, a two-run shot, in the fourth inning of that game, off Yankees starter Jim Bouton. Palmer finished the season with a 5–4 record. In , Palmer joined the starting rotation. Baltimore won the pennant behind Frank Robinson's MVP and Triple Crown season. Palmer won his final game, against the Kansas City Athletics, to clinch the AL pennant. In Game 2 of that World Series, at Dodger Stadium, he became the youngest pitcher (20 years, 11 months) to pitch a shutout, defeating the defending world champion Dodgers 6–0. The underdog Orioles swept the series over a Los Angeles team that featured Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale and Claude Osteen. The shutout was part of a World Series record-setting consecutive shutout innings by Orioles pitchers. The Dodgers' last run was against Moe Drabowsky in the third inning of Game 1. Palmer, Wally Bunker and Dave McNally pitched shutouts in the next three games. During the next two seasons, Palmer struggled with arm injuries. He had injured his arm in 1966 while using a paint roller in his new house in Baltimore. Cortisone injections allowed him to pitch through the rest of the season and the World Series, but in 1967, his arm continued to feel heavy. He threw a one-hit game against the New York Yankees on May 12 but was sent to the minor leagues after a poor start against the Boston Red Sox five days later. While trying to make it back with the Rochester Red Wings in Niagara Falls, New York that Palmer surrendered the only grand slam in his entire professional career which was hit by the Buffalo Bisons' Johnny Bench. He only pitched three more games for the Orioles in 1967. In 1968, he was limited to 10 minor league games, with no appearances for the Orioles. The outlook on his career was so bleak, Palmer considered quitting baseball to attend college or trying to be a position player. He had been placed on waivers in September 1968 and was left unprotected for the Kansas City Royals and Seattle Pilots in the expansion draft one month later, but was not claimed. After he pitched for an Instructional League team, the Orioles sent him to pitch for the Santurce Crabbers in the Puerto Rican Winter League. Before he left for Santurce, however, Palmer attended a Baltimore Bullets game and sat next to Marv Foxxman, a pharmaceutical representative who suggested he try Indocin. In Santurce, Palmer's arm stopped hurting, and his fastball began hitting 95 mph again. "It was a miracle as far as I was concerned," said Palmer. Palmer returned healthy in 1969, rejoining an Orioles rotation that included 20-game winners Dave McNally and Mike Cuellar. He missed July with a six-week stint on the disabled list, but it was for a torn back muscle, not because of arm trouble. That August 13, Palmer threw a no-hitter against Oakland, just four days after coming off the disabled list. It was the only no-hitter of his career. He finished the season with a mark of 16–4, 123 strikeouts, a 2.34 ERA, and .800 winning percentage. The heavily favored Orioles were beaten in the 1969 World Series by the New York Mets with Palmer taking the loss in Game 3. 1970s In , Cuellar went 24–8, McNally 24–9, Palmer 20–10; in the trio went 20–9, 21–5 and 20–9, respectively, with Pat Dobson going 20–8. Only one other team in MLB history, the Chicago White Sox, has had four 20-game winners. Palmer won 21 games in , and went 22–9, 158, 2.40 in , walking off with his first Cy Young Award. His success was interrupted in when his arm started giving him trouble in spring training. Eventually, he was downed for eight weeks with elbow problems. Palmer had lost seven games in a row by the time he went on the disabled list on June 20. He was diagnosed with an ulnar nerve injury and orthopedic surgeon Robert Kerlan prescribed rest, hot and cold water therapy and medication. Surgery was considered, but Palmer's pain lessened and he was able to return to play in August. He finished 7–12. Palmer was at his peak again in , winning 23 games, throwing 10 shutouts (allowing just 44 hits in those games), and fashioning a 2.09 ERA—all tops in the American League. He completed 25 games, even saved one, and limited opposing hitters to a .216 batting average. On July 28, 1976, he received a fine from AL president Lee MacPhail after hitting Mickey Rivers with a pitch the day before. Palmer said it was in retaliation for Dock Ellis hitting Reggie Jackson with a pitch earlier in the game, then complained when Ellis (who did not admit to throwing at Jackson) was not fined. Palmer won his second Cy Young Award, and repeated his feat in (22–13, 2.51). During the latter year, he won the first of four consecutive Gold Glove Awards. (Jim Kaat, who had won the award 14 years in a row, moved to the National League, where he won the award that year and in .) After making $185,000 in 1976, Palmer hoped for a raise in 1977. The Orioles offered $200,000 initially, but Palmer wanted $275,000. They finally agreed on a $260,000 salary, with a bonus for a "significant contribution." In 1977 and 1978, Palmer won 20 and 21 games, respectively. Despite the 20 wins in 1977, the Orioles almost refused to give him a bonus. After the Major League Baseball Players Association filed a grievance in Palmer's dispute and threatened to go to arbitration (which likely would have resulted in Palmer becoming a free agent), GM Hank Peters relented and gave him the bonus. During the period spanning 1970 to 1978, Palmer had won 20 games in every season except for 1974. During those eight 20-win seasons, he pitched between and 319 innings per year, leading the league in innings pitched four times and earned run average twice. During that span, he threw between 17 and 25 complete games each year. Frustrated that pitchers who had become free agents like Vida Blue and Bert Blyleven were making more money than him in 1979, Palmer told a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press "I'm going to aggravate [the Orioles] until they trade me." Weaver responded by pinning a note to his locker that said, "Happy Father's Day. Now grow up." "He's right he's underpaid...He's worth a million dollars when he's pitching but he signed for $260,000." Palmer eventually got over being discontent, and the team won the AL pennant. Weaver tabbed Palmer to start Game 1 of the ALCS against the Angels; though Palmer asked him to start Mike Flanagan, the 1979 Cy Young Award winner, instead, Weaver valued Palmer's experience. Matched up against Ryan, Palmer allowed three runs in nine innings, taking a no-decision as he left with the game tied. The Orioles won in the 10th on a John Lowenstein home run and won the series 3–1. 1980s From 1980 through 1985, Palmer was hampered by arm fatigue and myriad minor injuries. Even so, he brought a stabilizing veteran presence to the pitching staff. In 1981, Palmer got into a feud with Doug DeCinces after DeCinces missed a line drive hit by Alan Trammell in a game against the Tigers. According to DeCinces, Palmer "was cussing me out and throwing his hands in the air" after the play. "Those balls have to be caught," Palmer told a paper. "Doug is reluctant to get in front of a ball." "I'd like to know where Jim Palmer gets off criticizing others," DeCinces responded. "Ask anybody–they're all sick of it. We're a twenty-four man team–and one prima donna. He thinks it's always someone else's fault." The feud simmered until June, when Weaver said, "I see no cause for concern. The third baseman wants the pitcher to do a little better and the pitcher wants the third baseman to do a little better. I hope we can all do better and kiss and make up...The judge gave me custody of both of them." Palmer ultimately blamed Brooks Robinson for the dispute: "If Brooks hadn't been the best third-baseman of all time, the rest of the Orioles wouldn't have taken it for granted that any ball hit anywhere within the same county as Brooks would be judged perfectly, fielded perfectly, and thrown perfectly, nailing (perfectly) what seemed like every single opposing batter." After Palmer posted a 6.84 ERA in five starts, GM Hank Peters announced that "Palmer is never, ever, ever going to start another game in an Orioles uniform. I've had it." Weaver moved Palmer to the bullpen, but with the team needing another starter, he put Palmer back in the rotation in June. Shortly thereafter, Palmer went on an 11-game winning streak. Palmer's final major-league victory was noteworthy: pitching in relief of Mike Flanagan in the third game of the 1983 World Series, he faced the Phillies' celebrity-studded batting order and gave up no runs in a close Oriole win. The 17 years between Palmer's first World Series win in 1966 and the 1983 win is the longest period of time between first and last pitching victories in the World Series for an individual pitcher in major league history. He also became the only pitcher in major league baseball history to have won World Series games in three decades. Also, Palmer became the only player in Orioles history to appear in all six (1966, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1979, 1983) of their World Series appearances to date. Palmer was the only Orioles player on the 1983 championship team to have previously won a World Series. He retired after being released by Baltimore during the season. He retired with a 268–152 win-loss record and a 2.86 ERA. Palmer was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1990, his first year of eligibility. Early broadcasting career While still an active player, Palmer did color commentary for ABC for their coverage of the 1978, 1980 and 1982 American League Championship Series, 1981 American League Division Series between Oakland and Kansas City, and the 1981 World Series. From to , Palmer formed an announcing team with Al Michaels and Tim McCarver at ABC. Palmer announced the 1985 World Series, where he was supposed to team with Michaels and Howard Cosell, whom Palmer had worked with on the previous year's ALCS. McCarver replaced Cosell for the World Series at the last minute after Cosell released a book (I Never Played the Game) that was critical of the ABC Sports team. The team of Palmer, Michaels and McCarver would subsequently go on to call the 1986 All-Star Game (that year, Palmer worked with Michaels on the ALCS while McCarver teamed with Keith Jackson on ABC's coverage of the National League Championship Series), the 1987 World Series, and 1988 All-Star Game as well as that year's NLCS. Palmer was present at San Francisco's Candlestick Park on October 17, , when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit prior to Game 3 of the World Series. After the 1989 season, ABC lost its contract to broadcast baseball to CBS. Palmer had earned $350,000 from ABC that year for appearing on around ten regular season broadcasts and making a few postseason appearances. In 1990, the Los Angeles Times reported that Palmer was thinking of pursuing work as a major league manager. Instead, Palmer worked as an analyst for ESPN and as a broadcaster for Orioles games on their local telecasts over WMAR-TV and Home Team Sports. Comeback attempt In , Palmer attempted a comeback with the Orioles. He explained in his 1996 book, "I wanted to see if I could be like Nolan Ryan was to the game or what George Blanda was to football." ESPN, which was trying to cut expenses, had asked him to take a pay cut and to sign a three-year contract. Palmer said he would sign a one-year contract for less pay, but ESPN refused. "I wouldn't be here today if the broadcasting climate had been more to my liking. That was really my prime motivation, the fact that I no longer had that obligation", Palmer said during spring training. Covering Palmer's spring training workouts, Richard Hoffer of Sports Illustrated said that Palmer's comeback was not entirely about money. He wrote that "it is fair to suspect that a certain vanity is involved." Hoffer said that Palmer "has failed to excite either ridicule or astonishment. He's in fabulous condition, no question. But no matter whom he lines up with on the row of practice mounds, there is more pop in the gloves of catchers other than his." "I couldn't throw ninety-five miles an hour anymore," Palmer later reflected. "The best I could do was eighty." While working out at the University of Miami during his comeback attempt, Palmer was approached by Miami assistant coach Lazaro Collazo. Collazo reportedly told him, "You'll never get into the Hall of Fame with those mechanics." "I'm already in the Hall of Fame", Palmer replied. To help Palmer's pitching motion, Collazo and Palmer completed unusual drills that involved Palmer placing a knee or foot on a chair as he tossed the ball. After giving up five hits and two runs in two innings of a spring training game, he retired permanently. Palmer said that he tore his hamstring while warming up for the game, commenting, "I'm not saying I wouldn't like to continue, but I can't", he said. "I heard something pop in my leg yesterday. It wasn't a nice sound. I don't know what that means, but I think it's going to play havoc with my tennis game." Return to broadcasting From to , Palmer returned to ABC (this time, via a revenue-sharing joint venture between Major League Baseball, ABC and NBC called The Baseball Network) to once again broadcast with Tim McCarver and Al Michaels. In 1995, the reunited team of Palmer, McCarver and Michaels would call the All-Star Game, Game 3 of that NLDS between Cincinnati and Los Angeles, Game 4 of the NLDS between Atlanta and Colorado, Games 1–2 of the NLCS, and Games 1, 4–5 of the World Series. Palmer, McCarver and Michaels were also intended to call the previous year's World Series for ABC, but were denied the opportunity when the entire postseason was canceled due to a strike. He is currently a color commentator on MASN's television broadcasts of Oriole games. In July 2012, Palmer put up for auction his three Cy Young Award trophies and two of his four Gold Glove Awards. "At this point in my life, I would rather concern myself with the education of my grandchildren", he said. Palmer also noted that his autistic teenage stepson would require special care and that "my priorities have changed." Palmer had put up for auction one of his Cy Young Award trophies on behalf of a fundraising event for cystic fibrosis in years past, although he stated the winning bidder "had paid $39,000 for that and never ever took it. It was for the cause." Legacy Palmer has been considered one of the best pitchers in major-league history. Palmer is the only pitcher in big-league history to win World Series games in three decades (1960s, 1970s, and 1980s). During his 19-year major league career of 575 games (including 17 postseason games), he never surrendered a grand slam, nor did he ever allow back-to-back homers. Palmer's career earned run average (2.856) is the third-lowest among starting pitchers whose careers began after the advent of the live-ball era in 1920. In six ALCS and six World Series, he posted an 8–3 record with 90 strikeouts, and an ERA of 2.61 and two shutouts in 17 games. He was a mainstay in the rotation during Baltimore's six pennant-winning teams in the 1960s (1966 and 1969), 1970s (1970, 1971 and 1979) and 1980s (1983). With the passing of Mike Cuellar in 2010, Palmer became the last surviving member of the 1971 Baltimore starting rotation that included four 20-game winners. Palmer won spots on six All-Star teams, received four Gold Glove Awards and won three Cy Young Awards. He led the league in ERA twice and in wins three times. Sometimes, Palmer would shift fielders around during games. He never meddled with the best fielders, such as the Robinsons or Paul Blair, but he would do so for less experienced players. "They might not know...that if they're playing a step or two to the opposite field and you're behind the batter two balls and no strikes...and you have a big lead...you're probably going to take a little off the pitch...and the fielders have to know to shift a couple of steps and play for the batter to pull." In , he ranked No. 64 on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, and was nominated as a finalist for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. Endorsements During the late 1970s, Palmer was a spokesman and underwear model for Jockey brand men's briefs. He appeared in the company's national print and television advertisements as well as on billboards at Times Square in New York City and other major cities. He donated all proceeds from the sale of his underwear poster to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. From 1992 until 1999, he was frequently seen on television throughout the United States in commercials for The Money Store, a national home equity and mortgage lender. He has periodically appeared in ads and commercials for vitamins and other health-related products. Palmer also represents Cosamin DS, a joint health supplement made by Nutramax Laboratories in Edgewood, Maryland. He was also the spokesperson for Nationwide Motors Corp., which is a regional chain of car dealerships located in the Middle Atlantic region. He is currently a spokesman for the national "Strike Out High Cholesterol" campaign. Additionally, Palmer serves as a member of the advisory board of the Baseball Assistance Team, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to helping former Major League, Minor League, and Negro league players through financial and medical difficulties. Personal life Shortly after graduating from high school in 1963, Palmer married the former Susan Ryan in 1964. He has two daughters with Ryan, named Jamie and Kelly. Ryan was not a huge baseball fan, as Palmer recalled: "She used to bring her knitting and/or a friend, who usually liked baseball even less, to the games." In 2007, Palmer married the former Susan Earle, who has an adult son with autism. The Palmers have homes in Palm Beach, Florida, and in Corona Del Mar, California. In 2006, Palmer also acquired a penthouse condominium in Little Italy, Baltimore, which he uses while in Baltimore for Orioles' broadcasts. See also List of Major League Baseball career wins leaders List of Major League Baseball annual ERA leaders List of Major League Baseball annual wins leaders List of Major League Baseball career strikeout leaders Major League Baseball titles leaders List of Major League Baseball no-hitters List of Major League Baseball players who spent their entire career with one franchise References External links Jim Palmer at SABR (Baseball BioProject) 1945 births Living people Aberdeen Pheasants players American adoptees American League All-Stars American League ERA champions American League wins champions American people of Irish descent Baltimore Orioles announcers Baltimore Orioles players Baseball players from New York (state) Cy Young Award winners Elmira Pioneers players Gold Glove Award winners Hagerstown Suns players Major League Baseball broadcasters Major League Baseball pitchers Major League Baseball players with retired numbers Male models from New York (state) Miami Marlins (FSL) players Mid-Atlantic Sports Network Models from New York City National Baseball Hall of Fame inductees Rochester Red Wings players Sportspeople from New York City

C_596dc3da71fb4978952c538497aaa136_1

Were there other stations Palmer worked for?

Were there other stations Jim Palmer worked for, besides ABC and ESPN?

Jim Palmer

While still an active player, Palmer did color commentary for ABC for their coverage of the 1978, 1980 and 1982 American League Championship Series, 1981 American League Division Series between Oakland and Kansas City, and the 1981 World Series. From 1985 to 1989, Palmer formed an announcing team with Al Michaels and Tim McCarver at ABC. Palmer announced the 1985 World Series, where he was supposed to team with Michaels and Howard Cosell, whom Palmer had worked with on the previous year's ALCS. McCarver replaced Cosell for the World Series at the last minute after Cosell released a book (I Never Played the Game) that was critical of the ABC Sports team. The team of Palmer, Michaels and McCarver would subsequently go on to call the 1986 All-Star Game (that year, Palmer worked with Michaels on the ALCS while McCarver teamed with Keith Jackson on ABC's coverage of the National League Championship Series), the 1987 World Series, and 1988 All-Star Game as well as that year's NLCS. Palmer was present at San Francisco's Candlestick Park on October 17, 1989, when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit prior to Game 3 of the World Series. After the 1989 season, ABC lost its contract to broadcast baseball to CBS. Palmer had earned $350,000 from ABC that year for appearing on around ten regular season broadcasts and making a few postseason appearances. In 1990, the Los Angeles Times reported that Palmer was thinking of pursuing work as a major league manager. Instead, Palmer worked as an analyst for ESPN and as a broadcaster for Orioles games on their local telecasts over WMAR-TV and Home Team Sports. CANNOTANSWER

a broadcaster for Orioles games on their local telecasts over WMAR-TV and Home Team Sports.

James Alvin Palmer (born October 15, 1945) is an American former professional baseball pitcher who played 19 years in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Baltimore Orioles (1965–1967, 1969–1984). Palmer was the winningest MLB pitcher in the 1970s, totaling 186 wins. He also won at least 20 games in eight different seasons and won three Cy Young Awards and four Gold Gloves during the decade. His 268 career victories are currently an Orioles record. A six-time American League (AL) All-Star, he was also one of the rare pitchers who never allowed a grand slam in any major league contest. Palmer appeared in the postseason eight times and was a vital member of three World Series Champions, six AL pennant winners and seven Eastern Division titleholders. He is the only pitcher in history to earn a win in a World Series game in three different decades. He is also the youngest to pitch a complete-game shutout in a World Series, doing so nine days before his 21st birthday in 1966, in which he defeated Sandy Koufax in Koufax's last appearance. He was one of the starters on the last rotation to feature four 20-game winners in a single season in 1971. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1990. Since his retirement as an active player in 1984, Palmer has worked as a color commentator on telecasts of MLB games for ABC and ESPN and for the Orioles on Home Team Sports (HTS), Comcast SportsNet (CSN) Mid-Atlantic and the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN). He has also been a popular spokesman, most famously for Jockey International for almost 20 years. He was nicknamed "Cakes" in the 1960s because of his habit of eating pancakes for breakfast on the days he pitched. Early life James Alvin Palmer was born in Manhattan, New York City on October 15, 1945. Research conducted by his third wife Susan in 2017 revealed that his biological father and mother were Michael Joseph Geheran and Mary Ann Moroney, both Irish immigrants from Counties Leitrim and Clare respectively. Joe was a married 41-year-old man about town, while Mary Ann was an unmarried 37-year-old domestic worker for the Feinstein family which was prominent in the garment industry. Moroney gave up her infant for adoption and concealed information in the New York City birth registry, where Palmer is listed as Baby Boy Kennedy, whose father was Maroney and mother was Kennedy. Maroney was the incorrect spelling of her surname as listed when she registered at Ellis Island, while Kennedy was her sister Katharine's married name. Moroney eventually married John Lane and the couple had a daughter, Patricia, Palmer's biological half-sister, who died of leukemia at age 40 in 1987. (As of May 2018, the Palmers were still searching for Patricia Lane's daughter, whose married name is Kimberly Hughes and who would be Jim Palmer's half-niece.) Geheran died in 1959 and Moroney in 1979. Two days after his birth, Palmer was adopted by Moe Wiesen and his wife Polly, a wealthy Manhattan dress designer and a boutique owner respectively, who lived on Park Avenue. His sister Bonnie was also adopted by the Wiesens. The family's butler taught the young Jim to throw a baseball in Central Park. After his adoptive father died of a heart attack in 1955, the nine-year-old Jim, his mother and his sister moved to Beverly Hills, California where he began playing in youth-league baseball. In 1956, his mother married actor Max Palmer, but Jim continued to go under the name Jim Wiesen until a year later. At a Little League banquet, just before being presented with an award, he asked the coaches to identify him as "James Alvin Palmer." "Through all these years, that night was the highlight of my entire life," Max recalled. Max was a character actor and there were two men who shared that name who worked in show business during similar time periods. The Max who was Jim's second dad worked mostly on TV on such programs as Dragnet, Bat Masterson and The Colgate Comedy Hour. He was Jewish, and he also earned a living by selling shoes. The other Max Palmer, often erroneously credited as Jim's father, worked in several movies as a monster. He was 8'2" tall and later became a professional wrestler and eventually a Christian evangelist. Jim played baseball for the Beverly Hills Yankees, where he pitched and also hit home runs as an outfielder. The family eventually moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, where Jim played baseball, basketball, and football at Scottsdale High School. He earned All-State honors in each of these sports, also graduating with a 3.4 grade-point average in 1963. Palmer also showed his prowess at American Legion Baseball. The University of Southern California, UCLA, and Arizona State University each offered him full scholarships; Stanford University offered a partial scholarship as well. Bobby Winkles of Arizona State suggested that Palmer get more experience playing collegiate summer baseball, so Palmer went to South Dakota to join the Winner Pheasants of the Basin League. The team advanced all the way to the league finals, and Palmer caught the attention of Baltimore Orioles scout Harry Dalton while pitching in the second game of the championship. According to Palmer, 13 Major League Baseball (MLB) teams recruited him after the season wrapped up, but Jim Russo (the scout who also signed Dave McNally and Boog Powell) and Jim Wilson of the Orioles made the best impression on his parents with their polite manners. Palmer signed with Baltimore for $50,000. Career in baseball 1960s A high-kicking pitcher known for an exceptionally smooth delivery, Palmer picked up his first major-league win on May 16, , beating the Yankees in relief at home. He hit the first of his three career major-league home runs, a two-run shot, in the fourth inning of that game, off Yankees starter Jim Bouton. Palmer finished the season with a 5–4 record. In , Palmer joined the starting rotation. Baltimore won the pennant behind Frank Robinson's MVP and Triple Crown season. Palmer won his final game, against the Kansas City Athletics, to clinch the AL pennant. In Game 2 of that World Series, at Dodger Stadium, he became the youngest pitcher (20 years, 11 months) to pitch a shutout, defeating the defending world champion Dodgers 6–0. The underdog Orioles swept the series over a Los Angeles team that featured Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale and Claude Osteen. The shutout was part of a World Series record-setting consecutive shutout innings by Orioles pitchers. The Dodgers' last run was against Moe Drabowsky in the third inning of Game 1. Palmer, Wally Bunker and Dave McNally pitched shutouts in the next three games. During the next two seasons, Palmer struggled with arm injuries. He had injured his arm in 1966 while using a paint roller in his new house in Baltimore. Cortisone injections allowed him to pitch through the rest of the season and the World Series, but in 1967, his arm continued to feel heavy. He threw a one-hit game against the New York Yankees on May 12 but was sent to the minor leagues after a poor start against the Boston Red Sox five days later. While trying to make it back with the Rochester Red Wings in Niagara Falls, New York that Palmer surrendered the only grand slam in his entire professional career which was hit by the Buffalo Bisons' Johnny Bench. He only pitched three more games for the Orioles in 1967. In 1968, he was limited to 10 minor league games, with no appearances for the Orioles. The outlook on his career was so bleak, Palmer considered quitting baseball to attend college or trying to be a position player. He had been placed on waivers in September 1968 and was left unprotected for the Kansas City Royals and Seattle Pilots in the expansion draft one month later, but was not claimed. After he pitched for an Instructional League team, the Orioles sent him to pitch for the Santurce Crabbers in the Puerto Rican Winter League. Before he left for Santurce, however, Palmer attended a Baltimore Bullets game and sat next to Marv Foxxman, a pharmaceutical representative who suggested he try Indocin. In Santurce, Palmer's arm stopped hurting, and his fastball began hitting 95 mph again. "It was a miracle as far as I was concerned," said Palmer. Palmer returned healthy in 1969, rejoining an Orioles rotation that included 20-game winners Dave McNally and Mike Cuellar. He missed July with a six-week stint on the disabled list, but it was for a torn back muscle, not because of arm trouble. That August 13, Palmer threw a no-hitter against Oakland, just four days after coming off the disabled list. It was the only no-hitter of his career. He finished the season with a mark of 16–4, 123 strikeouts, a 2.34 ERA, and .800 winning percentage. The heavily favored Orioles were beaten in the 1969 World Series by the New York Mets with Palmer taking the loss in Game 3. 1970s In , Cuellar went 24–8, McNally 24–9, Palmer 20–10; in the trio went 20–9, 21–5 and 20–9, respectively, with Pat Dobson going 20–8. Only one other team in MLB history, the Chicago White Sox, has had four 20-game winners. Palmer won 21 games in , and went 22–9, 158, 2.40 in , walking off with his first Cy Young Award. His success was interrupted in when his arm started giving him trouble in spring training. Eventually, he was downed for eight weeks with elbow problems. Palmer had lost seven games in a row by the time he went on the disabled list on June 20. He was diagnosed with an ulnar nerve injury and orthopedic surgeon Robert Kerlan prescribed rest, hot and cold water therapy and medication. Surgery was considered, but Palmer's pain lessened and he was able to return to play in August. He finished 7–12. Palmer was at his peak again in , winning 23 games, throwing 10 shutouts (allowing just 44 hits in those games), and fashioning a 2.09 ERA—all tops in the American League. He completed 25 games, even saved one, and limited opposing hitters to a .216 batting average. On July 28, 1976, he received a fine from AL president Lee MacPhail after hitting Mickey Rivers with a pitch the day before. Palmer said it was in retaliation for Dock Ellis hitting Reggie Jackson with a pitch earlier in the game, then complained when Ellis (who did not admit to throwing at Jackson) was not fined. Palmer won his second Cy Young Award, and repeated his feat in (22–13, 2.51). During the latter year, he won the first of four consecutive Gold Glove Awards. (Jim Kaat, who had won the award 14 years in a row, moved to the National League, where he won the award that year and in .) After making $185,000 in 1976, Palmer hoped for a raise in 1977. The Orioles offered $200,000 initially, but Palmer wanted $275,000. They finally agreed on a $260,000 salary, with a bonus for a "significant contribution." In 1977 and 1978, Palmer won 20 and 21 games, respectively. Despite the 20 wins in 1977, the Orioles almost refused to give him a bonus. After the Major League Baseball Players Association filed a grievance in Palmer's dispute and threatened to go to arbitration (which likely would have resulted in Palmer becoming a free agent), GM Hank Peters relented and gave him the bonus. During the period spanning 1970 to 1978, Palmer had won 20 games in every season except for 1974. During those eight 20-win seasons, he pitched between and 319 innings per year, leading the league in innings pitched four times and earned run average twice. During that span, he threw between 17 and 25 complete games each year. Frustrated that pitchers who had become free agents like Vida Blue and Bert Blyleven were making more money than him in 1979, Palmer told a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press "I'm going to aggravate [the Orioles] until they trade me." Weaver responded by pinning a note to his locker that said, "Happy Father's Day. Now grow up." "He's right he's underpaid...He's worth a million dollars when he's pitching but he signed for $260,000." Palmer eventually got over being discontent, and the team won the AL pennant. Weaver tabbed Palmer to start Game 1 of the ALCS against the Angels; though Palmer asked him to start Mike Flanagan, the 1979 Cy Young Award winner, instead, Weaver valued Palmer's experience. Matched up against Ryan, Palmer allowed three runs in nine innings, taking a no-decision as he left with the game tied. The Orioles won in the 10th on a John Lowenstein home run and won the series 3–1. 1980s From 1980 through 1985, Palmer was hampered by arm fatigue and myriad minor injuries. Even so, he brought a stabilizing veteran presence to the pitching staff. In 1981, Palmer got into a feud with Doug DeCinces after DeCinces missed a line drive hit by Alan Trammell in a game against the Tigers. According to DeCinces, Palmer "was cussing me out and throwing his hands in the air" after the play. "Those balls have to be caught," Palmer told a paper. "Doug is reluctant to get in front of a ball." "I'd like to know where Jim Palmer gets off criticizing others," DeCinces responded. "Ask anybody–they're all sick of it. We're a twenty-four man team–and one prima donna. He thinks it's always someone else's fault." The feud simmered until June, when Weaver said, "I see no cause for concern. The third baseman wants the pitcher to do a little better and the pitcher wants the third baseman to do a little better. I hope we can all do better and kiss and make up...The judge gave me custody of both of them." Palmer ultimately blamed Brooks Robinson for the dispute: "If Brooks hadn't been the best third-baseman of all time, the rest of the Orioles wouldn't have taken it for granted that any ball hit anywhere within the same county as Brooks would be judged perfectly, fielded perfectly, and thrown perfectly, nailing (perfectly) what seemed like every single opposing batter." After Palmer posted a 6.84 ERA in five starts, GM Hank Peters announced that "Palmer is never, ever, ever going to start another game in an Orioles uniform. I've had it." Weaver moved Palmer to the bullpen, but with the team needing another starter, he put Palmer back in the rotation in June. Shortly thereafter, Palmer went on an 11-game winning streak. Palmer's final major-league victory was noteworthy: pitching in relief of Mike Flanagan in the third game of the 1983 World Series, he faced the Phillies' celebrity-studded batting order and gave up no runs in a close Oriole win. The 17 years between Palmer's first World Series win in 1966 and the 1983 win is the longest period of time between first and last pitching victories in the World Series for an individual pitcher in major league history. He also became the only pitcher in major league baseball history to have won World Series games in three decades. Also, Palmer became the only player in Orioles history to appear in all six (1966, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1979, 1983) of their World Series appearances to date. Palmer was the only Orioles player on the 1983 championship team to have previously won a World Series. He retired after being released by Baltimore during the season. He retired with a 268–152 win-loss record and a 2.86 ERA. Palmer was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1990, his first year of eligibility. Early broadcasting career While still an active player, Palmer did color commentary for ABC for their coverage of the 1978, 1980 and 1982 American League Championship Series, 1981 American League Division Series between Oakland and Kansas City, and the 1981 World Series. From to , Palmer formed an announcing team with Al Michaels and Tim McCarver at ABC. Palmer announced the 1985 World Series, where he was supposed to team with Michaels and Howard Cosell, whom Palmer had worked with on the previous year's ALCS. McCarver replaced Cosell for the World Series at the last minute after Cosell released a book (I Never Played the Game) that was critical of the ABC Sports team. The team of Palmer, Michaels and McCarver would subsequently go on to call the 1986 All-Star Game (that year, Palmer worked with Michaels on the ALCS while McCarver teamed with Keith Jackson on ABC's coverage of the National League Championship Series), the 1987 World Series, and 1988 All-Star Game as well as that year's NLCS. Palmer was present at San Francisco's Candlestick Park on October 17, , when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit prior to Game 3 of the World Series. After the 1989 season, ABC lost its contract to broadcast baseball to CBS. Palmer had earned $350,000 from ABC that year for appearing on around ten regular season broadcasts and making a few postseason appearances. In 1990, the Los Angeles Times reported that Palmer was thinking of pursuing work as a major league manager. Instead, Palmer worked as an analyst for ESPN and as a broadcaster for Orioles games on their local telecasts over WMAR-TV and Home Team Sports. Comeback attempt In , Palmer attempted a comeback with the Orioles. He explained in his 1996 book, "I wanted to see if I could be like Nolan Ryan was to the game or what George Blanda was to football." ESPN, which was trying to cut expenses, had asked him to take a pay cut and to sign a three-year contract. Palmer said he would sign a one-year contract for less pay, but ESPN refused. "I wouldn't be here today if the broadcasting climate had been more to my liking. That was really my prime motivation, the fact that I no longer had that obligation", Palmer said during spring training. Covering Palmer's spring training workouts, Richard Hoffer of Sports Illustrated said that Palmer's comeback was not entirely about money. He wrote that "it is fair to suspect that a certain vanity is involved." Hoffer said that Palmer "has failed to excite either ridicule or astonishment. He's in fabulous condition, no question. But no matter whom he lines up with on the row of practice mounds, there is more pop in the gloves of catchers other than his." "I couldn't throw ninety-five miles an hour anymore," Palmer later reflected. "The best I could do was eighty." While working out at the University of Miami during his comeback attempt, Palmer was approached by Miami assistant coach Lazaro Collazo. Collazo reportedly told him, "You'll never get into the Hall of Fame with those mechanics." "I'm already in the Hall of Fame", Palmer replied. To help Palmer's pitching motion, Collazo and Palmer completed unusual drills that involved Palmer placing a knee or foot on a chair as he tossed the ball. After giving up five hits and two runs in two innings of a spring training game, he retired permanently. Palmer said that he tore his hamstring while warming up for the game, commenting, "I'm not saying I wouldn't like to continue, but I can't", he said. "I heard something pop in my leg yesterday. It wasn't a nice sound. I don't know what that means, but I think it's going to play havoc with my tennis game." Return to broadcasting From to , Palmer returned to ABC (this time, via a revenue-sharing joint venture between Major League Baseball, ABC and NBC called The Baseball Network) to once again broadcast with Tim McCarver and Al Michaels. In 1995, the reunited team of Palmer, McCarver and Michaels would call the All-Star Game, Game 3 of that NLDS between Cincinnati and Los Angeles, Game 4 of the NLDS between Atlanta and Colorado, Games 1–2 of the NLCS, and Games 1, 4–5 of the World Series. Palmer, McCarver and Michaels were also intended to call the previous year's World Series for ABC, but were denied the opportunity when the entire postseason was canceled due to a strike. He is currently a color commentator on MASN's television broadcasts of Oriole games. In July 2012, Palmer put up for auction his three Cy Young Award trophies and two of his four Gold Glove Awards. "At this point in my life, I would rather concern myself with the education of my grandchildren", he said. Palmer also noted that his autistic teenage stepson would require special care and that "my priorities have changed." Palmer had put up for auction one of his Cy Young Award trophies on behalf of a fundraising event for cystic fibrosis in years past, although he stated the winning bidder "had paid $39,000 for that and never ever took it. It was for the cause." Legacy Palmer has been considered one of the best pitchers in major-league history. Palmer is the only pitcher in big-league history to win World Series games in three decades (1960s, 1970s, and 1980s). During his 19-year major league career of 575 games (including 17 postseason games), he never surrendered a grand slam, nor did he ever allow back-to-back homers. Palmer's career earned run average (2.856) is the third-lowest among starting pitchers whose careers began after the advent of the live-ball era in 1920. In six ALCS and six World Series, he posted an 8–3 record with 90 strikeouts, and an ERA of 2.61 and two shutouts in 17 games. He was a mainstay in the rotation during Baltimore's six pennant-winning teams in the 1960s (1966 and 1969), 1970s (1970, 1971 and 1979) and 1980s (1983). With the passing of Mike Cuellar in 2010, Palmer became the last surviving member of the 1971 Baltimore starting rotation that included four 20-game winners. Palmer won spots on six All-Star teams, received four Gold Glove Awards and won three Cy Young Awards. He led the league in ERA twice and in wins three times. Sometimes, Palmer would shift fielders around during games. He never meddled with the best fielders, such as the Robinsons or Paul Blair, but he would do so for less experienced players. "They might not know...that if they're playing a step or two to the opposite field and you're behind the batter two balls and no strikes...and you have a big lead...you're probably going to take a little off the pitch...and the fielders have to know to shift a couple of steps and play for the batter to pull." In , he ranked No. 64 on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, and was nominated as a finalist for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. Endorsements During the late 1970s, Palmer was a spokesman and underwear model for Jockey brand men's briefs. He appeared in the company's national print and television advertisements as well as on billboards at Times Square in New York City and other major cities. He donated all proceeds from the sale of his underwear poster to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. From 1992 until 1999, he was frequently seen on television throughout the United States in commercials for The Money Store, a national home equity and mortgage lender. He has periodically appeared in ads and commercials for vitamins and other health-related products. Palmer also represents Cosamin DS, a joint health supplement made by Nutramax Laboratories in Edgewood, Maryland. He was also the spokesperson for Nationwide Motors Corp., which is a regional chain of car dealerships located in the Middle Atlantic region. He is currently a spokesman for the national "Strike Out High Cholesterol" campaign. Additionally, Palmer serves as a member of the advisory board of the Baseball Assistance Team, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to helping former Major League, Minor League, and Negro league players through financial and medical difficulties. Personal life Shortly after graduating from high school in 1963, Palmer married the former Susan Ryan in 1964. He has two daughters with Ryan, named Jamie and Kelly. Ryan was not a huge baseball fan, as Palmer recalled: "She used to bring her knitting and/or a friend, who usually liked baseball even less, to the games." In 2007, Palmer married the former Susan Earle, who has an adult son with autism. The Palmers have homes in Palm Beach, Florida, and in Corona Del Mar, California. In 2006, Palmer also acquired a penthouse condominium in Little Italy, Baltimore, which he uses while in Baltimore for Orioles' broadcasts. See also List of Major League Baseball career wins leaders List of Major League Baseball annual ERA leaders List of Major League Baseball annual wins leaders List of Major League Baseball career strikeout leaders Major League Baseball titles leaders List of Major League Baseball no-hitters List of Major League Baseball players who spent their entire career with one franchise References External links Jim Palmer at SABR (Baseball BioProject) 1945 births Living people Aberdeen Pheasants players American adoptees American League All-Stars American League ERA champions American League wins champions American people of Irish descent Baltimore Orioles announcers Baltimore Orioles players Baseball players from New York (state) Cy Young Award winners Elmira Pioneers players Gold Glove Award winners Hagerstown Suns players Major League Baseball broadcasters Major League Baseball pitchers Major League Baseball players with retired numbers Male models from New York (state) Miami Marlins (FSL) players Mid-Atlantic Sports Network Models from New York City National Baseball Hall of Fame inductees Rochester Red Wings players Sportspeople from New York City

C_596dc3da71fb4978952c538497aaa136_1

Who did Palmer work with most (Or a lot) on T.V?

Who did Jim Palmer work with most (Or a lot) on T.V?

Jim Palmer

While still an active player, Palmer did color commentary for ABC for their coverage of the 1978, 1980 and 1982 American League Championship Series, 1981 American League Division Series between Oakland and Kansas City, and the 1981 World Series. From 1985 to 1989, Palmer formed an announcing team with Al Michaels and Tim McCarver at ABC. Palmer announced the 1985 World Series, where he was supposed to team with Michaels and Howard Cosell, whom Palmer had worked with on the previous year's ALCS. McCarver replaced Cosell for the World Series at the last minute after Cosell released a book (I Never Played the Game) that was critical of the ABC Sports team. The team of Palmer, Michaels and McCarver would subsequently go on to call the 1986 All-Star Game (that year, Palmer worked with Michaels on the ALCS while McCarver teamed with Keith Jackson on ABC's coverage of the National League Championship Series), the 1987 World Series, and 1988 All-Star Game as well as that year's NLCS. Palmer was present at San Francisco's Candlestick Park on October 17, 1989, when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit prior to Game 3 of the World Series. After the 1989 season, ABC lost its contract to broadcast baseball to CBS. Palmer had earned $350,000 from ABC that year for appearing on around ten regular season broadcasts and making a few postseason appearances. In 1990, the Los Angeles Times reported that Palmer was thinking of pursuing work as a major league manager. Instead, Palmer worked as an analyst for ESPN and as a broadcaster for Orioles games on their local telecasts over WMAR-TV and Home Team Sports. CANNOTANSWER

The team of Palmer, Michaels and McCarver would subsequently go on to call the 1986 All-Star Game

James Alvin Palmer (born October 15, 1945) is an American former professional baseball pitcher who played 19 years in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Baltimore Orioles (1965–1967, 1969–1984). Palmer was the winningest MLB pitcher in the 1970s, totaling 186 wins. He also won at least 20 games in eight different seasons and won three Cy Young Awards and four Gold Gloves during the decade. His 268 career victories are currently an Orioles record. A six-time American League (AL) All-Star, he was also one of the rare pitchers who never allowed a grand slam in any major league contest. Palmer appeared in the postseason eight times and was a vital member of three World Series Champions, six AL pennant winners and seven Eastern Division titleholders. He is the only pitcher in history to earn a win in a World Series game in three different decades. He is also the youngest to pitch a complete-game shutout in a World Series, doing so nine days before his 21st birthday in 1966, in which he defeated Sandy Koufax in Koufax's last appearance. He was one of the starters on the last rotation to feature four 20-game winners in a single season in 1971. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1990. Since his retirement as an active player in 1984, Palmer has worked as a color commentator on telecasts of MLB games for ABC and ESPN and for the Orioles on Home Team Sports (HTS), Comcast SportsNet (CSN) Mid-Atlantic and the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN). He has also been a popular spokesman, most famously for Jockey International for almost 20 years. He was nicknamed "Cakes" in the 1960s because of his habit of eating pancakes for breakfast on the days he pitched. Early life James Alvin Palmer was born in Manhattan, New York City on October 15, 1945. Research conducted by his third wife Susan in 2017 revealed that his biological father and mother were Michael Joseph Geheran and Mary Ann Moroney, both Irish immigrants from Counties Leitrim and Clare respectively. Joe was a married 41-year-old man about town, while Mary Ann was an unmarried 37-year-old domestic worker for the Feinstein family which was prominent in the garment industry. Moroney gave up her infant for adoption and concealed information in the New York City birth registry, where Palmer is listed as Baby Boy Kennedy, whose father was Maroney and mother was Kennedy. Maroney was the incorrect spelling of her surname as listed when she registered at Ellis Island, while Kennedy was her sister Katharine's married name. Moroney eventually married John Lane and the couple had a daughter, Patricia, Palmer's biological half-sister, who died of leukemia at age 40 in 1987. (As of May 2018, the Palmers were still searching for Patricia Lane's daughter, whose married name is Kimberly Hughes and who would be Jim Palmer's half-niece.) Geheran died in 1959 and Moroney in 1979. Two days after his birth, Palmer was adopted by Moe Wiesen and his wife Polly, a wealthy Manhattan dress designer and a boutique owner respectively, who lived on Park Avenue. His sister Bonnie was also adopted by the Wiesens. The family's butler taught the young Jim to throw a baseball in Central Park. After his adoptive father died of a heart attack in 1955, the nine-year-old Jim, his mother and his sister moved to Beverly Hills, California where he began playing in youth-league baseball. In 1956, his mother married actor Max Palmer, but Jim continued to go under the name Jim Wiesen until a year later. At a Little League banquet, just before being presented with an award, he asked the coaches to identify him as "James Alvin Palmer." "Through all these years, that night was the highlight of my entire life," Max recalled. Max was a character actor and there were two men who shared that name who worked in show business during similar time periods. The Max who was Jim's second dad worked mostly on TV on such programs as Dragnet, Bat Masterson and The Colgate Comedy Hour. He was Jewish, and he also earned a living by selling shoes. The other Max Palmer, often erroneously credited as Jim's father, worked in several movies as a monster. He was 8'2" tall and later became a professional wrestler and eventually a Christian evangelist. Jim played baseball for the Beverly Hills Yankees, where he pitched and also hit home runs as an outfielder. The family eventually moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, where Jim played baseball, basketball, and football at Scottsdale High School. He earned All-State honors in each of these sports, also graduating with a 3.4 grade-point average in 1963. Palmer also showed his prowess at American Legion Baseball. The University of Southern California, UCLA, and Arizona State University each offered him full scholarships; Stanford University offered a partial scholarship as well. Bobby Winkles of Arizona State suggested that Palmer get more experience playing collegiate summer baseball, so Palmer went to South Dakota to join the Winner Pheasants of the Basin League. The team advanced all the way to the league finals, and Palmer caught the attention of Baltimore Orioles scout Harry Dalton while pitching in the second game of the championship. According to Palmer, 13 Major League Baseball (MLB) teams recruited him after the season wrapped up, but Jim Russo (the scout who also signed Dave McNally and Boog Powell) and Jim Wilson of the Orioles made the best impression on his parents with their polite manners. Palmer signed with Baltimore for $50,000. Career in baseball 1960s A high-kicking pitcher known for an exceptionally smooth delivery, Palmer picked up his first major-league win on May 16, , beating the Yankees in relief at home. He hit the first of his three career major-league home runs, a two-run shot, in the fourth inning of that game, off Yankees starter Jim Bouton. Palmer finished the season with a 5–4 record. In , Palmer joined the starting rotation. Baltimore won the pennant behind Frank Robinson's MVP and Triple Crown season. Palmer won his final game, against the Kansas City Athletics, to clinch the AL pennant. In Game 2 of that World Series, at Dodger Stadium, he became the youngest pitcher (20 years, 11 months) to pitch a shutout, defeating the defending world champion Dodgers 6–0. The underdog Orioles swept the series over a Los Angeles team that featured Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale and Claude Osteen. The shutout was part of a World Series record-setting consecutive shutout innings by Orioles pitchers. The Dodgers' last run was against Moe Drabowsky in the third inning of Game 1. Palmer, Wally Bunker and Dave McNally pitched shutouts in the next three games. During the next two seasons, Palmer struggled with arm injuries. He had injured his arm in 1966 while using a paint roller in his new house in Baltimore. Cortisone injections allowed him to pitch through the rest of the season and the World Series, but in 1967, his arm continued to feel heavy. He threw a one-hit game against the New York Yankees on May 12 but was sent to the minor leagues after a poor start against the Boston Red Sox five days later. While trying to make it back with the Rochester Red Wings in Niagara Falls, New York that Palmer surrendered the only grand slam in his entire professional career which was hit by the Buffalo Bisons' Johnny Bench. He only pitched three more games for the Orioles in 1967. In 1968, he was limited to 10 minor league games, with no appearances for the Orioles. The outlook on his career was so bleak, Palmer considered quitting baseball to attend college or trying to be a position player. He had been placed on waivers in September 1968 and was left unprotected for the Kansas City Royals and Seattle Pilots in the expansion draft one month later, but was not claimed. After he pitched for an Instructional League team, the Orioles sent him to pitch for the Santurce Crabbers in the Puerto Rican Winter League. Before he left for Santurce, however, Palmer attended a Baltimore Bullets game and sat next to Marv Foxxman, a pharmaceutical representative who suggested he try Indocin. In Santurce, Palmer's arm stopped hurting, and his fastball began hitting 95 mph again. "It was a miracle as far as I was concerned," said Palmer. Palmer returned healthy in 1969, rejoining an Orioles rotation that included 20-game winners Dave McNally and Mike Cuellar. He missed July with a six-week stint on the disabled list, but it was for a torn back muscle, not because of arm trouble. That August 13, Palmer threw a no-hitter against Oakland, just four days after coming off the disabled list. It was the only no-hitter of his career. He finished the season with a mark of 16–4, 123 strikeouts, a 2.34 ERA, and .800 winning percentage. The heavily favored Orioles were beaten in the 1969 World Series by the New York Mets with Palmer taking the loss in Game 3. 1970s In , Cuellar went 24–8, McNally 24–9, Palmer 20–10; in the trio went 20–9, 21–5 and 20–9, respectively, with Pat Dobson going 20–8. Only one other team in MLB history, the Chicago White Sox, has had four 20-game winners. Palmer won 21 games in , and went 22–9, 158, 2.40 in , walking off with his first Cy Young Award. His success was interrupted in when his arm started giving him trouble in spring training. Eventually, he was downed for eight weeks with elbow problems. Palmer had lost seven games in a row by the time he went on the disabled list on June 20. He was diagnosed with an ulnar nerve injury and orthopedic surgeon Robert Kerlan prescribed rest, hot and cold water therapy and medication. Surgery was considered, but Palmer's pain lessened and he was able to return to play in August. He finished 7–12. Palmer was at his peak again in , winning 23 games, throwing 10 shutouts (allowing just 44 hits in those games), and fashioning a 2.09 ERA—all tops in the American League. He completed 25 games, even saved one, and limited opposing hitters to a .216 batting average. On July 28, 1976, he received a fine from AL president Lee MacPhail after hitting Mickey Rivers with a pitch the day before. Palmer said it was in retaliation for Dock Ellis hitting Reggie Jackson with a pitch earlier in the game, then complained when Ellis (who did not admit to throwing at Jackson) was not fined. Palmer won his second Cy Young Award, and repeated his feat in (22–13, 2.51). During the latter year, he won the first of four consecutive Gold Glove Awards. (Jim Kaat, who had won the award 14 years in a row, moved to the National League, where he won the award that year and in .) After making $185,000 in 1976, Palmer hoped for a raise in 1977. The Orioles offered $200,000 initially, but Palmer wanted $275,000. They finally agreed on a $260,000 salary, with a bonus for a "significant contribution." In 1977 and 1978, Palmer won 20 and 21 games, respectively. Despite the 20 wins in 1977, the Orioles almost refused to give him a bonus. After the Major League Baseball Players Association filed a grievance in Palmer's dispute and threatened to go to arbitration (which likely would have resulted in Palmer becoming a free agent), GM Hank Peters relented and gave him the bonus. During the period spanning 1970 to 1978, Palmer had won 20 games in every season except for 1974. During those eight 20-win seasons, he pitched between and 319 innings per year, leading the league in innings pitched four times and earned run average twice. During that span, he threw between 17 and 25 complete games each year. Frustrated that pitchers who had become free agents like Vida Blue and Bert Blyleven were making more money than him in 1979, Palmer told a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press "I'm going to aggravate [the Orioles] until they trade me." Weaver responded by pinning a note to his locker that said, "Happy Father's Day. Now grow up." "He's right he's underpaid...He's worth a million dollars when he's pitching but he signed for $260,000." Palmer eventually got over being discontent, and the team won the AL pennant. Weaver tabbed Palmer to start Game 1 of the ALCS against the Angels; though Palmer asked him to start Mike Flanagan, the 1979 Cy Young Award winner, instead, Weaver valued Palmer's experience. Matched up against Ryan, Palmer allowed three runs in nine innings, taking a no-decision as he left with the game tied. The Orioles won in the 10th on a John Lowenstein home run and won the series 3–1. 1980s From 1980 through 1985, Palmer was hampered by arm fatigue and myriad minor injuries. Even so, he brought a stabilizing veteran presence to the pitching staff. In 1981, Palmer got into a feud with Doug DeCinces after DeCinces missed a line drive hit by Alan Trammell in a game against the Tigers. According to DeCinces, Palmer "was cussing me out and throwing his hands in the air" after the play. "Those balls have to be caught," Palmer told a paper. "Doug is reluctant to get in front of a ball." "I'd like to know where Jim Palmer gets off criticizing others," DeCinces responded. "Ask anybody–they're all sick of it. We're a twenty-four man team–and one prima donna. He thinks it's always someone else's fault." The feud simmered until June, when Weaver said, "I see no cause for concern. The third baseman wants the pitcher to do a little better and the pitcher wants the third baseman to do a little better. I hope we can all do better and kiss and make up...The judge gave me custody of both of them." Palmer ultimately blamed Brooks Robinson for the dispute: "If Brooks hadn't been the best third-baseman of all time, the rest of the Orioles wouldn't have taken it for granted that any ball hit anywhere within the same county as Brooks would be judged perfectly, fielded perfectly, and thrown perfectly, nailing (perfectly) what seemed like every single opposing batter." After Palmer posted a 6.84 ERA in five starts, GM Hank Peters announced that "Palmer is never, ever, ever going to start another game in an Orioles uniform. I've had it." Weaver moved Palmer to the bullpen, but with the team needing another starter, he put Palmer back in the rotation in June. Shortly thereafter, Palmer went on an 11-game winning streak. Palmer's final major-league victory was noteworthy: pitching in relief of Mike Flanagan in the third game of the 1983 World Series, he faced the Phillies' celebrity-studded batting order and gave up no runs in a close Oriole win. The 17 years between Palmer's first World Series win in 1966 and the 1983 win is the longest period of time between first and last pitching victories in the World Series for an individual pitcher in major league history. He also became the only pitcher in major league baseball history to have won World Series games in three decades. Also, Palmer became the only player in Orioles history to appear in all six (1966, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1979, 1983) of their World Series appearances to date. Palmer was the only Orioles player on the 1983 championship team to have previously won a World Series. He retired after being released by Baltimore during the season. He retired with a 268–152 win-loss record and a 2.86 ERA. Palmer was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1990, his first year of eligibility. Early broadcasting career While still an active player, Palmer did color commentary for ABC for their coverage of the 1978, 1980 and 1982 American League Championship Series, 1981 American League Division Series between Oakland and Kansas City, and the 1981 World Series. From to , Palmer formed an announcing team with Al Michaels and Tim McCarver at ABC. Palmer announced the 1985 World Series, where he was supposed to team with Michaels and Howard Cosell, whom Palmer had worked with on the previous year's ALCS. McCarver replaced Cosell for the World Series at the last minute after Cosell released a book (I Never Played the Game) that was critical of the ABC Sports team. The team of Palmer, Michaels and McCarver would subsequently go on to call the 1986 All-Star Game (that year, Palmer worked with Michaels on the ALCS while McCarver teamed with Keith Jackson on ABC's coverage of the National League Championship Series), the 1987 World Series, and 1988 All-Star Game as well as that year's NLCS. Palmer was present at San Francisco's Candlestick Park on October 17, , when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit prior to Game 3 of the World Series. After the 1989 season, ABC lost its contract to broadcast baseball to CBS. Palmer had earned $350,000 from ABC that year for appearing on around ten regular season broadcasts and making a few postseason appearances. In 1990, the Los Angeles Times reported that Palmer was thinking of pursuing work as a major league manager. Instead, Palmer worked as an analyst for ESPN and as a broadcaster for Orioles games on their local telecasts over WMAR-TV and Home Team Sports. Comeback attempt In , Palmer attempted a comeback with the Orioles. He explained in his 1996 book, "I wanted to see if I could be like Nolan Ryan was to the game or what George Blanda was to football." ESPN, which was trying to cut expenses, had asked him to take a pay cut and to sign a three-year contract. Palmer said he would sign a one-year contract for less pay, but ESPN refused. "I wouldn't be here today if the broadcasting climate had been more to my liking. That was really my prime motivation, the fact that I no longer had that obligation", Palmer said during spring training. Covering Palmer's spring training workouts, Richard Hoffer of Sports Illustrated said that Palmer's comeback was not entirely about money. He wrote that "it is fair to suspect that a certain vanity is involved." Hoffer said that Palmer "has failed to excite either ridicule or astonishment. He's in fabulous condition, no question. But no matter whom he lines up with on the row of practice mounds, there is more pop in the gloves of catchers other than his." "I couldn't throw ninety-five miles an hour anymore," Palmer later reflected. "The best I could do was eighty." While working out at the University of Miami during his comeback attempt, Palmer was approached by Miami assistant coach Lazaro Collazo. Collazo reportedly told him, "You'll never get into the Hall of Fame with those mechanics." "I'm already in the Hall of Fame", Palmer replied. To help Palmer's pitching motion, Collazo and Palmer completed unusual drills that involved Palmer placing a knee or foot on a chair as he tossed the ball. After giving up five hits and two runs in two innings of a spring training game, he retired permanently. Palmer said that he tore his hamstring while warming up for the game, commenting, "I'm not saying I wouldn't like to continue, but I can't", he said. "I heard something pop in my leg yesterday. It wasn't a nice sound. I don't know what that means, but I think it's going to play havoc with my tennis game." Return to broadcasting From to , Palmer returned to ABC (this time, via a revenue-sharing joint venture between Major League Baseball, ABC and NBC called The Baseball Network) to once again broadcast with Tim McCarver and Al Michaels. In 1995, the reunited team of Palmer, McCarver and Michaels would call the All-Star Game, Game 3 of that NLDS between Cincinnati and Los Angeles, Game 4 of the NLDS between Atlanta and Colorado, Games 1–2 of the NLCS, and Games 1, 4–5 of the World Series. Palmer, McCarver and Michaels were also intended to call the previous year's World Series for ABC, but were denied the opportunity when the entire postseason was canceled due to a strike. He is currently a color commentator on MASN's television broadcasts of Oriole games. In July 2012, Palmer put up for auction his three Cy Young Award trophies and two of his four Gold Glove Awards. "At this point in my life, I would rather concern myself with the education of my grandchildren", he said. Palmer also noted that his autistic teenage stepson would require special care and that "my priorities have changed." Palmer had put up for auction one of his Cy Young Award trophies on behalf of a fundraising event for cystic fibrosis in years past, although he stated the winning bidder "had paid $39,000 for that and never ever took it. It was for the cause." Legacy Palmer has been considered one of the best pitchers in major-league history. Palmer is the only pitcher in big-league history to win World Series games in three decades (1960s, 1970s, and 1980s). During his 19-year major league career of 575 games (including 17 postseason games), he never surrendered a grand slam, nor did he ever allow back-to-back homers. Palmer's career earned run average (2.856) is the third-lowest among starting pitchers whose careers began after the advent of the live-ball era in 1920. In six ALCS and six World Series, he posted an 8–3 record with 90 strikeouts, and an ERA of 2.61 and two shutouts in 17 games. He was a mainstay in the rotation during Baltimore's six pennant-winning teams in the 1960s (1966 and 1969), 1970s (1970, 1971 and 1979) and 1980s (1983). With the passing of Mike Cuellar in 2010, Palmer became the last surviving member of the 1971 Baltimore starting rotation that included four 20-game winners. Palmer won spots on six All-Star teams, received four Gold Glove Awards and won three Cy Young Awards. He led the league in ERA twice and in wins three times. Sometimes, Palmer would shift fielders around during games. He never meddled with the best fielders, such as the Robinsons or Paul Blair, but he would do so for less experienced players. "They might not know...that if they're playing a step or two to the opposite field and you're behind the batter two balls and no strikes...and you have a big lead...you're probably going to take a little off the pitch...and the fielders have to know to shift a couple of steps and play for the batter to pull." In , he ranked No. 64 on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, and was nominated as a finalist for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. Endorsements During the late 1970s, Palmer was a spokesman and underwear model for Jockey brand men's briefs. He appeared in the company's national print and television advertisements as well as on billboards at Times Square in New York City and other major cities. He donated all proceeds from the sale of his underwear poster to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. From 1992 until 1999, he was frequently seen on television throughout the United States in commercials for The Money Store, a national home equity and mortgage lender. He has periodically appeared in ads and commercials for vitamins and other health-related products. Palmer also represents Cosamin DS, a joint health supplement made by Nutramax Laboratories in Edgewood, Maryland. He was also the spokesperson for Nationwide Motors Corp., which is a regional chain of car dealerships located in the Middle Atlantic region. He is currently a spokesman for the national "Strike Out High Cholesterol" campaign. Additionally, Palmer serves as a member of the advisory board of the Baseball Assistance Team, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to helping former Major League, Minor League, and Negro league players through financial and medical difficulties. Personal life Shortly after graduating from high school in 1963, Palmer married the former Susan Ryan in 1964. He has two daughters with Ryan, named Jamie and Kelly. Ryan was not a huge baseball fan, as Palmer recalled: "She used to bring her knitting and/or a friend, who usually liked baseball even less, to the games." In 2007, Palmer married the former Susan Earle, who has an adult son with autism. The Palmers have homes in Palm Beach, Florida, and in Corona Del Mar, California. In 2006, Palmer also acquired a penthouse condominium in Little Italy, Baltimore, which he uses while in Baltimore for Orioles' broadcasts. See also List of Major League Baseball career wins leaders List of Major League Baseball annual ERA leaders List of Major League Baseball annual wins leaders List of Major League Baseball career strikeout leaders Major League Baseball titles leaders List of Major League Baseball no-hitters List of Major League Baseball players who spent their entire career with one franchise References External links Jim Palmer at SABR (Baseball BioProject) 1945 births Living people Aberdeen Pheasants players American adoptees American League All-Stars American League ERA champions American League wins champions American people of Irish descent Baltimore Orioles announcers Baltimore Orioles players Baseball players from New York (state) Cy Young Award winners Elmira Pioneers players Gold Glove Award winners Hagerstown Suns players Major League Baseball broadcasters Major League Baseball pitchers Major League Baseball players with retired numbers Male models from New York (state) Miami Marlins (FSL) players Mid-Atlantic Sports Network Models from New York City National Baseball Hall of Fame inductees Rochester Red Wings players Sportspeople from New York City

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What did he retire from?

What did Chris Amon retire from?

Chris Amon

After his retirement from F1, Amon dedicated himself to running the family farm in New Zealand's Manawatu District for many years. After retiring from farming, he lived in Taupo in New Zealand's North Island. In the early 1980s he became more well known in New Zealand from test-driving vehicles on the TV motoring series Motor Show and later consulted for Toyota New Zealand, tuning the 1984 Toyota Corolla and subsequent cars for sale there. He also appeared in TV commercials for the company, where much was made of the acclaim he won from Enzo Ferrari. Amon participated in the 2004 EnergyWise Rally where he won ahead of Brian Cowan. Amon drove a Toyota Prius for the event. Amon was involved in the design of the upgraded Taupo Motorsport Park circuit, used for the New Zealand round of the 2006-07 A1 Grand Prix season in January 2007. At the New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing in 2011, Amon's life and career were honoured with a selection of his cars being driven and also used the event to raise funds for the Bruce McLaren trust. Amon was also honoured at the festival in January 2013. Amon died in Rotorua Hospital on 3 August 2016, aged 73, of cancer. He was survived by his wife (they married in 1977) their three children and their grandchildren. One of his sons, James, is a qualified High Performance personal trainer. He trained Central Districts Stags cricket team, and was revealed to be Brendon Hartley's personal trainer. CANNOTANSWER

After his retirement from F1,

Christopher Arthur Amon (20 July 1943 – 3 August 2016) was a New Zealand motor racing driver. He was active in Formula One racing in the 1960s and 1970s and is widely regarded as one of the best F1 drivers never to win a championship Grand Prix. His reputation for bad luck was such that fellow driver Mario Andretti once joked that "if he became an undertaker, people would stop dying". Former Ferrari Technical Director Mauro Forghieri stated that Amon was "by far the best test driver I have ever worked with. He had all the qualities to be a World Champion but bad luck just wouldn't let him be". Apart from driving, Chris Amon also ran his own Formula One team for a short period in 1974. Away from Formula One, Amon had some success in sports car racing, teaming with co-driver Bruce McLaren to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans race in . Early life Amon was born in Bulls, and attended Whanganui Collegiate School. He was the only child of wealthy sheep-owners Ngaio and Betty Amon. He learned to drive at the age of six, taught by a farm worker on the family farm. On leaving school, he persuaded his father to buy him an Austin A40 Special, which he entered in some minor local races and hillclimbs along with practice on the family farm. He progressed to a 1.5-litre Cooper and then an old 2.5-litre Maserati 250F, but only began to draw attention when he drove the Cooper-Climax T51 which Bruce McLaren had used to win his maiden Grand Prix. In 1962 Amon entered the Cooper for the New Zealand winter series, but was hampered by mechanical problems. However, Scuderia Veloce entered him in a similar car, and, in the rain at Lakeside, he performed well. One of the spectators there was the English racing driver Reg Parnell who persuaded Amon to come to England and race for his team. In a test at Goodwood Amon continued to impress and was on the pace in the Goodwood International Trophy and Aintree 200 pre-season races. Racing career 1960s 1963 For the 1963 Formula One season the Parnell team were using the year old Lola Mk4A, powered by 1962 specification Climax V8 engines. Amon was teamed with the very experienced Maurice Trintignant for the first race of the season at Monaco and his Grand Prix career started with what was to become typical bad luck: Trintignant's Climax developed a misfire, so he took over Amon's car. At the 1963 Belgian Grand Prix, Amon was partnered by Lucien Bianchi and started ahead of him from 15th position. After nine laps, however, an oil fire ended his race. He continued to experience mechanical problems at the Dutch, Mexican and German Grands Prix; and after an accident in practice for the Italian Grand Prix left him hanging out of his car's cockpit with three broken ribs, he missed both the Italian and United States rounds. Amon usually qualified in the midfield and generally outpaced his teammates, who included his good friend Mike Hailwood. His best results of the year were seventh at the French and British Grands Prix. During this time, however, Amon's social life was attracting as much attention as his driving. He was a member of the Ditton Road Flyers, the social set named after the road in London where Amon shared an apartment with American Peter Revson, Hailwood and Tony Maggs. Parnell was nonetheless impressed with Amon's results in what was regarded as less-than-competitive machinery and promoted him to team leader. Parnell died from peritonitis in January 1964 and his son Tim took over the team. 1964 In a series of four pre-season races in Britain and Italy, Amon recorded three fifth places at Snetterton, Silverstone and Syracuse. He failed to qualify for the first F1 race of the season, the Monaco GP, but at the next race, the Dutch GP, he scored his first World Championship points. The rest of his season, however, was blighted by mechanical problems. 1965 Parnell was offered BRM engines for 1965, but only if it ran Richard Attwood as its regular driver. Reluctantly, Parnell agreed and Attwood took Amon's place. Spotting an opportunity, Bruce McLaren quickly signed Amon for his new McLaren team, but when no second McLaren F1 car materialised, Amon could only drive in sports car races. At the French GP Amon rejoined Parnell to stand in for an injured Attwood. Amon also competed in a Formula Two race in Stuttgart and won. He returned to Germany for the German GP as second Parnell driver, but mechanical failure again forced an early retirement. His last drive before Attwood's return, a non-championship race in Enna, Sicily, also ended in retirement. 1966 During 1966 Amon continued to race for McLaren in Can-Am. He was intended to drive the second McLaren M2B but difficulties with engine supply meant that the team never made the intended expansion to two cars. (James Garner's character Pete Aron's helmet and car livery in the film Grand Prix were modelled on Amon driving a McLaren, which caused the movie makers to have to encourage other cars to be painted in the 'Yamura' colours and other drivers (Bruce McLaren included) to wear Amon-style helmets.) However, an opportunity arose to drive for the Cooper F1 team after Richie Ginther left them for Honda. Amon drove for Cooper at the French GP and was scheduled to drive for them for the rest of the season, until the more successful John Surtees left Scuderia Ferrari to join Cooper and Amon found himself dropped. Amon made one other F1 appearance during the year, driving a Brabham BT11 powered by an old 2-litre BRM engine at the Italian GP under the banner of "Chris Amon Racing". He failed to qualify. Amon did however, score his biggest success to date when he partnered Bruce McLaren in a 7-litre Ford GT40 Mark II and Ken Miles to Ford's dead-heat "photo-finish" after Miles was instructed to slow down despite leading at the Le Mans 24-hour race, spearheading a formation finish. He subsequently received an invitation to meet Enzo Ferrari at the Ferrari home in Maranello, where he signed to race for Ferrari in 1967 alongside Lorenzo Bandini, Mike Parkes and Ludovico Scarfiotti. 1967 Amon's first year with Ferrari did not begin auspiciously. En route to Brands Hatch for the pre-season Formula One Race of Champions, he crashed his road car and, following race practice, had to withdraw. Tragedy then struck the Ferrari team when Bandini died following a crash during the 1967 Monaco Grand Prix, Mike Parkes broke both his legs at the Belgian Grand Prix and, in the aftermath, Ludovico Scarfiotti went into temporary retirement. Amon, therefore, became Ferrari's only driver for the rest of the season, until joined by Jonathan Williams for the final race in Mexico. Amon scored his first podium in his first official outing for the Scuderia in Monaco and at the end of 1967 had achieved four third places finishing fifth in the Drivers' Championship, in what was going to be the most successful season of his career. Amon's Ferrari contract also included sports car racing and he began 1967 by winning the Daytona 24 Hours and 1000km Monza events with Bandini in the 4-litre Ferrari 330-P4. He finished the year partnering Jackie Stewart to a second place at the BOAC 500, thereby clinching the manufacturer's world championship for Ferrari by one point over Porsche. 1968 1968 was the year aerodynamics first played a significant role in F1 car design and Amon worked with engineer Mauro Forghieri to place aerofoils on the Ferrari 312. In January 1968 Amon had returned home to New Zealand and Australia to compete in the 1968 Tasman Series which was used by many of the top Formula One drivers as a warm up series to the World Championship. Ferrari had been interested in the series for several years and in 1965 had reengineered 2.4 Dino engines used by Mike Hawthorn, Peter Collins and Phil Hill in 1958–60 with more torque and mid speed power for the planned use of team leader Surtees in the 1966 Tasman Series. After a late season crash in US Can-Am racing by Surtees, the entry was withdrawn but consideration was given to using NZ Gold star champion Jim Palmer in a semi-works Ferrari entry in the 1967 Tasman Series as it was viewed in a 2.4 car he would be competitive with Clark and Stewart in 2-litre F1 cars. Palmer had run world-class times in the 1966 Tasman Series, particularly in the Pukekohe practice and Longford race, and was tested in Italy at the same time as Amon by Ferrari, and ran competitive times at Modena but for whatever reason Ferrari did not compete in 1967 series. For the 1968 series Ferrari decided to use the 2.4 engines with a new Dino 166 F2 chassis rather than a downsized 3-litre V12. Using the 246T Amon won the first two rounds of the Tasman Series, including the 1968 New Zealand Grand Prix, before narrowly losing the series to the Lotus-Ford of Jim Clark. The Dino 246 Tasmania was better handling than Clark's Lotus 49T which was still wingless and a difficult proposition. Impressed by Amon's driving in the NZ rounds, Ferrari dispatched a new four-valve version of the 2.4 V6 for the Australian rounds and this gave another 15 hp, but with lesser reliability which, combined with the fact Clark was the best driver in the world at the time, cost Amon the series, although in the final round at Sandown Park he duelled wheel to wheel with Clark before being pipped at the line. After the first race of the F1 season in South Africa, Amon achieved pole positions in three of the following four races (at the Spanish, Belgian and Dutch Grands Prix) but ever-present mechanical problems meant he secured only a single Championship point from them. Throughout the rest of the season he never qualified lower than fifth place and nearly scored victories at the British and Canadian rounds and he suffered a 100 mph crash in Italy which demolished his car. In Britain, he duelled to the line with Jo Siffert's Lotus 49B and in Canada he dominated the race despite a malfunctioning clutch. Seventeen laps from the finish, however, his car's transmission failed and a distraught Amon had to be consoled by Jacky Ickx. From at least ten promising starts that season he was only able to finish five races and score ten Championship points. His best finish was second place to Siffert's Lotus-Cosworth at the British Grand Prix. Outside F1, Amon was runner-up in the Formula Two race at Zolder, Belgium, testing the Dino 166 F2. He also came third in that year's BRDC International Trophy. 1969 Amon began 1969 with success driving the Dino engined 246 Tasmania in the Tasman Series that included winning both the New Zealand and Australian Grands Prix. In straight fights, he beat new Gold Leaf Lotus team leader, Jochen Rindt, into second in the races at Pukekohe and Sandown. He would ultimately win the seven race Tasman Series, probably the best of the seven-year 2.5-litre international formula series in this country and the nearest to World Championship level racing in New Zealand, with ferocious competition between Rindt, Graham Hill, Amon and Williams driver Piers Courage. It was actually much more serious racing than the McLaren dominated Can-Am series in the US in which the big sports cars required few gear changes and were essentially cruised to victory with little real competition, where the Tasman cars were essentially marginally lower power F1 cars, as difficult to drive as GP cars on unforgiving very dangerous narrow tracks. Amon finished with four wins, two-thirds and one retirement, but in Formula One his poor luck continued. Despite six starts from top-six positions, he was only able to achieve a third-place at the Dutch GP. Ferrari's F1 V12 engine was too unreliable and although its replacement had proven very fast in testing, it had suffered many mechanical breakages. Amon had no reason to believe it would be any more dependable than the V12, so although the new engine was clearly more powerful, he decided to leave Ferrari for a Cosworth DFV powered team. Ironically, the new flat-12 engine would become one of the best Formula One engines of the 1970s. Jacky Ickx, Amon's old teammate did return to Ferrari for 1970, after a successful sabbatical with Brabham gained Ickx second in the 1969 World Championship. Ickx saw Enzo Ferrari had secured huge backing from Fiat who had taken partial ownership of the Marque, and believed Ferrari would be a renewed team and an effective proposition. Amon was more influenced by views of Jackie Stewart and Jochen Rindt, who believed it was essential to be Ford DFV-powered to be competitive. In addition to Formula One, Amon also drove for Ferrari in the 1969 International Championship for Makes, partnering Pedro Rodriguez to a fourth place in the BOAC 500 at Brands Hatch and coming second at the 12 Hours of Sebring, but retiring from the 1000km Nürburgring and 1000km Monza races, all in the Ferrari 312P sportscar. He also drove in a few Can-Am races. His last race for Ferrari would be the 1970 1000 km Monza, where he finished as runner-up. 1970s 1970 For the 1970 Formula One season, Amon made what was to be the first of several moves to smaller, newer teams. March Engineering had been formed the previous year to build custom chassis for Formulas 2 and 3, but quickly moved into F1, designing and building the March 701. Amon and Siffert were signed as drivers, with IndyCar driver Mario Andretti making an occasional appearance in a third car. March also sold their 701 chassis to Tyrrell, where Jackie Stewart drove it to its first victory in that year's Spanish GP. Amon won the pre-season Silverstone International Trophy, but once the F1 season began he found himself prevented from converting good qualifying positions into good results. He qualified second behind Stewart's Tyrrell-March for the season-opening South African Grand Prix only for his own March to overheat within fourteen laps. Amon then qualified sixth for the Spanish Grand Prix only for his March's Ford-Cosworth DFV engine to expire within ten laps. He qualified and ran second in the 1970 Monaco Grand Prix until his suspension failed twenty laps from the finish. This was the race where Amon refused to drive unless his entry number was changed from 18 – the number under which his then teammate Lorenzo Bandini had crashed and died in Monaco – to 28. Amon's close second place from a third-place start at the 1970 Belgian Grand Prix finally gave the March works team their first points finish. At that race, Amon set fastest lap at over 152 miles per hour, a lap record which still stands as of 2016, as it was the last race on the full-length Spa-Francorchamps circuit. However, after qualifying fourth for the next race, the Dutch Grand Prix, his car's clutch broke after just one lap. Amon duplicated his Belgian result at the 1970 French Grand Prix,. After a disappointing performance in the British GP at Brands Hatch where Amon finished fifth after being outqualified by tyro Ronnie Peterson in a private 701 on the same tyres, conflict with team boss Max Mosley over the non-delivery of three-quarters of Amon's expected pay for the season saw him provided with inferior DFVs and two backmarker 7th places in Austria and Italy, Amon finished the season strongly with strong drives to third at Mosport, fifth at Watkins Glen and fourth in Mexico. At Watkins Glen in the USGP he was robbed of a probably certain victory, in the opinion of March designer Robin Herd, by a puncture. By the end of the year, disagreements with March co-founders Mosley and Robin Herd meant that Amon had decided to move to another relatively new team, Matra. 1971 In 1971, Amon, now driving for the Matra factory team, once again scored a pre-season victory, this time at the Argentine Grand Prix. Once the Formula One season had begun, he managed to convert a third-place start at the Spanish GP into a third-place podium finish and scored a couple of fifth places in the South African and French GPs. Apart from these results, however, his run of poor F1 returns continued. He had a major accident at the Nürburgring and it sidelined him for the next race at the Österreichring. At the Italian GP he qualified in pole position and despite a poor start to the race looked as if he would capitalise on it – until the visor on his helmet became detached. Amon had to slow to avoid risking a major accident, thereby allowing other drivers to catch and overtake him. He finished the race in sixth place, scoring just one Championship point. During the year Amon also competed in the non-championship Questor Grand Prix at the new Ontario Motor Speedway, where he qualified second and, despite suffering a puncture during the race, managed to finish fourth. In the Tasman Series Amon started from fourth at the Levin Circuit and in the race, he battled with David Oxton and John Cannon but managed to finish third. Amon's third race at Wigram Airfield starting fifth and spun at the start to drop him to the back of the field but managed to climb up to fifth. 1972 In the 1972 Formula One season, Amon, again driving for Matra achieved a handful of points-scoring finishes, but only one podium appearance, at the French GP. Here he achieved the fifth and final pole position of his career and was leading the race until a puncture forced him to pit. However, he climbed back through the field, breaking the circuit's lap record to finish third. With the money he had made from motorsport, Amon decided to set up a racing engine firm with former BRM engineer Aubrey Woods. Amon Racing Engines supplied Formula 2 engines to a few drivers, but the company quickly became too expensive to run and was sold to March for a loss. Matra decided to end their participation in Formula One at the end of 1972, so Amon found himself looking to return to March as a driver. The place, however, was given to Jean-Pierre Jarier, purportedly for financial reasons. Amon therefore signed for another recently formed F1 team, Tecno. 1973 Tecno had entered F1 the previous year, having been a successful chassis-builder for other Formulæ and had developed a potentially powerful Flat 12 for F1. Their first year in F1 proved to be dismal, however with considerable backing from Martini Rossi they had jumped at the chance to sign Amon, and allocate David Yorke the former Vanwall and Gulf GT40 Team Manager to run the team and commission two new chassis designs by former Lotus and McLaren mechanic. Alan McCall who had worked on Clark and Hulme's F1 cars and unproven, British designer Gordon Fowell for a more radical back up design, in the hope he would help transform their performance. While McCalls car was built rapidly, testing it was more time-consuming and after its non-appearance, for the Spanish GP, Amon and team manager David Yorke met with Enzo Ferrari to see if Amon could be released from his contract to develop the new Ferrari B3 for Ickx and Mezarrio, in a supposedly one off GP drive at Monaco. Yorke rejected the release, and Amon admits he would not have left Ferrari if offered the drive for a season. Unfortunately, the team went from bad to worse and wasn't able to field the Tecno PA123/6 until the fifth GP of the season, the Belgian GP. Amon managed to finish in sixth position. At Monaco the car qualified a useful 12th and chassis felt good but Chris was unhappy with the car. He decided to concentrate on the undeveloped Gordon Fowell Goral car. This was against the view of the Techno team and the Pederanzi engine builders and Martini Rossi who required the car and driver to appear at races Amon commented at the time that it was "the best chassis I've ever sat in", it too proved virtually undriveable. Amon refused to drive the McCall, Techno in the Swedish or German Gps and withdrew from the Austrian GP after qualifying. By the time of the Austrian GP, four races from the end of the season, Amon's patience had run out and he left the team. He would later claim that the months he spent with the team "felt like ten [seasons]". Tyrrell offered Amon a third car – the 005 – in which to drive the last two races of the season. After a mediocre first outing at the Canadian GP, he and Jackie Stewart withdrew from the final race of the year, the United States GP, following the death of their teammate François Cevert during qualifying. 1974 For the 1974 F1 season, Amon revived Chris Amon Racing. Gordon Fowell designed the car, the AF101, which featured a single central fuel tank, titanium torsion bars and a forward driving position. Structurally, however, it proved to be weak and was not ready for an F1 appearance until the fourth race of the season, the Spanish GP. Amon was only able to qualify 23rd, thanks to brake-disc vibration that only became worse with the tyres for the wet race that followed. Despite cautious driving, a brake shaft finally broke and Amon was forced to retire after 22 laps. Following further work and testing, Amon returned for the Monaco GP and qualified twentieth, but, thanks to mechanical problems, he was unable to start the race. Further problems and illness meant Amon was not able to reappear with the F101 until the Italian GP, three races from the end of the season, but this time he was unable to qualify. That sealed the fate of both the car and Chris Amon Racing, leaving Amon to drive the season's last two races with the faltering BRM team. He would later reveal that he had turned down a chance to join the Brabham team earlier in the season. 1975 Amon contested the 1975 F5000 Tasman series against only local Australasian drivers, although Graham McRae, Warwick Brown and Kevin Bartlett were acknowledged internationally. Amon qualified on the front row of three of the four New Zealand rounds and scored a victory at Teretonga in January 1975 in rainy conditions by 24.2 seconds. In the Australian rounds, the competition was always harder with more good cars and the locals on their own tracks. Amon had a frustrating series of races unable to pass, South Australian Johnnie Walker, in a superior Lola T332 chassis with Repco-engineered V8. At Surfers Paradise, running from the back of the grid he managed to eventually pass Walker by widening the braking zone in the only corner where overtaking was usually possible. Amon brushed the edge of the track on repeated laps, got extra grip and passed Walker to take the lead. He had been forced to miss most of the practice session, when Customs seized his car's gearbox. In the race, the brilliant effort went for nothing as the Chev engine blew. At Oran Park and Adelaide he followed Walker the whole way to 4th and 3rd unable to pass. In the final deciding race for the Tasman Series with Brown, Walker and Lawrence still in contention, Walker lost his T332 on the first lap and it demolished on wooden barriers surrounding Sandown's car and horse racing tracks. Amon was never in contention and finished 4th. Amon intended to compete in F5000 in both Europe and the US in 1975 but started in only one round of both series, managing a pole in one Shellsport round in the UK and a 4th place overall at the Long Beach GP in a two heat race. He used different Talon F5000 cars for both races. The speed he showed in qualifying for a couple of UK F5000 races encouraged the small Ensign team to give him a race. Mo Nunn the Ensign team owner had been a Lotus F3 driver in 1966 and the Dave Baldwin designed chassis was in many ways a lightweight Lotus F1, which Ronnie Peterson wanted to test in 1975 out of frustration with his old 72 and which could have been used by Colin Chapman had he not decided to concentrate on developing chassis which would use ground effect technology, the Lotus 77 design for 1976 which was in many ways a test vehicle for the development of concepts, including the de facto legalisation of technology like plastic sliding skirts, introduced on Andretti's 77 from the 1976 Canadian Grand Prix, that would be used in future Lotus wing cars the Lotus 78 and Lotus 79. Apart from these successes, Amon's racing career seemed once again to have stalled. Apparently a chance meeting with Mo Nunn of Ensign Racing led to the Ensign drive, but in fact Mo Nunn thought his new N175 a very fast car and did not view the two Dutch drivers favoured by the Dutch HB Security company who sponsored Ensign fast enough. Gijs van Lennep, the 1973 European F5000 Champion in a Surtees TS11 who had won Le Mans in 1971 and 1976 was a very good driver but also one of the last racing aristocrats. Van Lennep, qualified the car on its debut in the French GP at Paul Ricard and finished 6th in the German GP at Nürburgring, and was faster on both circuits than Patrick Nève or Amon were in 1976. Amon managed 7th in the non-championship Swiss GP at Dijon chasing James Hunt debuting the disappointing Hesketh 308C and 12th in two GP drives in the Ensign N175 at the Austrian and Italian GPs. At Monza after a long pit stop he finally ran at competitive pace, running 4 laps down but keeping pace with the leading Ferrari 312T of Niki Lauda for a number of laps. Progressive evaluation of the possibilities of what was slowing the N175 led Amon to change the airbox alignment on the day of the Italian GP and this resulted in a 2-second gain (much like the change in air cooler position that lost and gained two seconds on Hunt's McLaren M23 resolved by the 1976 French GP). Ironically Amon never raced the N175 again and the high airboxes had been banned by the time N176 ran at Jarama the following year, but the flash of testing and driving genius was enough to give Amon another chance. Although the results were unremarkable, he and Nunn worked well together, so Amon joined Ensign for the 1976 F1 season. 1976 Ensign's first race of the season was the South African GP where Amon qualified 18th and showed a revival of form, climbing to seventh place, in the old Ensign N174 and contesting sixth with Mario Andretti in the Parnelli Ford, in the last laps before a last minute refueling stop left him 14th. Thereafter results began to improve, with Amon qualifying 17th and finishing eighth in the USA West GP; qualifying tenth and finishing fifth in the Spanish GP; and then qualifying eighth for the Belgian GP. More points then seemed likely from the race until his car lost a wheel 19 laps from the finish and Amon was lucky to escape unhurt from the ensuing accident. He then achieved a third-place grid position start for the Swedish GP using a Nicholson rebuilt Cosworth for the first time and in the race looked as if he would join Tyrrell drivers Jody Scheckter and Patrick Depailler on the podium, until suspension failure threw him from the track after 38 laps. Amon had again been lucky to escape serious injury and decided to miss the next race, the French GP. He returned for the British GP, qualifying in sixth and running fourth in the race when his Ford-Cosworth DFV engine developed a water leak. Rather than risk losing an engine, his team called him in to retire. At the German GP problems dogged his attempts to qualify well, but it was Niki Lauda's crash during the second lap of the race that had a far greater impact. Amon refused to restart the race and Nunn fired him from the team. Amon declared his retirement from the sport and returned to New Zealand. "I'd seen too many people fried in racing cars at that stage. When you've driven past Bandini, Schlesser, Courage and Williamson, another shunt like that was simply too much. It was a personal decision..." (Amon, on his retirement in 1976)However, Walter Wolf contacted Amon and persuaded him to drive for his Wolf–Williams team in the North American races near the end of the season. After recording some promising times in preparation for the Canadian GP, however, Amon was involved in a heavy collision with another car during qualifying and once again was lucky to walk away unharmed. He then did not take part in either the Canadian or United States Grands Prix. 1977 Amon turned down an offer of a full-time F1 drive for 1977, but did attempt a return to Can-Am racing in 1977 with a Wolf-Dallara WD1. However, after only one race he quit, saying "I'm just not enjoying this anymore". His place was taken by the young and then unknown Canadian Gilles Villeneuve, whom Amon would, later that year, recommend to Enzo Ferrari. In the meantime, Amon returned once again to New Zealand, this time to retire from F1 motor racing for good. 2000s 2003 Amon came out of retirement for a one-off appearance in the 2003 Dunlop Targa New Zealand with motorsport commentator Murray Walker as his navigator. The pair completed the week-long Auckland to Wellington Tarmac Rally in a Toyota Camry Sportivo, the same car previously used by Walker and Colin Bond in Australia's Targa Tasmania. Retirement After his retirement from F1, Amon dedicated himself to running the family farm in New Zealand's Manawatu District for many years. After retiring from farming, he lived in Taupo in New Zealand's North Island. In the early 1980s he became more well known in New Zealand from test-driving vehicles on the TV motoring series Motor Show and later consulted for Toyota New Zealand, tuning the 1984 Toyota Corolla and subsequent cars for sale there. He also appeared in TV commercials for the company, where much was made of the acclaim he won from Enzo Ferrari. Amon participated in the 2004 EnergyWise Rally where he won ahead of Brian Cowan. Amon drove a Toyota Prius for the event. In the 1993 Queen's Birthday Honours, Amon was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, for services to motor sport. Amon was involved in the design of the upgraded Taupo Motorsport Park circuit, used for the New Zealand round of the 2006–07 A1 Grand Prix season in January 2007. At the New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing in 2011, Amon's life and career were honoured with a selection of his cars being driven and also used the event to raise funds for the Bruce McLaren trust. Amon was also honoured at the festival in January 2013. Death Amon died in Rotorua Hospital on 3 August 2016, aged 73, of cancer. He was survived by his wife (they married in 1977) their three children and their grandchildren. One of his sons, James, is a qualified High Performance personal trainer. He trained Central Districts Stags cricket team, and was revealed to be Brendon Hartley's personal trainer. Legacy Despite never winning a championship Formula One Grand Prix, Amon won eight non-championship GPs, the Silverstone International Trophy, the 1000 km Monza, the Daytona 24 Hours, the Tasman Series and, perhaps most significant of all, the famous 24 Heures du Mans (alongside Bruce McLaren). These races included many of Amon's otherwise more successful fellow Formula One drivers. Amon also remains the only driver from New Zealand and Oceania to have raced for Scuderia Ferrari in Formula One. In Formula One, Chris Amon took part in 96 Grands Prix, achieving 5 poles, leading 183 laps in 7 races, reaching the podium 11 times and scoring a total of 83 Championship points. Amon holds the record for the most different makes of car raced by a Formula 1 World Championship driver, with thirteen. A biography Forza Amon by journalist Eoin Young charts Amon's racing career and gives some insights into his personal life. The book makes clear one point on which Amon himself disagrees with most commentators, the issue of his bad luck. Amon has pointed out on several occasions that he competed for a decade and a half in Formula One and survived some serious accidents, notably in 1976, whilst others, including friends like Bruce McLaren, suffered serious injury and death. In 2008, motorsport journalist Alan Henry rated Chris Amon as his 13th greatest driver. Reflecting on the 1968 racing death of Jim Clark, Amon said: "If this can happen to Jimmy, what chance do the rest of us have? I think we all felt that. It seemed like we'd lost our leader." In 1995, Amon was inducted into the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame. Amon's name has been given to the Toyota Racing Series driver's championship trophy, and the International Scholarship to support drivers who win his trophy to further their careers in single-seater racing. The Toyota Racing Series serves as motorsport's version of "winter ball" in New Zealand during January and February. Following his death, his name was also lent to the Manfeild Autocourse in Feilding, Manawatu. Racing record Formula One World Championship results (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap) Non-Championship Formula One results (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap) Complete Tasman Series results (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap) Complete 24 Hours of Le Mans results References External links Bruce McLaren Trust Official site Trio At The Top – a documentary about Bruce McLaren, Denny Hulme and Chris Amon on NZ On Screen Chris Amon 8W-Forix; Tom Prankard; 1 October 2000 New Zealand racing drivers New Zealand Formula One drivers Amon Formula One drivers BRM Formula One drivers Cooper Formula One drivers Ensign Formula One drivers Ferrari Formula One drivers March Formula One drivers Matra Formula One drivers Reg Parnell Racing Formula One drivers Tecno Formula One drivers Tyrrell Formula One drivers Williams Formula One drivers Formula One team owners 24 Hours of Le Mans drivers 24 Hours of Le Mans winning drivers 12 Hours of Reims drivers 24 Hours of Daytona drivers World Sportscar Championship drivers Tasman Series drivers New Zealand Members of the Order of the British Empire People from Bulls 1943 births 2016 deaths

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When did he retire?

When did Chris Amon retire from F1?

Chris Amon

After his retirement from F1, Amon dedicated himself to running the family farm in New Zealand's Manawatu District for many years. After retiring from farming, he lived in Taupo in New Zealand's North Island. In the early 1980s he became more well known in New Zealand from test-driving vehicles on the TV motoring series Motor Show and later consulted for Toyota New Zealand, tuning the 1984 Toyota Corolla and subsequent cars for sale there. He also appeared in TV commercials for the company, where much was made of the acclaim he won from Enzo Ferrari. Amon participated in the 2004 EnergyWise Rally where he won ahead of Brian Cowan. Amon drove a Toyota Prius for the event. Amon was involved in the design of the upgraded Taupo Motorsport Park circuit, used for the New Zealand round of the 2006-07 A1 Grand Prix season in January 2007. At the New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing in 2011, Amon's life and career were honoured with a selection of his cars being driven and also used the event to raise funds for the Bruce McLaren trust. Amon was also honoured at the festival in January 2013. Amon died in Rotorua Hospital on 3 August 2016, aged 73, of cancer. He was survived by his wife (they married in 1977) their three children and their grandchildren. One of his sons, James, is a qualified High Performance personal trainer. He trained Central Districts Stags cricket team, and was revealed to be Brendon Hartley's personal trainer. CANNOTANSWER

CANNOTANSWER

Christopher Arthur Amon (20 July 1943 – 3 August 2016) was a New Zealand motor racing driver. He was active in Formula One racing in the 1960s and 1970s and is widely regarded as one of the best F1 drivers never to win a championship Grand Prix. His reputation for bad luck was such that fellow driver Mario Andretti once joked that "if he became an undertaker, people would stop dying". Former Ferrari Technical Director Mauro Forghieri stated that Amon was "by far the best test driver I have ever worked with. He had all the qualities to be a World Champion but bad luck just wouldn't let him be". Apart from driving, Chris Amon also ran his own Formula One team for a short period in 1974. Away from Formula One, Amon had some success in sports car racing, teaming with co-driver Bruce McLaren to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans race in . Early life Amon was born in Bulls, and attended Whanganui Collegiate School. He was the only child of wealthy sheep-owners Ngaio and Betty Amon. He learned to drive at the age of six, taught by a farm worker on the family farm. On leaving school, he persuaded his father to buy him an Austin A40 Special, which he entered in some minor local races and hillclimbs along with practice on the family farm. He progressed to a 1.5-litre Cooper and then an old 2.5-litre Maserati 250F, but only began to draw attention when he drove the Cooper-Climax T51 which Bruce McLaren had used to win his maiden Grand Prix. In 1962 Amon entered the Cooper for the New Zealand winter series, but was hampered by mechanical problems. However, Scuderia Veloce entered him in a similar car, and, in the rain at Lakeside, he performed well. One of the spectators there was the English racing driver Reg Parnell who persuaded Amon to come to England and race for his team. In a test at Goodwood Amon continued to impress and was on the pace in the Goodwood International Trophy and Aintree 200 pre-season races. Racing career 1960s 1963 For the 1963 Formula One season the Parnell team were using the year old Lola Mk4A, powered by 1962 specification Climax V8 engines. Amon was teamed with the very experienced Maurice Trintignant for the first race of the season at Monaco and his Grand Prix career started with what was to become typical bad luck: Trintignant's Climax developed a misfire, so he took over Amon's car. At the 1963 Belgian Grand Prix, Amon was partnered by Lucien Bianchi and started ahead of him from 15th position. After nine laps, however, an oil fire ended his race. He continued to experience mechanical problems at the Dutch, Mexican and German Grands Prix; and after an accident in practice for the Italian Grand Prix left him hanging out of his car's cockpit with three broken ribs, he missed both the Italian and United States rounds. Amon usually qualified in the midfield and generally outpaced his teammates, who included his good friend Mike Hailwood. His best results of the year were seventh at the French and British Grands Prix. During this time, however, Amon's social life was attracting as much attention as his driving. He was a member of the Ditton Road Flyers, the social set named after the road in London where Amon shared an apartment with American Peter Revson, Hailwood and Tony Maggs. Parnell was nonetheless impressed with Amon's results in what was regarded as less-than-competitive machinery and promoted him to team leader. Parnell died from peritonitis in January 1964 and his son Tim took over the team. 1964 In a series of four pre-season races in Britain and Italy, Amon recorded three fifth places at Snetterton, Silverstone and Syracuse. He failed to qualify for the first F1 race of the season, the Monaco GP, but at the next race, the Dutch GP, he scored his first World Championship points. The rest of his season, however, was blighted by mechanical problems. 1965 Parnell was offered BRM engines for 1965, but only if it ran Richard Attwood as its regular driver. Reluctantly, Parnell agreed and Attwood took Amon's place. Spotting an opportunity, Bruce McLaren quickly signed Amon for his new McLaren team, but when no second McLaren F1 car materialised, Amon could only drive in sports car races. At the French GP Amon rejoined Parnell to stand in for an injured Attwood. Amon also competed in a Formula Two race in Stuttgart and won. He returned to Germany for the German GP as second Parnell driver, but mechanical failure again forced an early retirement. His last drive before Attwood's return, a non-championship race in Enna, Sicily, also ended in retirement. 1966 During 1966 Amon continued to race for McLaren in Can-Am. He was intended to drive the second McLaren M2B but difficulties with engine supply meant that the team never made the intended expansion to two cars. (James Garner's character Pete Aron's helmet and car livery in the film Grand Prix were modelled on Amon driving a McLaren, which caused the movie makers to have to encourage other cars to be painted in the 'Yamura' colours and other drivers (Bruce McLaren included) to wear Amon-style helmets.) However, an opportunity arose to drive for the Cooper F1 team after Richie Ginther left them for Honda. Amon drove for Cooper at the French GP and was scheduled to drive for them for the rest of the season, until the more successful John Surtees left Scuderia Ferrari to join Cooper and Amon found himself dropped. Amon made one other F1 appearance during the year, driving a Brabham BT11 powered by an old 2-litre BRM engine at the Italian GP under the banner of "Chris Amon Racing". He failed to qualify. Amon did however, score his biggest success to date when he partnered Bruce McLaren in a 7-litre Ford GT40 Mark II and Ken Miles to Ford's dead-heat "photo-finish" after Miles was instructed to slow down despite leading at the Le Mans 24-hour race, spearheading a formation finish. He subsequently received an invitation to meet Enzo Ferrari at the Ferrari home in Maranello, where he signed to race for Ferrari in 1967 alongside Lorenzo Bandini, Mike Parkes and Ludovico Scarfiotti. 1967 Amon's first year with Ferrari did not begin auspiciously. En route to Brands Hatch for the pre-season Formula One Race of Champions, he crashed his road car and, following race practice, had to withdraw. Tragedy then struck the Ferrari team when Bandini died following a crash during the 1967 Monaco Grand Prix, Mike Parkes broke both his legs at the Belgian Grand Prix and, in the aftermath, Ludovico Scarfiotti went into temporary retirement. Amon, therefore, became Ferrari's only driver for the rest of the season, until joined by Jonathan Williams for the final race in Mexico. Amon scored his first podium in his first official outing for the Scuderia in Monaco and at the end of 1967 had achieved four third places finishing fifth in the Drivers' Championship, in what was going to be the most successful season of his career. Amon's Ferrari contract also included sports car racing and he began 1967 by winning the Daytona 24 Hours and 1000km Monza events with Bandini in the 4-litre Ferrari 330-P4. He finished the year partnering Jackie Stewart to a second place at the BOAC 500, thereby clinching the manufacturer's world championship for Ferrari by one point over Porsche. 1968 1968 was the year aerodynamics first played a significant role in F1 car design and Amon worked with engineer Mauro Forghieri to place aerofoils on the Ferrari 312. In January 1968 Amon had returned home to New Zealand and Australia to compete in the 1968 Tasman Series which was used by many of the top Formula One drivers as a warm up series to the World Championship. Ferrari had been interested in the series for several years and in 1965 had reengineered 2.4 Dino engines used by Mike Hawthorn, Peter Collins and Phil Hill in 1958–60 with more torque and mid speed power for the planned use of team leader Surtees in the 1966 Tasman Series. After a late season crash in US Can-Am racing by Surtees, the entry was withdrawn but consideration was given to using NZ Gold star champion Jim Palmer in a semi-works Ferrari entry in the 1967 Tasman Series as it was viewed in a 2.4 car he would be competitive with Clark and Stewart in 2-litre F1 cars. Palmer had run world-class times in the 1966 Tasman Series, particularly in the Pukekohe practice and Longford race, and was tested in Italy at the same time as Amon by Ferrari, and ran competitive times at Modena but for whatever reason Ferrari did not compete in 1967 series. For the 1968 series Ferrari decided to use the 2.4 engines with a new Dino 166 F2 chassis rather than a downsized 3-litre V12. Using the 246T Amon won the first two rounds of the Tasman Series, including the 1968 New Zealand Grand Prix, before narrowly losing the series to the Lotus-Ford of Jim Clark. The Dino 246 Tasmania was better handling than Clark's Lotus 49T which was still wingless and a difficult proposition. Impressed by Amon's driving in the NZ rounds, Ferrari dispatched a new four-valve version of the 2.4 V6 for the Australian rounds and this gave another 15 hp, but with lesser reliability which, combined with the fact Clark was the best driver in the world at the time, cost Amon the series, although in the final round at Sandown Park he duelled wheel to wheel with Clark before being pipped at the line. After the first race of the F1 season in South Africa, Amon achieved pole positions in three of the following four races (at the Spanish, Belgian and Dutch Grands Prix) but ever-present mechanical problems meant he secured only a single Championship point from them. Throughout the rest of the season he never qualified lower than fifth place and nearly scored victories at the British and Canadian rounds and he suffered a 100 mph crash in Italy which demolished his car. In Britain, he duelled to the line with Jo Siffert's Lotus 49B and in Canada he dominated the race despite a malfunctioning clutch. Seventeen laps from the finish, however, his car's transmission failed and a distraught Amon had to be consoled by Jacky Ickx. From at least ten promising starts that season he was only able to finish five races and score ten Championship points. His best finish was second place to Siffert's Lotus-Cosworth at the British Grand Prix. Outside F1, Amon was runner-up in the Formula Two race at Zolder, Belgium, testing the Dino 166 F2. He also came third in that year's BRDC International Trophy. 1969 Amon began 1969 with success driving the Dino engined 246 Tasmania in the Tasman Series that included winning both the New Zealand and Australian Grands Prix. In straight fights, he beat new Gold Leaf Lotus team leader, Jochen Rindt, into second in the races at Pukekohe and Sandown. He would ultimately win the seven race Tasman Series, probably the best of the seven-year 2.5-litre international formula series in this country and the nearest to World Championship level racing in New Zealand, with ferocious competition between Rindt, Graham Hill, Amon and Williams driver Piers Courage. It was actually much more serious racing than the McLaren dominated Can-Am series in the US in which the big sports cars required few gear changes and were essentially cruised to victory with little real competition, where the Tasman cars were essentially marginally lower power F1 cars, as difficult to drive as GP cars on unforgiving very dangerous narrow tracks. Amon finished with four wins, two-thirds and one retirement, but in Formula One his poor luck continued. Despite six starts from top-six positions, he was only able to achieve a third-place at the Dutch GP. Ferrari's F1 V12 engine was too unreliable and although its replacement had proven very fast in testing, it had suffered many mechanical breakages. Amon had no reason to believe it would be any more dependable than the V12, so although the new engine was clearly more powerful, he decided to leave Ferrari for a Cosworth DFV powered team. Ironically, the new flat-12 engine would become one of the best Formula One engines of the 1970s. Jacky Ickx, Amon's old teammate did return to Ferrari for 1970, after a successful sabbatical with Brabham gained Ickx second in the 1969 World Championship. Ickx saw Enzo Ferrari had secured huge backing from Fiat who had taken partial ownership of the Marque, and believed Ferrari would be a renewed team and an effective proposition. Amon was more influenced by views of Jackie Stewart and Jochen Rindt, who believed it was essential to be Ford DFV-powered to be competitive. In addition to Formula One, Amon also drove for Ferrari in the 1969 International Championship for Makes, partnering Pedro Rodriguez to a fourth place in the BOAC 500 at Brands Hatch and coming second at the 12 Hours of Sebring, but retiring from the 1000km Nürburgring and 1000km Monza races, all in the Ferrari 312P sportscar. He also drove in a few Can-Am races. His last race for Ferrari would be the 1970 1000 km Monza, where he finished as runner-up. 1970s 1970 For the 1970 Formula One season, Amon made what was to be the first of several moves to smaller, newer teams. March Engineering had been formed the previous year to build custom chassis for Formulas 2 and 3, but quickly moved into F1, designing and building the March 701. Amon and Siffert were signed as drivers, with IndyCar driver Mario Andretti making an occasional appearance in a third car. March also sold their 701 chassis to Tyrrell, where Jackie Stewart drove it to its first victory in that year's Spanish GP. Amon won the pre-season Silverstone International Trophy, but once the F1 season began he found himself prevented from converting good qualifying positions into good results. He qualified second behind Stewart's Tyrrell-March for the season-opening South African Grand Prix only for his own March to overheat within fourteen laps. Amon then qualified sixth for the Spanish Grand Prix only for his March's Ford-Cosworth DFV engine to expire within ten laps. He qualified and ran second in the 1970 Monaco Grand Prix until his suspension failed twenty laps from the finish. This was the race where Amon refused to drive unless his entry number was changed from 18 – the number under which his then teammate Lorenzo Bandini had crashed and died in Monaco – to 28. Amon's close second place from a third-place start at the 1970 Belgian Grand Prix finally gave the March works team their first points finish. At that race, Amon set fastest lap at over 152 miles per hour, a lap record which still stands as of 2016, as it was the last race on the full-length Spa-Francorchamps circuit. However, after qualifying fourth for the next race, the Dutch Grand Prix, his car's clutch broke after just one lap. Amon duplicated his Belgian result at the 1970 French Grand Prix,. After a disappointing performance in the British GP at Brands Hatch where Amon finished fifth after being outqualified by tyro Ronnie Peterson in a private 701 on the same tyres, conflict with team boss Max Mosley over the non-delivery of three-quarters of Amon's expected pay for the season saw him provided with inferior DFVs and two backmarker 7th places in Austria and Italy, Amon finished the season strongly with strong drives to third at Mosport, fifth at Watkins Glen and fourth in Mexico. At Watkins Glen in the USGP he was robbed of a probably certain victory, in the opinion of March designer Robin Herd, by a puncture. By the end of the year, disagreements with March co-founders Mosley and Robin Herd meant that Amon had decided to move to another relatively new team, Matra. 1971 In 1971, Amon, now driving for the Matra factory team, once again scored a pre-season victory, this time at the Argentine Grand Prix. Once the Formula One season had begun, he managed to convert a third-place start at the Spanish GP into a third-place podium finish and scored a couple of fifth places in the South African and French GPs. Apart from these results, however, his run of poor F1 returns continued. He had a major accident at the Nürburgring and it sidelined him for the next race at the Österreichring. At the Italian GP he qualified in pole position and despite a poor start to the race looked as if he would capitalise on it – until the visor on his helmet became detached. Amon had to slow to avoid risking a major accident, thereby allowing other drivers to catch and overtake him. He finished the race in sixth place, scoring just one Championship point. During the year Amon also competed in the non-championship Questor Grand Prix at the new Ontario Motor Speedway, where he qualified second and, despite suffering a puncture during the race, managed to finish fourth. In the Tasman Series Amon started from fourth at the Levin Circuit and in the race, he battled with David Oxton and John Cannon but managed to finish third. Amon's third race at Wigram Airfield starting fifth and spun at the start to drop him to the back of the field but managed to climb up to fifth. 1972 In the 1972 Formula One season, Amon, again driving for Matra achieved a handful of points-scoring finishes, but only one podium appearance, at the French GP. Here he achieved the fifth and final pole position of his career and was leading the race until a puncture forced him to pit. However, he climbed back through the field, breaking the circuit's lap record to finish third. With the money he had made from motorsport, Amon decided to set up a racing engine firm with former BRM engineer Aubrey Woods. Amon Racing Engines supplied Formula 2 engines to a few drivers, but the company quickly became too expensive to run and was sold to March for a loss. Matra decided to end their participation in Formula One at the end of 1972, so Amon found himself looking to return to March as a driver. The place, however, was given to Jean-Pierre Jarier, purportedly for financial reasons. Amon therefore signed for another recently formed F1 team, Tecno. 1973 Tecno had entered F1 the previous year, having been a successful chassis-builder for other Formulæ and had developed a potentially powerful Flat 12 for F1. Their first year in F1 proved to be dismal, however with considerable backing from Martini Rossi they had jumped at the chance to sign Amon, and allocate David Yorke the former Vanwall and Gulf GT40 Team Manager to run the team and commission two new chassis designs by former Lotus and McLaren mechanic. Alan McCall who had worked on Clark and Hulme's F1 cars and unproven, British designer Gordon Fowell for a more radical back up design, in the hope he would help transform their performance. While McCalls car was built rapidly, testing it was more time-consuming and after its non-appearance, for the Spanish GP, Amon and team manager David Yorke met with Enzo Ferrari to see if Amon could be released from his contract to develop the new Ferrari B3 for Ickx and Mezarrio, in a supposedly one off GP drive at Monaco. Yorke rejected the release, and Amon admits he would not have left Ferrari if offered the drive for a season. Unfortunately, the team went from bad to worse and wasn't able to field the Tecno PA123/6 until the fifth GP of the season, the Belgian GP. Amon managed to finish in sixth position. At Monaco the car qualified a useful 12th and chassis felt good but Chris was unhappy with the car. He decided to concentrate on the undeveloped Gordon Fowell Goral car. This was against the view of the Techno team and the Pederanzi engine builders and Martini Rossi who required the car and driver to appear at races Amon commented at the time that it was "the best chassis I've ever sat in", it too proved virtually undriveable. Amon refused to drive the McCall, Techno in the Swedish or German Gps and withdrew from the Austrian GP after qualifying. By the time of the Austrian GP, four races from the end of the season, Amon's patience had run out and he left the team. He would later claim that the months he spent with the team "felt like ten [seasons]". Tyrrell offered Amon a third car – the 005 – in which to drive the last two races of the season. After a mediocre first outing at the Canadian GP, he and Jackie Stewart withdrew from the final race of the year, the United States GP, following the death of their teammate François Cevert during qualifying. 1974 For the 1974 F1 season, Amon revived Chris Amon Racing. Gordon Fowell designed the car, the AF101, which featured a single central fuel tank, titanium torsion bars and a forward driving position. Structurally, however, it proved to be weak and was not ready for an F1 appearance until the fourth race of the season, the Spanish GP. Amon was only able to qualify 23rd, thanks to brake-disc vibration that only became worse with the tyres for the wet race that followed. Despite cautious driving, a brake shaft finally broke and Amon was forced to retire after 22 laps. Following further work and testing, Amon returned for the Monaco GP and qualified twentieth, but, thanks to mechanical problems, he was unable to start the race. Further problems and illness meant Amon was not able to reappear with the F101 until the Italian GP, three races from the end of the season, but this time he was unable to qualify. That sealed the fate of both the car and Chris Amon Racing, leaving Amon to drive the season's last two races with the faltering BRM team. He would later reveal that he had turned down a chance to join the Brabham team earlier in the season. 1975 Amon contested the 1975 F5000 Tasman series against only local Australasian drivers, although Graham McRae, Warwick Brown and Kevin Bartlett were acknowledged internationally. Amon qualified on the front row of three of the four New Zealand rounds and scored a victory at Teretonga in January 1975 in rainy conditions by 24.2 seconds. In the Australian rounds, the competition was always harder with more good cars and the locals on their own tracks. Amon had a frustrating series of races unable to pass, South Australian Johnnie Walker, in a superior Lola T332 chassis with Repco-engineered V8. At Surfers Paradise, running from the back of the grid he managed to eventually pass Walker by widening the braking zone in the only corner where overtaking was usually possible. Amon brushed the edge of the track on repeated laps, got extra grip and passed Walker to take the lead. He had been forced to miss most of the practice session, when Customs seized his car's gearbox. In the race, the brilliant effort went for nothing as the Chev engine blew. At Oran Park and Adelaide he followed Walker the whole way to 4th and 3rd unable to pass. In the final deciding race for the Tasman Series with Brown, Walker and Lawrence still in contention, Walker lost his T332 on the first lap and it demolished on wooden barriers surrounding Sandown's car and horse racing tracks. Amon was never in contention and finished 4th. Amon intended to compete in F5000 in both Europe and the US in 1975 but started in only one round of both series, managing a pole in one Shellsport round in the UK and a 4th place overall at the Long Beach GP in a two heat race. He used different Talon F5000 cars for both races. The speed he showed in qualifying for a couple of UK F5000 races encouraged the small Ensign team to give him a race. Mo Nunn the Ensign team owner had been a Lotus F3 driver in 1966 and the Dave Baldwin designed chassis was in many ways a lightweight Lotus F1, which Ronnie Peterson wanted to test in 1975 out of frustration with his old 72 and which could have been used by Colin Chapman had he not decided to concentrate on developing chassis which would use ground effect technology, the Lotus 77 design for 1976 which was in many ways a test vehicle for the development of concepts, including the de facto legalisation of technology like plastic sliding skirts, introduced on Andretti's 77 from the 1976 Canadian Grand Prix, that would be used in future Lotus wing cars the Lotus 78 and Lotus 79. Apart from these successes, Amon's racing career seemed once again to have stalled. Apparently a chance meeting with Mo Nunn of Ensign Racing led to the Ensign drive, but in fact Mo Nunn thought his new N175 a very fast car and did not view the two Dutch drivers favoured by the Dutch HB Security company who sponsored Ensign fast enough. Gijs van Lennep, the 1973 European F5000 Champion in a Surtees TS11 who had won Le Mans in 1971 and 1976 was a very good driver but also one of the last racing aristocrats. Van Lennep, qualified the car on its debut in the French GP at Paul Ricard and finished 6th in the German GP at Nürburgring, and was faster on both circuits than Patrick Nève or Amon were in 1976. Amon managed 7th in the non-championship Swiss GP at Dijon chasing James Hunt debuting the disappointing Hesketh 308C and 12th in two GP drives in the Ensign N175 at the Austrian and Italian GPs. At Monza after a long pit stop he finally ran at competitive pace, running 4 laps down but keeping pace with the leading Ferrari 312T of Niki Lauda for a number of laps. Progressive evaluation of the possibilities of what was slowing the N175 led Amon to change the airbox alignment on the day of the Italian GP and this resulted in a 2-second gain (much like the change in air cooler position that lost and gained two seconds on Hunt's McLaren M23 resolved by the 1976 French GP). Ironically Amon never raced the N175 again and the high airboxes had been banned by the time N176 ran at Jarama the following year, but the flash of testing and driving genius was enough to give Amon another chance. Although the results were unremarkable, he and Nunn worked well together, so Amon joined Ensign for the 1976 F1 season. 1976 Ensign's first race of the season was the South African GP where Amon qualified 18th and showed a revival of form, climbing to seventh place, in the old Ensign N174 and contesting sixth with Mario Andretti in the Parnelli Ford, in the last laps before a last minute refueling stop left him 14th. Thereafter results began to improve, with Amon qualifying 17th and finishing eighth in the USA West GP; qualifying tenth and finishing fifth in the Spanish GP; and then qualifying eighth for the Belgian GP. More points then seemed likely from the race until his car lost a wheel 19 laps from the finish and Amon was lucky to escape unhurt from the ensuing accident. He then achieved a third-place grid position start for the Swedish GP using a Nicholson rebuilt Cosworth for the first time and in the race looked as if he would join Tyrrell drivers Jody Scheckter and Patrick Depailler on the podium, until suspension failure threw him from the track after 38 laps. Amon had again been lucky to escape serious injury and decided to miss the next race, the French GP. He returned for the British GP, qualifying in sixth and running fourth in the race when his Ford-Cosworth DFV engine developed a water leak. Rather than risk losing an engine, his team called him in to retire. At the German GP problems dogged his attempts to qualify well, but it was Niki Lauda's crash during the second lap of the race that had a far greater impact. Amon refused to restart the race and Nunn fired him from the team. Amon declared his retirement from the sport and returned to New Zealand. "I'd seen too many people fried in racing cars at that stage. When you've driven past Bandini, Schlesser, Courage and Williamson, another shunt like that was simply too much. It was a personal decision..." (Amon, on his retirement in 1976)However, Walter Wolf contacted Amon and persuaded him to drive for his Wolf–Williams team in the North American races near the end of the season. After recording some promising times in preparation for the Canadian GP, however, Amon was involved in a heavy collision with another car during qualifying and once again was lucky to walk away unharmed. He then did not take part in either the Canadian or United States Grands Prix. 1977 Amon turned down an offer of a full-time F1 drive for 1977, but did attempt a return to Can-Am racing in 1977 with a Wolf-Dallara WD1. However, after only one race he quit, saying "I'm just not enjoying this anymore". His place was taken by the young and then unknown Canadian Gilles Villeneuve, whom Amon would, later that year, recommend to Enzo Ferrari. In the meantime, Amon returned once again to New Zealand, this time to retire from F1 motor racing for good. 2000s 2003 Amon came out of retirement for a one-off appearance in the 2003 Dunlop Targa New Zealand with motorsport commentator Murray Walker as his navigator. The pair completed the week-long Auckland to Wellington Tarmac Rally in a Toyota Camry Sportivo, the same car previously used by Walker and Colin Bond in Australia's Targa Tasmania. Retirement After his retirement from F1, Amon dedicated himself to running the family farm in New Zealand's Manawatu District for many years. After retiring from farming, he lived in Taupo in New Zealand's North Island. In the early 1980s he became more well known in New Zealand from test-driving vehicles on the TV motoring series Motor Show and later consulted for Toyota New Zealand, tuning the 1984 Toyota Corolla and subsequent cars for sale there. He also appeared in TV commercials for the company, where much was made of the acclaim he won from Enzo Ferrari. Amon participated in the 2004 EnergyWise Rally where he won ahead of Brian Cowan. Amon drove a Toyota Prius for the event. In the 1993 Queen's Birthday Honours, Amon was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, for services to motor sport. Amon was involved in the design of the upgraded Taupo Motorsport Park circuit, used for the New Zealand round of the 2006–07 A1 Grand Prix season in January 2007. At the New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing in 2011, Amon's life and career were honoured with a selection of his cars being driven and also used the event to raise funds for the Bruce McLaren trust. Amon was also honoured at the festival in January 2013. Death Amon died in Rotorua Hospital on 3 August 2016, aged 73, of cancer. He was survived by his wife (they married in 1977) their three children and their grandchildren. One of his sons, James, is a qualified High Performance personal trainer. He trained Central Districts Stags cricket team, and was revealed to be Brendon Hartley's personal trainer. Legacy Despite never winning a championship Formula One Grand Prix, Amon won eight non-championship GPs, the Silverstone International Trophy, the 1000 km Monza, the Daytona 24 Hours, the Tasman Series and, perhaps most significant of all, the famous 24 Heures du Mans (alongside Bruce McLaren). These races included many of Amon's otherwise more successful fellow Formula One drivers. Amon also remains the only driver from New Zealand and Oceania to have raced for Scuderia Ferrari in Formula One. In Formula One, Chris Amon took part in 96 Grands Prix, achieving 5 poles, leading 183 laps in 7 races, reaching the podium 11 times and scoring a total of 83 Championship points. Amon holds the record for the most different makes of car raced by a Formula 1 World Championship driver, with thirteen. A biography Forza Amon by journalist Eoin Young charts Amon's racing career and gives some insights into his personal life. The book makes clear one point on which Amon himself disagrees with most commentators, the issue of his bad luck. Amon has pointed out on several occasions that he competed for a decade and a half in Formula One and survived some serious accidents, notably in 1976, whilst others, including friends like Bruce McLaren, suffered serious injury and death. In 2008, motorsport journalist Alan Henry rated Chris Amon as his 13th greatest driver. Reflecting on the 1968 racing death of Jim Clark, Amon said: "If this can happen to Jimmy, what chance do the rest of us have? I think we all felt that. It seemed like we'd lost our leader." In 1995, Amon was inducted into the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame. Amon's name has been given to the Toyota Racing Series driver's championship trophy, and the International Scholarship to support drivers who win his trophy to further their careers in single-seater racing. The Toyota Racing Series serves as motorsport's version of "winter ball" in New Zealand during January and February. Following his death, his name was also lent to the Manfeild Autocourse in Feilding, Manawatu. Racing record Formula One World Championship results (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap) Non-Championship Formula One results (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap) Complete Tasman Series results (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap) Complete 24 Hours of Le Mans results References External links Bruce McLaren Trust Official site Trio At The Top – a documentary about Bruce McLaren, Denny Hulme and Chris Amon on NZ On Screen Chris Amon 8W-Forix; Tom Prankard; 1 October 2000 New Zealand racing drivers New Zealand Formula One drivers Amon Formula One drivers BRM Formula One drivers Cooper Formula One drivers Ensign Formula One drivers Ferrari Formula One drivers March Formula One drivers Matra Formula One drivers Reg Parnell Racing Formula One drivers Tecno Formula One drivers Tyrrell Formula One drivers Williams Formula One drivers Formula One team owners 24 Hours of Le Mans drivers 24 Hours of Le Mans winning drivers 12 Hours of Reims drivers 24 Hours of Daytona drivers World Sportscar Championship drivers Tasman Series drivers New Zealand Members of the Order of the British Empire People from Bulls 1943 births 2016 deaths

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What caused his retirement?

What caused Chris Amon's retirement from F1?

Chris Amon

After his retirement from F1, Amon dedicated himself to running the family farm in New Zealand's Manawatu District for many years. After retiring from farming, he lived in Taupo in New Zealand's North Island. In the early 1980s he became more well known in New Zealand from test-driving vehicles on the TV motoring series Motor Show and later consulted for Toyota New Zealand, tuning the 1984 Toyota Corolla and subsequent cars for sale there. He also appeared in TV commercials for the company, where much was made of the acclaim he won from Enzo Ferrari. Amon participated in the 2004 EnergyWise Rally where he won ahead of Brian Cowan. Amon drove a Toyota Prius for the event. Amon was involved in the design of the upgraded Taupo Motorsport Park circuit, used for the New Zealand round of the 2006-07 A1 Grand Prix season in January 2007. At the New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing in 2011, Amon's life and career were honoured with a selection of his cars being driven and also used the event to raise funds for the Bruce McLaren trust. Amon was also honoured at the festival in January 2013. Amon died in Rotorua Hospital on 3 August 2016, aged 73, of cancer. He was survived by his wife (they married in 1977) their three children and their grandchildren. One of his sons, James, is a qualified High Performance personal trainer. He trained Central Districts Stags cricket team, and was revealed to be Brendon Hartley's personal trainer. CANNOTANSWER

CANNOTANSWER

Christopher Arthur Amon (20 July 1943 – 3 August 2016) was a New Zealand motor racing driver. He was active in Formula One racing in the 1960s and 1970s and is widely regarded as one of the best F1 drivers never to win a championship Grand Prix. His reputation for bad luck was such that fellow driver Mario Andretti once joked that "if he became an undertaker, people would stop dying". Former Ferrari Technical Director Mauro Forghieri stated that Amon was "by far the best test driver I have ever worked with. He had all the qualities to be a World Champion but bad luck just wouldn't let him be". Apart from driving, Chris Amon also ran his own Formula One team for a short period in 1974. Away from Formula One, Amon had some success in sports car racing, teaming with co-driver Bruce McLaren to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans race in . Early life Amon was born in Bulls, and attended Whanganui Collegiate School. He was the only child of wealthy sheep-owners Ngaio and Betty Amon. He learned to drive at the age of six, taught by a farm worker on the family farm. On leaving school, he persuaded his father to buy him an Austin A40 Special, which he entered in some minor local races and hillclimbs along with practice on the family farm. He progressed to a 1.5-litre Cooper and then an old 2.5-litre Maserati 250F, but only began to draw attention when he drove the Cooper-Climax T51 which Bruce McLaren had used to win his maiden Grand Prix. In 1962 Amon entered the Cooper for the New Zealand winter series, but was hampered by mechanical problems. However, Scuderia Veloce entered him in a similar car, and, in the rain at Lakeside, he performed well. One of the spectators there was the English racing driver Reg Parnell who persuaded Amon to come to England and race for his team. In a test at Goodwood Amon continued to impress and was on the pace in the Goodwood International Trophy and Aintree 200 pre-season races. Racing career 1960s 1963 For the 1963 Formula One season the Parnell team were using the year old Lola Mk4A, powered by 1962 specification Climax V8 engines. Amon was teamed with the very experienced Maurice Trintignant for the first race of the season at Monaco and his Grand Prix career started with what was to become typical bad luck: Trintignant's Climax developed a misfire, so he took over Amon's car. At the 1963 Belgian Grand Prix, Amon was partnered by Lucien Bianchi and started ahead of him from 15th position. After nine laps, however, an oil fire ended his race. He continued to experience mechanical problems at the Dutch, Mexican and German Grands Prix; and after an accident in practice for the Italian Grand Prix left him hanging out of his car's cockpit with three broken ribs, he missed both the Italian and United States rounds. Amon usually qualified in the midfield and generally outpaced his teammates, who included his good friend Mike Hailwood. His best results of the year were seventh at the French and British Grands Prix. During this time, however, Amon's social life was attracting as much attention as his driving. He was a member of the Ditton Road Flyers, the social set named after the road in London where Amon shared an apartment with American Peter Revson, Hailwood and Tony Maggs. Parnell was nonetheless impressed with Amon's results in what was regarded as less-than-competitive machinery and promoted him to team leader. Parnell died from peritonitis in January 1964 and his son Tim took over the team. 1964 In a series of four pre-season races in Britain and Italy, Amon recorded three fifth places at Snetterton, Silverstone and Syracuse. He failed to qualify for the first F1 race of the season, the Monaco GP, but at the next race, the Dutch GP, he scored his first World Championship points. The rest of his season, however, was blighted by mechanical problems. 1965 Parnell was offered BRM engines for 1965, but only if it ran Richard Attwood as its regular driver. Reluctantly, Parnell agreed and Attwood took Amon's place. Spotting an opportunity, Bruce McLaren quickly signed Amon for his new McLaren team, but when no second McLaren F1 car materialised, Amon could only drive in sports car races. At the French GP Amon rejoined Parnell to stand in for an injured Attwood. Amon also competed in a Formula Two race in Stuttgart and won. He returned to Germany for the German GP as second Parnell driver, but mechanical failure again forced an early retirement. His last drive before Attwood's return, a non-championship race in Enna, Sicily, also ended in retirement. 1966 During 1966 Amon continued to race for McLaren in Can-Am. He was intended to drive the second McLaren M2B but difficulties with engine supply meant that the team never made the intended expansion to two cars. (James Garner's character Pete Aron's helmet and car livery in the film Grand Prix were modelled on Amon driving a McLaren, which caused the movie makers to have to encourage other cars to be painted in the 'Yamura' colours and other drivers (Bruce McLaren included) to wear Amon-style helmets.) However, an opportunity arose to drive for the Cooper F1 team after Richie Ginther left them for Honda. Amon drove for Cooper at the French GP and was scheduled to drive for them for the rest of the season, until the more successful John Surtees left Scuderia Ferrari to join Cooper and Amon found himself dropped. Amon made one other F1 appearance during the year, driving a Brabham BT11 powered by an old 2-litre BRM engine at the Italian GP under the banner of "Chris Amon Racing". He failed to qualify. Amon did however, score his biggest success to date when he partnered Bruce McLaren in a 7-litre Ford GT40 Mark II and Ken Miles to Ford's dead-heat "photo-finish" after Miles was instructed to slow down despite leading at the Le Mans 24-hour race, spearheading a formation finish. He subsequently received an invitation to meet Enzo Ferrari at the Ferrari home in Maranello, where he signed to race for Ferrari in 1967 alongside Lorenzo Bandini, Mike Parkes and Ludovico Scarfiotti. 1967 Amon's first year with Ferrari did not begin auspiciously. En route to Brands Hatch for the pre-season Formula One Race of Champions, he crashed his road car and, following race practice, had to withdraw. Tragedy then struck the Ferrari team when Bandini died following a crash during the 1967 Monaco Grand Prix, Mike Parkes broke both his legs at the Belgian Grand Prix and, in the aftermath, Ludovico Scarfiotti went into temporary retirement. Amon, therefore, became Ferrari's only driver for the rest of the season, until joined by Jonathan Williams for the final race in Mexico. Amon scored his first podium in his first official outing for the Scuderia in Monaco and at the end of 1967 had achieved four third places finishing fifth in the Drivers' Championship, in what was going to be the most successful season of his career. Amon's Ferrari contract also included sports car racing and he began 1967 by winning the Daytona 24 Hours and 1000km Monza events with Bandini in the 4-litre Ferrari 330-P4. He finished the year partnering Jackie Stewart to a second place at the BOAC 500, thereby clinching the manufacturer's world championship for Ferrari by one point over Porsche. 1968 1968 was the year aerodynamics first played a significant role in F1 car design and Amon worked with engineer Mauro Forghieri to place aerofoils on the Ferrari 312. In January 1968 Amon had returned home to New Zealand and Australia to compete in the 1968 Tasman Series which was used by many of the top Formula One drivers as a warm up series to the World Championship. Ferrari had been interested in the series for several years and in 1965 had reengineered 2.4 Dino engines used by Mike Hawthorn, Peter Collins and Phil Hill in 1958–60 with more torque and mid speed power for the planned use of team leader Surtees in the 1966 Tasman Series. After a late season crash in US Can-Am racing by Surtees, the entry was withdrawn but consideration was given to using NZ Gold star champion Jim Palmer in a semi-works Ferrari entry in the 1967 Tasman Series as it was viewed in a 2.4 car he would be competitive with Clark and Stewart in 2-litre F1 cars. Palmer had run world-class times in the 1966 Tasman Series, particularly in the Pukekohe practice and Longford race, and was tested in Italy at the same time as Amon by Ferrari, and ran competitive times at Modena but for whatever reason Ferrari did not compete in 1967 series. For the 1968 series Ferrari decided to use the 2.4 engines with a new Dino 166 F2 chassis rather than a downsized 3-litre V12. Using the 246T Amon won the first two rounds of the Tasman Series, including the 1968 New Zealand Grand Prix, before narrowly losing the series to the Lotus-Ford of Jim Clark. The Dino 246 Tasmania was better handling than Clark's Lotus 49T which was still wingless and a difficult proposition. Impressed by Amon's driving in the NZ rounds, Ferrari dispatched a new four-valve version of the 2.4 V6 for the Australian rounds and this gave another 15 hp, but with lesser reliability which, combined with the fact Clark was the best driver in the world at the time, cost Amon the series, although in the final round at Sandown Park he duelled wheel to wheel with Clark before being pipped at the line. After the first race of the F1 season in South Africa, Amon achieved pole positions in three of the following four races (at the Spanish, Belgian and Dutch Grands Prix) but ever-present mechanical problems meant he secured only a single Championship point from them. Throughout the rest of the season he never qualified lower than fifth place and nearly scored victories at the British and Canadian rounds and he suffered a 100 mph crash in Italy which demolished his car. In Britain, he duelled to the line with Jo Siffert's Lotus 49B and in Canada he dominated the race despite a malfunctioning clutch. Seventeen laps from the finish, however, his car's transmission failed and a distraught Amon had to be consoled by Jacky Ickx. From at least ten promising starts that season he was only able to finish five races and score ten Championship points. His best finish was second place to Siffert's Lotus-Cosworth at the British Grand Prix. Outside F1, Amon was runner-up in the Formula Two race at Zolder, Belgium, testing the Dino 166 F2. He also came third in that year's BRDC International Trophy. 1969 Amon began 1969 with success driving the Dino engined 246 Tasmania in the Tasman Series that included winning both the New Zealand and Australian Grands Prix. In straight fights, he beat new Gold Leaf Lotus team leader, Jochen Rindt, into second in the races at Pukekohe and Sandown. He would ultimately win the seven race Tasman Series, probably the best of the seven-year 2.5-litre international formula series in this country and the nearest to World Championship level racing in New Zealand, with ferocious competition between Rindt, Graham Hill, Amon and Williams driver Piers Courage. It was actually much more serious racing than the McLaren dominated Can-Am series in the US in which the big sports cars required few gear changes and were essentially cruised to victory with little real competition, where the Tasman cars were essentially marginally lower power F1 cars, as difficult to drive as GP cars on unforgiving very dangerous narrow tracks. Amon finished with four wins, two-thirds and one retirement, but in Formula One his poor luck continued. Despite six starts from top-six positions, he was only able to achieve a third-place at the Dutch GP. Ferrari's F1 V12 engine was too unreliable and although its replacement had proven very fast in testing, it had suffered many mechanical breakages. Amon had no reason to believe it would be any more dependable than the V12, so although the new engine was clearly more powerful, he decided to leave Ferrari for a Cosworth DFV powered team. Ironically, the new flat-12 engine would become one of the best Formula One engines of the 1970s. Jacky Ickx, Amon's old teammate did return to Ferrari for 1970, after a successful sabbatical with Brabham gained Ickx second in the 1969 World Championship. Ickx saw Enzo Ferrari had secured huge backing from Fiat who had taken partial ownership of the Marque, and believed Ferrari would be a renewed team and an effective proposition. Amon was more influenced by views of Jackie Stewart and Jochen Rindt, who believed it was essential to be Ford DFV-powered to be competitive. In addition to Formula One, Amon also drove for Ferrari in the 1969 International Championship for Makes, partnering Pedro Rodriguez to a fourth place in the BOAC 500 at Brands Hatch and coming second at the 12 Hours of Sebring, but retiring from the 1000km Nürburgring and 1000km Monza races, all in the Ferrari 312P sportscar. He also drove in a few Can-Am races. His last race for Ferrari would be the 1970 1000 km Monza, where he finished as runner-up. 1970s 1970 For the 1970 Formula One season, Amon made what was to be the first of several moves to smaller, newer teams. March Engineering had been formed the previous year to build custom chassis for Formulas 2 and 3, but quickly moved into F1, designing and building the March 701. Amon and Siffert were signed as drivers, with IndyCar driver Mario Andretti making an occasional appearance in a third car. March also sold their 701 chassis to Tyrrell, where Jackie Stewart drove it to its first victory in that year's Spanish GP. Amon won the pre-season Silverstone International Trophy, but once the F1 season began he found himself prevented from converting good qualifying positions into good results. He qualified second behind Stewart's Tyrrell-March for the season-opening South African Grand Prix only for his own March to overheat within fourteen laps. Amon then qualified sixth for the Spanish Grand Prix only for his March's Ford-Cosworth DFV engine to expire within ten laps. He qualified and ran second in the 1970 Monaco Grand Prix until his suspension failed twenty laps from the finish. This was the race where Amon refused to drive unless his entry number was changed from 18 – the number under which his then teammate Lorenzo Bandini had crashed and died in Monaco – to 28. Amon's close second place from a third-place start at the 1970 Belgian Grand Prix finally gave the March works team their first points finish. At that race, Amon set fastest lap at over 152 miles per hour, a lap record which still stands as of 2016, as it was the last race on the full-length Spa-Francorchamps circuit. However, after qualifying fourth for the next race, the Dutch Grand Prix, his car's clutch broke after just one lap. Amon duplicated his Belgian result at the 1970 French Grand Prix,. After a disappointing performance in the British GP at Brands Hatch where Amon finished fifth after being outqualified by tyro Ronnie Peterson in a private 701 on the same tyres, conflict with team boss Max Mosley over the non-delivery of three-quarters of Amon's expected pay for the season saw him provided with inferior DFVs and two backmarker 7th places in Austria and Italy, Amon finished the season strongly with strong drives to third at Mosport, fifth at Watkins Glen and fourth in Mexico. At Watkins Glen in the USGP he was robbed of a probably certain victory, in the opinion of March designer Robin Herd, by a puncture. By the end of the year, disagreements with March co-founders Mosley and Robin Herd meant that Amon had decided to move to another relatively new team, Matra. 1971 In 1971, Amon, now driving for the Matra factory team, once again scored a pre-season victory, this time at the Argentine Grand Prix. Once the Formula One season had begun, he managed to convert a third-place start at the Spanish GP into a third-place podium finish and scored a couple of fifth places in the South African and French GPs. Apart from these results, however, his run of poor F1 returns continued. He had a major accident at the Nürburgring and it sidelined him for the next race at the Österreichring. At the Italian GP he qualified in pole position and despite a poor start to the race looked as if he would capitalise on it – until the visor on his helmet became detached. Amon had to slow to avoid risking a major accident, thereby allowing other drivers to catch and overtake him. He finished the race in sixth place, scoring just one Championship point. During the year Amon also competed in the non-championship Questor Grand Prix at the new Ontario Motor Speedway, where he qualified second and, despite suffering a puncture during the race, managed to finish fourth. In the Tasman Series Amon started from fourth at the Levin Circuit and in the race, he battled with David Oxton and John Cannon but managed to finish third. Amon's third race at Wigram Airfield starting fifth and spun at the start to drop him to the back of the field but managed to climb up to fifth. 1972 In the 1972 Formula One season, Amon, again driving for Matra achieved a handful of points-scoring finishes, but only one podium appearance, at the French GP. Here he achieved the fifth and final pole position of his career and was leading the race until a puncture forced him to pit. However, he climbed back through the field, breaking the circuit's lap record to finish third. With the money he had made from motorsport, Amon decided to set up a racing engine firm with former BRM engineer Aubrey Woods. Amon Racing Engines supplied Formula 2 engines to a few drivers, but the company quickly became too expensive to run and was sold to March for a loss. Matra decided to end their participation in Formula One at the end of 1972, so Amon found himself looking to return to March as a driver. The place, however, was given to Jean-Pierre Jarier, purportedly for financial reasons. Amon therefore signed for another recently formed F1 team, Tecno. 1973 Tecno had entered F1 the previous year, having been a successful chassis-builder for other Formulæ and had developed a potentially powerful Flat 12 for F1. Their first year in F1 proved to be dismal, however with considerable backing from Martini Rossi they had jumped at the chance to sign Amon, and allocate David Yorke the former Vanwall and Gulf GT40 Team Manager to run the team and commission two new chassis designs by former Lotus and McLaren mechanic. Alan McCall who had worked on Clark and Hulme's F1 cars and unproven, British designer Gordon Fowell for a more radical back up design, in the hope he would help transform their performance. While McCalls car was built rapidly, testing it was more time-consuming and after its non-appearance, for the Spanish GP, Amon and team manager David Yorke met with Enzo Ferrari to see if Amon could be released from his contract to develop the new Ferrari B3 for Ickx and Mezarrio, in a supposedly one off GP drive at Monaco. Yorke rejected the release, and Amon admits he would not have left Ferrari if offered the drive for a season. Unfortunately, the team went from bad to worse and wasn't able to field the Tecno PA123/6 until the fifth GP of the season, the Belgian GP. Amon managed to finish in sixth position. At Monaco the car qualified a useful 12th and chassis felt good but Chris was unhappy with the car. He decided to concentrate on the undeveloped Gordon Fowell Goral car. This was against the view of the Techno team and the Pederanzi engine builders and Martini Rossi who required the car and driver to appear at races Amon commented at the time that it was "the best chassis I've ever sat in", it too proved virtually undriveable. Amon refused to drive the McCall, Techno in the Swedish or German Gps and withdrew from the Austrian GP after qualifying. By the time of the Austrian GP, four races from the end of the season, Amon's patience had run out and he left the team. He would later claim that the months he spent with the team "felt like ten [seasons]". Tyrrell offered Amon a third car – the 005 – in which to drive the last two races of the season. After a mediocre first outing at the Canadian GP, he and Jackie Stewart withdrew from the final race of the year, the United States GP, following the death of their teammate François Cevert during qualifying. 1974 For the 1974 F1 season, Amon revived Chris Amon Racing. Gordon Fowell designed the car, the AF101, which featured a single central fuel tank, titanium torsion bars and a forward driving position. Structurally, however, it proved to be weak and was not ready for an F1 appearance until the fourth race of the season, the Spanish GP. Amon was only able to qualify 23rd, thanks to brake-disc vibration that only became worse with the tyres for the wet race that followed. Despite cautious driving, a brake shaft finally broke and Amon was forced to retire after 22 laps. Following further work and testing, Amon returned for the Monaco GP and qualified twentieth, but, thanks to mechanical problems, he was unable to start the race. Further problems and illness meant Amon was not able to reappear with the F101 until the Italian GP, three races from the end of the season, but this time he was unable to qualify. That sealed the fate of both the car and Chris Amon Racing, leaving Amon to drive the season's last two races with the faltering BRM team. He would later reveal that he had turned down a chance to join the Brabham team earlier in the season. 1975 Amon contested the 1975 F5000 Tasman series against only local Australasian drivers, although Graham McRae, Warwick Brown and Kevin Bartlett were acknowledged internationally. Amon qualified on the front row of three of the four New Zealand rounds and scored a victory at Teretonga in January 1975 in rainy conditions by 24.2 seconds. In the Australian rounds, the competition was always harder with more good cars and the locals on their own tracks. Amon had a frustrating series of races unable to pass, South Australian Johnnie Walker, in a superior Lola T332 chassis with Repco-engineered V8. At Surfers Paradise, running from the back of the grid he managed to eventually pass Walker by widening the braking zone in the only corner where overtaking was usually possible. Amon brushed the edge of the track on repeated laps, got extra grip and passed Walker to take the lead. He had been forced to miss most of the practice session, when Customs seized his car's gearbox. In the race, the brilliant effort went for nothing as the Chev engine blew. At Oran Park and Adelaide he followed Walker the whole way to 4th and 3rd unable to pass. In the final deciding race for the Tasman Series with Brown, Walker and Lawrence still in contention, Walker lost his T332 on the first lap and it demolished on wooden barriers surrounding Sandown's car and horse racing tracks. Amon was never in contention and finished 4th. Amon intended to compete in F5000 in both Europe and the US in 1975 but started in only one round of both series, managing a pole in one Shellsport round in the UK and a 4th place overall at the Long Beach GP in a two heat race. He used different Talon F5000 cars for both races. The speed he showed in qualifying for a couple of UK F5000 races encouraged the small Ensign team to give him a race. Mo Nunn the Ensign team owner had been a Lotus F3 driver in 1966 and the Dave Baldwin designed chassis was in many ways a lightweight Lotus F1, which Ronnie Peterson wanted to test in 1975 out of frustration with his old 72 and which could have been used by Colin Chapman had he not decided to concentrate on developing chassis which would use ground effect technology, the Lotus 77 design for 1976 which was in many ways a test vehicle for the development of concepts, including the de facto legalisation of technology like plastic sliding skirts, introduced on Andretti's 77 from the 1976 Canadian Grand Prix, that would be used in future Lotus wing cars the Lotus 78 and Lotus 79. Apart from these successes, Amon's racing career seemed once again to have stalled. Apparently a chance meeting with Mo Nunn of Ensign Racing led to the Ensign drive, but in fact Mo Nunn thought his new N175 a very fast car and did not view the two Dutch drivers favoured by the Dutch HB Security company who sponsored Ensign fast enough. Gijs van Lennep, the 1973 European F5000 Champion in a Surtees TS11 who had won Le Mans in 1971 and 1976 was a very good driver but also one of the last racing aristocrats. Van Lennep, qualified the car on its debut in the French GP at Paul Ricard and finished 6th in the German GP at Nürburgring, and was faster on both circuits than Patrick Nève or Amon were in 1976. Amon managed 7th in the non-championship Swiss GP at Dijon chasing James Hunt debuting the disappointing Hesketh 308C and 12th in two GP drives in the Ensign N175 at the Austrian and Italian GPs. At Monza after a long pit stop he finally ran at competitive pace, running 4 laps down but keeping pace with the leading Ferrari 312T of Niki Lauda for a number of laps. Progressive evaluation of the possibilities of what was slowing the N175 led Amon to change the airbox alignment on the day of the Italian GP and this resulted in a 2-second gain (much like the change in air cooler position that lost and gained two seconds on Hunt's McLaren M23 resolved by the 1976 French GP). Ironically Amon never raced the N175 again and the high airboxes had been banned by the time N176 ran at Jarama the following year, but the flash of testing and driving genius was enough to give Amon another chance. Although the results were unremarkable, he and Nunn worked well together, so Amon joined Ensign for the 1976 F1 season. 1976 Ensign's first race of the season was the South African GP where Amon qualified 18th and showed a revival of form, climbing to seventh place, in the old Ensign N174 and contesting sixth with Mario Andretti in the Parnelli Ford, in the last laps before a last minute refueling stop left him 14th. Thereafter results began to improve, with Amon qualifying 17th and finishing eighth in the USA West GP; qualifying tenth and finishing fifth in the Spanish GP; and then qualifying eighth for the Belgian GP. More points then seemed likely from the race until his car lost a wheel 19 laps from the finish and Amon was lucky to escape unhurt from the ensuing accident. He then achieved a third-place grid position start for the Swedish GP using a Nicholson rebuilt Cosworth for the first time and in the race looked as if he would join Tyrrell drivers Jody Scheckter and Patrick Depailler on the podium, until suspension failure threw him from the track after 38 laps. Amon had again been lucky to escape serious injury and decided to miss the next race, the French GP. He returned for the British GP, qualifying in sixth and running fourth in the race when his Ford-Cosworth DFV engine developed a water leak. Rather than risk losing an engine, his team called him in to retire. At the German GP problems dogged his attempts to qualify well, but it was Niki Lauda's crash during the second lap of the race that had a far greater impact. Amon refused to restart the race and Nunn fired him from the team. Amon declared his retirement from the sport and returned to New Zealand. "I'd seen too many people fried in racing cars at that stage. When you've driven past Bandini, Schlesser, Courage and Williamson, another shunt like that was simply too much. It was a personal decision..." (Amon, on his retirement in 1976)However, Walter Wolf contacted Amon and persuaded him to drive for his Wolf–Williams team in the North American races near the end of the season. After recording some promising times in preparation for the Canadian GP, however, Amon was involved in a heavy collision with another car during qualifying and once again was lucky to walk away unharmed. He then did not take part in either the Canadian or United States Grands Prix. 1977 Amon turned down an offer of a full-time F1 drive for 1977, but did attempt a return to Can-Am racing in 1977 with a Wolf-Dallara WD1. However, after only one race he quit, saying "I'm just not enjoying this anymore". His place was taken by the young and then unknown Canadian Gilles Villeneuve, whom Amon would, later that year, recommend to Enzo Ferrari. In the meantime, Amon returned once again to New Zealand, this time to retire from F1 motor racing for good. 2000s 2003 Amon came out of retirement for a one-off appearance in the 2003 Dunlop Targa New Zealand with motorsport commentator Murray Walker as his navigator. The pair completed the week-long Auckland to Wellington Tarmac Rally in a Toyota Camry Sportivo, the same car previously used by Walker and Colin Bond in Australia's Targa Tasmania. Retirement After his retirement from F1, Amon dedicated himself to running the family farm in New Zealand's Manawatu District for many years. After retiring from farming, he lived in Taupo in New Zealand's North Island. In the early 1980s he became more well known in New Zealand from test-driving vehicles on the TV motoring series Motor Show and later consulted for Toyota New Zealand, tuning the 1984 Toyota Corolla and subsequent cars for sale there. He also appeared in TV commercials for the company, where much was made of the acclaim he won from Enzo Ferrari. Amon participated in the 2004 EnergyWise Rally where he won ahead of Brian Cowan. Amon drove a Toyota Prius for the event. In the 1993 Queen's Birthday Honours, Amon was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, for services to motor sport. Amon was involved in the design of the upgraded Taupo Motorsport Park circuit, used for the New Zealand round of the 2006–07 A1 Grand Prix season in January 2007. At the New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing in 2011, Amon's life and career were honoured with a selection of his cars being driven and also used the event to raise funds for the Bruce McLaren trust. Amon was also honoured at the festival in January 2013. Death Amon died in Rotorua Hospital on 3 August 2016, aged 73, of cancer. He was survived by his wife (they married in 1977) their three children and their grandchildren. One of his sons, James, is a qualified High Performance personal trainer. He trained Central Districts Stags cricket team, and was revealed to be Brendon Hartley's personal trainer. Legacy Despite never winning a championship Formula One Grand Prix, Amon won eight non-championship GPs, the Silverstone International Trophy, the 1000 km Monza, the Daytona 24 Hours, the Tasman Series and, perhaps most significant of all, the famous 24 Heures du Mans (alongside Bruce McLaren). These races included many of Amon's otherwise more successful fellow Formula One drivers. Amon also remains the only driver from New Zealand and Oceania to have raced for Scuderia Ferrari in Formula One. In Formula One, Chris Amon took part in 96 Grands Prix, achieving 5 poles, leading 183 laps in 7 races, reaching the podium 11 times and scoring a total of 83 Championship points. Amon holds the record for the most different makes of car raced by a Formula 1 World Championship driver, with thirteen. A biography Forza Amon by journalist Eoin Young charts Amon's racing career and gives some insights into his personal life. The book makes clear one point on which Amon himself disagrees with most commentators, the issue of his bad luck. Amon has pointed out on several occasions that he competed for a decade and a half in Formula One and survived some serious accidents, notably in 1976, whilst others, including friends like Bruce McLaren, suffered serious injury and death. In 2008, motorsport journalist Alan Henry rated Chris Amon as his 13th greatest driver. Reflecting on the 1968 racing death of Jim Clark, Amon said: "If this can happen to Jimmy, what chance do the rest of us have? I think we all felt that. It seemed like we'd lost our leader." In 1995, Amon was inducted into the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame. Amon's name has been given to the Toyota Racing Series driver's championship trophy, and the International Scholarship to support drivers who win his trophy to further their careers in single-seater racing. The Toyota Racing Series serves as motorsport's version of "winter ball" in New Zealand during January and February. Following his death, his name was also lent to the Manfeild Autocourse in Feilding, Manawatu. Racing record Formula One World Championship results (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap) Non-Championship Formula One results (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap) Complete Tasman Series results (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap) Complete 24 Hours of Le Mans results References External links Bruce McLaren Trust Official site Trio At The Top – a documentary about Bruce McLaren, Denny Hulme and Chris Amon on NZ On Screen Chris Amon 8W-Forix; Tom Prankard; 1 October 2000 New Zealand racing drivers New Zealand Formula One drivers Amon Formula One drivers BRM Formula One drivers Cooper Formula One drivers Ensign Formula One drivers Ferrari Formula One drivers March Formula One drivers Matra Formula One drivers Reg Parnell Racing Formula One drivers Tecno Formula One drivers Tyrrell Formula One drivers Williams Formula One drivers Formula One team owners 24 Hours of Le Mans drivers 24 Hours of Le Mans winning drivers 12 Hours of Reims drivers 24 Hours of Daytona drivers World Sportscar Championship drivers Tasman Series drivers New Zealand Members of the Order of the British Empire People from Bulls 1943 births 2016 deaths

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Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?

Aside from Chris Amon's retirement from F1, are there any other interesting aspects about this article?

Chris Amon

After his retirement from F1, Amon dedicated himself to running the family farm in New Zealand's Manawatu District for many years. After retiring from farming, he lived in Taupo in New Zealand's North Island. In the early 1980s he became more well known in New Zealand from test-driving vehicles on the TV motoring series Motor Show and later consulted for Toyota New Zealand, tuning the 1984 Toyota Corolla and subsequent cars for sale there. He also appeared in TV commercials for the company, where much was made of the acclaim he won from Enzo Ferrari. Amon participated in the 2004 EnergyWise Rally where he won ahead of Brian Cowan. Amon drove a Toyota Prius for the event. Amon was involved in the design of the upgraded Taupo Motorsport Park circuit, used for the New Zealand round of the 2006-07 A1 Grand Prix season in January 2007. At the New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing in 2011, Amon's life and career were honoured with a selection of his cars being driven and also used the event to raise funds for the Bruce McLaren trust. Amon was also honoured at the festival in January 2013. Amon died in Rotorua Hospital on 3 August 2016, aged 73, of cancer. He was survived by his wife (they married in 1977) their three children and their grandchildren. One of his sons, James, is a qualified High Performance personal trainer. He trained Central Districts Stags cricket team, and was revealed to be Brendon Hartley's personal trainer. CANNOTANSWER

In the early 1980s he became more well known in New Zealand from test-driving vehicles on the TV motoring series Motor Show and later consulted for Toyota New Zealand,

Christopher Arthur Amon (20 July 1943 – 3 August 2016) was a New Zealand motor racing driver. He was active in Formula One racing in the 1960s and 1970s and is widely regarded as one of the best F1 drivers never to win a championship Grand Prix. His reputation for bad luck was such that fellow driver Mario Andretti once joked that "if he became an undertaker, people would stop dying". Former Ferrari Technical Director Mauro Forghieri stated that Amon was "by far the best test driver I have ever worked with. He had all the qualities to be a World Champion but bad luck just wouldn't let him be". Apart from driving, Chris Amon also ran his own Formula One team for a short period in 1974. Away from Formula One, Amon had some success in sports car racing, teaming with co-driver Bruce McLaren to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans race in . Early life Amon was born in Bulls, and attended Whanganui Collegiate School. He was the only child of wealthy sheep-owners Ngaio and Betty Amon. He learned to drive at the age of six, taught by a farm worker on the family farm. On leaving school, he persuaded his father to buy him an Austin A40 Special, which he entered in some minor local races and hillclimbs along with practice on the family farm. He progressed to a 1.5-litre Cooper and then an old 2.5-litre Maserati 250F, but only began to draw attention when he drove the Cooper-Climax T51 which Bruce McLaren had used to win his maiden Grand Prix. In 1962 Amon entered the Cooper for the New Zealand winter series, but was hampered by mechanical problems. However, Scuderia Veloce entered him in a similar car, and, in the rain at Lakeside, he performed well. One of the spectators there was the English racing driver Reg Parnell who persuaded Amon to come to England and race for his team. In a test at Goodwood Amon continued to impress and was on the pace in the Goodwood International Trophy and Aintree 200 pre-season races. Racing career 1960s 1963 For the 1963 Formula One season the Parnell team were using the year old Lola Mk4A, powered by 1962 specification Climax V8 engines. Amon was teamed with the very experienced Maurice Trintignant for the first race of the season at Monaco and his Grand Prix career started with what was to become typical bad luck: Trintignant's Climax developed a misfire, so he took over Amon's car. At the 1963 Belgian Grand Prix, Amon was partnered by Lucien Bianchi and started ahead of him from 15th position. After nine laps, however, an oil fire ended his race. He continued to experience mechanical problems at the Dutch, Mexican and German Grands Prix; and after an accident in practice for the Italian Grand Prix left him hanging out of his car's cockpit with three broken ribs, he missed both the Italian and United States rounds. Amon usually qualified in the midfield and generally outpaced his teammates, who included his good friend Mike Hailwood. His best results of the year were seventh at the French and British Grands Prix. During this time, however, Amon's social life was attracting as much attention as his driving. He was a member of the Ditton Road Flyers, the social set named after the road in London where Amon shared an apartment with American Peter Revson, Hailwood and Tony Maggs. Parnell was nonetheless impressed with Amon's results in what was regarded as less-than-competitive machinery and promoted him to team leader. Parnell died from peritonitis in January 1964 and his son Tim took over the team. 1964 In a series of four pre-season races in Britain and Italy, Amon recorded three fifth places at Snetterton, Silverstone and Syracuse. He failed to qualify for the first F1 race of the season, the Monaco GP, but at the next race, the Dutch GP, he scored his first World Championship points. The rest of his season, however, was blighted by mechanical problems. 1965 Parnell was offered BRM engines for 1965, but only if it ran Richard Attwood as its regular driver. Reluctantly, Parnell agreed and Attwood took Amon's place. Spotting an opportunity, Bruce McLaren quickly signed Amon for his new McLaren team, but when no second McLaren F1 car materialised, Amon could only drive in sports car races. At the French GP Amon rejoined Parnell to stand in for an injured Attwood. Amon also competed in a Formula Two race in Stuttgart and won. He returned to Germany for the German GP as second Parnell driver, but mechanical failure again forced an early retirement. His last drive before Attwood's return, a non-championship race in Enna, Sicily, also ended in retirement. 1966 During 1966 Amon continued to race for McLaren in Can-Am. He was intended to drive the second McLaren M2B but difficulties with engine supply meant that the team never made the intended expansion to two cars. (James Garner's character Pete Aron's helmet and car livery in the film Grand Prix were modelled on Amon driving a McLaren, which caused the movie makers to have to encourage other cars to be painted in the 'Yamura' colours and other drivers (Bruce McLaren included) to wear Amon-style helmets.) However, an opportunity arose to drive for the Cooper F1 team after Richie Ginther left them for Honda. Amon drove for Cooper at the French GP and was scheduled to drive for them for the rest of the season, until the more successful John Surtees left Scuderia Ferrari to join Cooper and Amon found himself dropped. Amon made one other F1 appearance during the year, driving a Brabham BT11 powered by an old 2-litre BRM engine at the Italian GP under the banner of "Chris Amon Racing". He failed to qualify. Amon did however, score his biggest success to date when he partnered Bruce McLaren in a 7-litre Ford GT40 Mark II and Ken Miles to Ford's dead-heat "photo-finish" after Miles was instructed to slow down despite leading at the Le Mans 24-hour race, spearheading a formation finish. He subsequently received an invitation to meet Enzo Ferrari at the Ferrari home in Maranello, where he signed to race for Ferrari in 1967 alongside Lorenzo Bandini, Mike Parkes and Ludovico Scarfiotti. 1967 Amon's first year with Ferrari did not begin auspiciously. En route to Brands Hatch for the pre-season Formula One Race of Champions, he crashed his road car and, following race practice, had to withdraw. Tragedy then struck the Ferrari team when Bandini died following a crash during the 1967 Monaco Grand Prix, Mike Parkes broke both his legs at the Belgian Grand Prix and, in the aftermath, Ludovico Scarfiotti went into temporary retirement. Amon, therefore, became Ferrari's only driver for the rest of the season, until joined by Jonathan Williams for the final race in Mexico. Amon scored his first podium in his first official outing for the Scuderia in Monaco and at the end of 1967 had achieved four third places finishing fifth in the Drivers' Championship, in what was going to be the most successful season of his career. Amon's Ferrari contract also included sports car racing and he began 1967 by winning the Daytona 24 Hours and 1000km Monza events with Bandini in the 4-litre Ferrari 330-P4. He finished the year partnering Jackie Stewart to a second place at the BOAC 500, thereby clinching the manufacturer's world championship for Ferrari by one point over Porsche. 1968 1968 was the year aerodynamics first played a significant role in F1 car design and Amon worked with engineer Mauro Forghieri to place aerofoils on the Ferrari 312. In January 1968 Amon had returned home to New Zealand and Australia to compete in the 1968 Tasman Series which was used by many of the top Formula One drivers as a warm up series to the World Championship. Ferrari had been interested in the series for several years and in 1965 had reengineered 2.4 Dino engines used by Mike Hawthorn, Peter Collins and Phil Hill in 1958–60 with more torque and mid speed power for the planned use of team leader Surtees in the 1966 Tasman Series. After a late season crash in US Can-Am racing by Surtees, the entry was withdrawn but consideration was given to using NZ Gold star champion Jim Palmer in a semi-works Ferrari entry in the 1967 Tasman Series as it was viewed in a 2.4 car he would be competitive with Clark and Stewart in 2-litre F1 cars. Palmer had run world-class times in the 1966 Tasman Series, particularly in the Pukekohe practice and Longford race, and was tested in Italy at the same time as Amon by Ferrari, and ran competitive times at Modena but for whatever reason Ferrari did not compete in 1967 series. For the 1968 series Ferrari decided to use the 2.4 engines with a new Dino 166 F2 chassis rather than a downsized 3-litre V12. Using the 246T Amon won the first two rounds of the Tasman Series, including the 1968 New Zealand Grand Prix, before narrowly losing the series to the Lotus-Ford of Jim Clark. The Dino 246 Tasmania was better handling than Clark's Lotus 49T which was still wingless and a difficult proposition. Impressed by Amon's driving in the NZ rounds, Ferrari dispatched a new four-valve version of the 2.4 V6 for the Australian rounds and this gave another 15 hp, but with lesser reliability which, combined with the fact Clark was the best driver in the world at the time, cost Amon the series, although in the final round at Sandown Park he duelled wheel to wheel with Clark before being pipped at the line. After the first race of the F1 season in South Africa, Amon achieved pole positions in three of the following four races (at the Spanish, Belgian and Dutch Grands Prix) but ever-present mechanical problems meant he secured only a single Championship point from them. Throughout the rest of the season he never qualified lower than fifth place and nearly scored victories at the British and Canadian rounds and he suffered a 100 mph crash in Italy which demolished his car. In Britain, he duelled to the line with Jo Siffert's Lotus 49B and in Canada he dominated the race despite a malfunctioning clutch. Seventeen laps from the finish, however, his car's transmission failed and a distraught Amon had to be consoled by Jacky Ickx. From at least ten promising starts that season he was only able to finish five races and score ten Championship points. His best finish was second place to Siffert's Lotus-Cosworth at the British Grand Prix. Outside F1, Amon was runner-up in the Formula Two race at Zolder, Belgium, testing the Dino 166 F2. He also came third in that year's BRDC International Trophy. 1969 Amon began 1969 with success driving the Dino engined 246 Tasmania in the Tasman Series that included winning both the New Zealand and Australian Grands Prix. In straight fights, he beat new Gold Leaf Lotus team leader, Jochen Rindt, into second in the races at Pukekohe and Sandown. He would ultimately win the seven race Tasman Series, probably the best of the seven-year 2.5-litre international formula series in this country and the nearest to World Championship level racing in New Zealand, with ferocious competition between Rindt, Graham Hill, Amon and Williams driver Piers Courage. It was actually much more serious racing than the McLaren dominated Can-Am series in the US in which the big sports cars required few gear changes and were essentially cruised to victory with little real competition, where the Tasman cars were essentially marginally lower power F1 cars, as difficult to drive as GP cars on unforgiving very dangerous narrow tracks. Amon finished with four wins, two-thirds and one retirement, but in Formula One his poor luck continued. Despite six starts from top-six positions, he was only able to achieve a third-place at the Dutch GP. Ferrari's F1 V12 engine was too unreliable and although its replacement had proven very fast in testing, it had suffered many mechanical breakages. Amon had no reason to believe it would be any more dependable than the V12, so although the new engine was clearly more powerful, he decided to leave Ferrari for a Cosworth DFV powered team. Ironically, the new flat-12 engine would become one of the best Formula One engines of the 1970s. Jacky Ickx, Amon's old teammate did return to Ferrari for 1970, after a successful sabbatical with Brabham gained Ickx second in the 1969 World Championship. Ickx saw Enzo Ferrari had secured huge backing from Fiat who had taken partial ownership of the Marque, and believed Ferrari would be a renewed team and an effective proposition. Amon was more influenced by views of Jackie Stewart and Jochen Rindt, who believed it was essential to be Ford DFV-powered to be competitive. In addition to Formula One, Amon also drove for Ferrari in the 1969 International Championship for Makes, partnering Pedro Rodriguez to a fourth place in the BOAC 500 at Brands Hatch and coming second at the 12 Hours of Sebring, but retiring from the 1000km Nürburgring and 1000km Monza races, all in the Ferrari 312P sportscar. He also drove in a few Can-Am races. His last race for Ferrari would be the 1970 1000 km Monza, where he finished as runner-up. 1970s 1970 For the 1970 Formula One season, Amon made what was to be the first of several moves to smaller, newer teams. March Engineering had been formed the previous year to build custom chassis for Formulas 2 and 3, but quickly moved into F1, designing and building the March 701. Amon and Siffert were signed as drivers, with IndyCar driver Mario Andretti making an occasional appearance in a third car. March also sold their 701 chassis to Tyrrell, where Jackie Stewart drove it to its first victory in that year's Spanish GP. Amon won the pre-season Silverstone International Trophy, but once the F1 season began he found himself prevented from converting good qualifying positions into good results. He qualified second behind Stewart's Tyrrell-March for the season-opening South African Grand Prix only for his own March to overheat within fourteen laps. Amon then qualified sixth for the Spanish Grand Prix only for his March's Ford-Cosworth DFV engine to expire within ten laps. He qualified and ran second in the 1970 Monaco Grand Prix until his suspension failed twenty laps from the finish. This was the race where Amon refused to drive unless his entry number was changed from 18 – the number under which his then teammate Lorenzo Bandini had crashed and died in Monaco – to 28. Amon's close second place from a third-place start at the 1970 Belgian Grand Prix finally gave the March works team their first points finish. At that race, Amon set fastest lap at over 152 miles per hour, a lap record which still stands as of 2016, as it was the last race on the full-length Spa-Francorchamps circuit. However, after qualifying fourth for the next race, the Dutch Grand Prix, his car's clutch broke after just one lap. Amon duplicated his Belgian result at the 1970 French Grand Prix,. After a disappointing performance in the British GP at Brands Hatch where Amon finished fifth after being outqualified by tyro Ronnie Peterson in a private 701 on the same tyres, conflict with team boss Max Mosley over the non-delivery of three-quarters of Amon's expected pay for the season saw him provided with inferior DFVs and two backmarker 7th places in Austria and Italy, Amon finished the season strongly with strong drives to third at Mosport, fifth at Watkins Glen and fourth in Mexico. At Watkins Glen in the USGP he was robbed of a probably certain victory, in the opinion of March designer Robin Herd, by a puncture. By the end of the year, disagreements with March co-founders Mosley and Robin Herd meant that Amon had decided to move to another relatively new team, Matra. 1971 In 1971, Amon, now driving for the Matra factory team, once again scored a pre-season victory, this time at the Argentine Grand Prix. Once the Formula One season had begun, he managed to convert a third-place start at the Spanish GP into a third-place podium finish and scored a couple of fifth places in the South African and French GPs. Apart from these results, however, his run of poor F1 returns continued. He had a major accident at the Nürburgring and it sidelined him for the next race at the Österreichring. At the Italian GP he qualified in pole position and despite a poor start to the race looked as if he would capitalise on it – until the visor on his helmet became detached. Amon had to slow to avoid risking a major accident, thereby allowing other drivers to catch and overtake him. He finished the race in sixth place, scoring just one Championship point. During the year Amon also competed in the non-championship Questor Grand Prix at the new Ontario Motor Speedway, where he qualified second and, despite suffering a puncture during the race, managed to finish fourth. In the Tasman Series Amon started from fourth at the Levin Circuit and in the race, he battled with David Oxton and John Cannon but managed to finish third. Amon's third race at Wigram Airfield starting fifth and spun at the start to drop him to the back of the field but managed to climb up to fifth. 1972 In the 1972 Formula One season, Amon, again driving for Matra achieved a handful of points-scoring finishes, but only one podium appearance, at the French GP. Here he achieved the fifth and final pole position of his career and was leading the race until a puncture forced him to pit. However, he climbed back through the field, breaking the circuit's lap record to finish third. With the money he had made from motorsport, Amon decided to set up a racing engine firm with former BRM engineer Aubrey Woods. Amon Racing Engines supplied Formula 2 engines to a few drivers, but the company quickly became too expensive to run and was sold to March for a loss. Matra decided to end their participation in Formula One at the end of 1972, so Amon found himself looking to return to March as a driver. The place, however, was given to Jean-Pierre Jarier, purportedly for financial reasons. Amon therefore signed for another recently formed F1 team, Tecno. 1973 Tecno had entered F1 the previous year, having been a successful chassis-builder for other Formulæ and had developed a potentially powerful Flat 12 for F1. Their first year in F1 proved to be dismal, however with considerable backing from Martini Rossi they had jumped at the chance to sign Amon, and allocate David Yorke the former Vanwall and Gulf GT40 Team Manager to run the team and commission two new chassis designs by former Lotus and McLaren mechanic. Alan McCall who had worked on Clark and Hulme's F1 cars and unproven, British designer Gordon Fowell for a more radical back up design, in the hope he would help transform their performance. While McCalls car was built rapidly, testing it was more time-consuming and after its non-appearance, for the Spanish GP, Amon and team manager David Yorke met with Enzo Ferrari to see if Amon could be released from his contract to develop the new Ferrari B3 for Ickx and Mezarrio, in a supposedly one off GP drive at Monaco. Yorke rejected the release, and Amon admits he would not have left Ferrari if offered the drive for a season. Unfortunately, the team went from bad to worse and wasn't able to field the Tecno PA123/6 until the fifth GP of the season, the Belgian GP. Amon managed to finish in sixth position. At Monaco the car qualified a useful 12th and chassis felt good but Chris was unhappy with the car. He decided to concentrate on the undeveloped Gordon Fowell Goral car. This was against the view of the Techno team and the Pederanzi engine builders and Martini Rossi who required the car and driver to appear at races Amon commented at the time that it was "the best chassis I've ever sat in", it too proved virtually undriveable. Amon refused to drive the McCall, Techno in the Swedish or German Gps and withdrew from the Austrian GP after qualifying. By the time of the Austrian GP, four races from the end of the season, Amon's patience had run out and he left the team. He would later claim that the months he spent with the team "felt like ten [seasons]". Tyrrell offered Amon a third car – the 005 – in which to drive the last two races of the season. After a mediocre first outing at the Canadian GP, he and Jackie Stewart withdrew from the final race of the year, the United States GP, following the death of their teammate François Cevert during qualifying. 1974 For the 1974 F1 season, Amon revived Chris Amon Racing. Gordon Fowell designed the car, the AF101, which featured a single central fuel tank, titanium torsion bars and a forward driving position. Structurally, however, it proved to be weak and was not ready for an F1 appearance until the fourth race of the season, the Spanish GP. Amon was only able to qualify 23rd, thanks to brake-disc vibration that only became worse with the tyres for the wet race that followed. Despite cautious driving, a brake shaft finally broke and Amon was forced to retire after 22 laps. Following further work and testing, Amon returned for the Monaco GP and qualified twentieth, but, thanks to mechanical problems, he was unable to start the race. Further problems and illness meant Amon was not able to reappear with the F101 until the Italian GP, three races from the end of the season, but this time he was unable to qualify. That sealed the fate of both the car and Chris Amon Racing, leaving Amon to drive the season's last two races with the faltering BRM team. He would later reveal that he had turned down a chance to join the Brabham team earlier in the season. 1975 Amon contested the 1975 F5000 Tasman series against only local Australasian drivers, although Graham McRae, Warwick Brown and Kevin Bartlett were acknowledged internationally. Amon qualified on the front row of three of the four New Zealand rounds and scored a victory at Teretonga in January 1975 in rainy conditions by 24.2 seconds. In the Australian rounds, the competition was always harder with more good cars and the locals on their own tracks. Amon had a frustrating series of races unable to pass, South Australian Johnnie Walker, in a superior Lola T332 chassis with Repco-engineered V8. At Surfers Paradise, running from the back of the grid he managed to eventually pass Walker by widening the braking zone in the only corner where overtaking was usually possible. Amon brushed the edge of the track on repeated laps, got extra grip and passed Walker to take the lead. He had been forced to miss most of the practice session, when Customs seized his car's gearbox. In the race, the brilliant effort went for nothing as the Chev engine blew. At Oran Park and Adelaide he followed Walker the whole way to 4th and 3rd unable to pass. In the final deciding race for the Tasman Series with Brown, Walker and Lawrence still in contention, Walker lost his T332 on the first lap and it demolished on wooden barriers surrounding Sandown's car and horse racing tracks. Amon was never in contention and finished 4th. Amon intended to compete in F5000 in both Europe and the US in 1975 but started in only one round of both series, managing a pole in one Shellsport round in the UK and a 4th place overall at the Long Beach GP in a two heat race. He used different Talon F5000 cars for both races. The speed he showed in qualifying for a couple of UK F5000 races encouraged the small Ensign team to give him a race. Mo Nunn the Ensign team owner had been a Lotus F3 driver in 1966 and the Dave Baldwin designed chassis was in many ways a lightweight Lotus F1, which Ronnie Peterson wanted to test in 1975 out of frustration with his old 72 and which could have been used by Colin Chapman had he not decided to concentrate on developing chassis which would use ground effect technology, the Lotus 77 design for 1976 which was in many ways a test vehicle for the development of concepts, including the de facto legalisation of technology like plastic sliding skirts, introduced on Andretti's 77 from the 1976 Canadian Grand Prix, that would be used in future Lotus wing cars the Lotus 78 and Lotus 79. Apart from these successes, Amon's racing career seemed once again to have stalled. Apparently a chance meeting with Mo Nunn of Ensign Racing led to the Ensign drive, but in fact Mo Nunn thought his new N175 a very fast car and did not view the two Dutch drivers favoured by the Dutch HB Security company who sponsored Ensign fast enough. Gijs van Lennep, the 1973 European F5000 Champion in a Surtees TS11 who had won Le Mans in 1971 and 1976 was a very good driver but also one of the last racing aristocrats. Van Lennep, qualified the car on its debut in the French GP at Paul Ricard and finished 6th in the German GP at Nürburgring, and was faster on both circuits than Patrick Nève or Amon were in 1976. Amon managed 7th in the non-championship Swiss GP at Dijon chasing James Hunt debuting the disappointing Hesketh 308C and 12th in two GP drives in the Ensign N175 at the Austrian and Italian GPs. At Monza after a long pit stop he finally ran at competitive pace, running 4 laps down but keeping pace with the leading Ferrari 312T of Niki Lauda for a number of laps. Progressive evaluation of the possibilities of what was slowing the N175 led Amon to change the airbox alignment on the day of the Italian GP and this resulted in a 2-second gain (much like the change in air cooler position that lost and gained two seconds on Hunt's McLaren M23 resolved by the 1976 French GP). Ironically Amon never raced the N175 again and the high airboxes had been banned by the time N176 ran at Jarama the following year, but the flash of testing and driving genius was enough to give Amon another chance. Although the results were unremarkable, he and Nunn worked well together, so Amon joined Ensign for the 1976 F1 season. 1976 Ensign's first race of the season was the South African GP where Amon qualified 18th and showed a revival of form, climbing to seventh place, in the old Ensign N174 and contesting sixth with Mario Andretti in the Parnelli Ford, in the last laps before a last minute refueling stop left him 14th. Thereafter results began to improve, with Amon qualifying 17th and finishing eighth in the USA West GP; qualifying tenth and finishing fifth in the Spanish GP; and then qualifying eighth for the Belgian GP. More points then seemed likely from the race until his car lost a wheel 19 laps from the finish and Amon was lucky to escape unhurt from the ensuing accident. He then achieved a third-place grid position start for the Swedish GP using a Nicholson rebuilt Cosworth for the first time and in the race looked as if he would join Tyrrell drivers Jody Scheckter and Patrick Depailler on the podium, until suspension failure threw him from the track after 38 laps. Amon had again been lucky to escape serious injury and decided to miss the next race, the French GP. He returned for the British GP, qualifying in sixth and running fourth in the race when his Ford-Cosworth DFV engine developed a water leak. Rather than risk losing an engine, his team called him in to retire. At the German GP problems dogged his attempts to qualify well, but it was Niki Lauda's crash during the second lap of the race that had a far greater impact. Amon refused to restart the race and Nunn fired him from the team. Amon declared his retirement from the sport and returned to New Zealand. "I'd seen too many people fried in racing cars at that stage. When you've driven past Bandini, Schlesser, Courage and Williamson, another shunt like that was simply too much. It was a personal decision..." (Amon, on his retirement in 1976)However, Walter Wolf contacted Amon and persuaded him to drive for his Wolf–Williams team in the North American races near the end of the season. After recording some promising times in preparation for the Canadian GP, however, Amon was involved in a heavy collision with another car during qualifying and once again was lucky to walk away unharmed. He then did not take part in either the Canadian or United States Grands Prix. 1977 Amon turned down an offer of a full-time F1 drive for 1977, but did attempt a return to Can-Am racing in 1977 with a Wolf-Dallara WD1. However, after only one race he quit, saying "I'm just not enjoying this anymore". His place was taken by the young and then unknown Canadian Gilles Villeneuve, whom Amon would, later that year, recommend to Enzo Ferrari. In the meantime, Amon returned once again to New Zealand, this time to retire from F1 motor racing for good. 2000s 2003 Amon came out of retirement for a one-off appearance in the 2003 Dunlop Targa New Zealand with motorsport commentator Murray Walker as his navigator. The pair completed the week-long Auckland to Wellington Tarmac Rally in a Toyota Camry Sportivo, the same car previously used by Walker and Colin Bond in Australia's Targa Tasmania. Retirement After his retirement from F1, Amon dedicated himself to running the family farm in New Zealand's Manawatu District for many years. After retiring from farming, he lived in Taupo in New Zealand's North Island. In the early 1980s he became more well known in New Zealand from test-driving vehicles on the TV motoring series Motor Show and later consulted for Toyota New Zealand, tuning the 1984 Toyota Corolla and subsequent cars for sale there. He also appeared in TV commercials for the company, where much was made of the acclaim he won from Enzo Ferrari. Amon participated in the 2004 EnergyWise Rally where he won ahead of Brian Cowan. Amon drove a Toyota Prius for the event. In the 1993 Queen's Birthday Honours, Amon was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, for services to motor sport. Amon was involved in the design of the upgraded Taupo Motorsport Park circuit, used for the New Zealand round of the 2006–07 A1 Grand Prix season in January 2007. At the New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing in 2011, Amon's life and career were honoured with a selection of his cars being driven and also used the event to raise funds for the Bruce McLaren trust. Amon was also honoured at the festival in January 2013. Death Amon died in Rotorua Hospital on 3 August 2016, aged 73, of cancer. He was survived by his wife (they married in 1977) their three children and their grandchildren. One of his sons, James, is a qualified High Performance personal trainer. He trained Central Districts Stags cricket team, and was revealed to be Brendon Hartley's personal trainer. Legacy Despite never winning a championship Formula One Grand Prix, Amon won eight non-championship GPs, the Silverstone International Trophy, the 1000 km Monza, the Daytona 24 Hours, the Tasman Series and, perhaps most significant of all, the famous 24 Heures du Mans (alongside Bruce McLaren). These races included many of Amon's otherwise more successful fellow Formula One drivers. Amon also remains the only driver from New Zealand and Oceania to have raced for Scuderia Ferrari in Formula One. In Formula One, Chris Amon took part in 96 Grands Prix, achieving 5 poles, leading 183 laps in 7 races, reaching the podium 11 times and scoring a total of 83 Championship points. Amon holds the record for the most different makes of car raced by a Formula 1 World Championship driver, with thirteen. A biography Forza Amon by journalist Eoin Young charts Amon's racing career and gives some insights into his personal life. The book makes clear one point on which Amon himself disagrees with most commentators, the issue of his bad luck. Amon has pointed out on several occasions that he competed for a decade and a half in Formula One and survived some serious accidents, notably in 1976, whilst others, including friends like Bruce McLaren, suffered serious injury and death. In 2008, motorsport journalist Alan Henry rated Chris Amon as his 13th greatest driver. Reflecting on the 1968 racing death of Jim Clark, Amon said: "If this can happen to Jimmy, what chance do the rest of us have? I think we all felt that. It seemed like we'd lost our leader." In 1995, Amon was inducted into the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame. Amon's name has been given to the Toyota Racing Series driver's championship trophy, and the International Scholarship to support drivers who win his trophy to further their careers in single-seater racing. The Toyota Racing Series serves as motorsport's version of "winter ball" in New Zealand during January and February. Following his death, his name was also lent to the Manfeild Autocourse in Feilding, Manawatu. Racing record Formula One World Championship results (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap) Non-Championship Formula One results (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap) Complete Tasman Series results (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap) Complete 24 Hours of Le Mans results References External links Bruce McLaren Trust Official site Trio At The Top – a documentary about Bruce McLaren, Denny Hulme and Chris Amon on NZ On Screen Chris Amon 8W-Forix; Tom Prankard; 1 October 2000 New Zealand racing drivers New Zealand Formula One drivers Amon Formula One drivers BRM Formula One drivers Cooper Formula One drivers Ensign Formula One drivers Ferrari Formula One drivers March Formula One drivers Matra Formula One drivers Reg Parnell Racing Formula One drivers Tecno Formula One drivers Tyrrell Formula One drivers Williams Formula One drivers Formula One team owners 24 Hours of Le Mans drivers 24 Hours of Le Mans winning drivers 12 Hours of Reims drivers 24 Hours of Daytona drivers World Sportscar Championship drivers Tasman Series drivers New Zealand Members of the Order of the British Empire People from Bulls 1943 births 2016 deaths

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Did he race any more after retirement?

Did Chris Amon race any more after his retirement?

Chris Amon

After his retirement from F1, Amon dedicated himself to running the family farm in New Zealand's Manawatu District for many years. After retiring from farming, he lived in Taupo in New Zealand's North Island. In the early 1980s he became more well known in New Zealand from test-driving vehicles on the TV motoring series Motor Show and later consulted for Toyota New Zealand, tuning the 1984 Toyota Corolla and subsequent cars for sale there. He also appeared in TV commercials for the company, where much was made of the acclaim he won from Enzo Ferrari. Amon participated in the 2004 EnergyWise Rally where he won ahead of Brian Cowan. Amon drove a Toyota Prius for the event. Amon was involved in the design of the upgraded Taupo Motorsport Park circuit, used for the New Zealand round of the 2006-07 A1 Grand Prix season in January 2007. At the New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing in 2011, Amon's life and career were honoured with a selection of his cars being driven and also used the event to raise funds for the Bruce McLaren trust. Amon was also honoured at the festival in January 2013. Amon died in Rotorua Hospital on 3 August 2016, aged 73, of cancer. He was survived by his wife (they married in 1977) their three children and their grandchildren. One of his sons, James, is a qualified High Performance personal trainer. He trained Central Districts Stags cricket team, and was revealed to be Brendon Hartley's personal trainer. CANNOTANSWER

Amon participated in the 2004 EnergyWise Rally where he won ahead of Brian Cowan. Amon drove a Toyota Prius for the event.

Christopher Arthur Amon (20 July 1943 – 3 August 2016) was a New Zealand motor racing driver. He was active in Formula One racing in the 1960s and 1970s and is widely regarded as one of the best F1 drivers never to win a championship Grand Prix. His reputation for bad luck was such that fellow driver Mario Andretti once joked that "if he became an undertaker, people would stop dying". Former Ferrari Technical Director Mauro Forghieri stated that Amon was "by far the best test driver I have ever worked with. He had all the qualities to be a World Champion but bad luck just wouldn't let him be". Apart from driving, Chris Amon also ran his own Formula One team for a short period in 1974. Away from Formula One, Amon had some success in sports car racing, teaming with co-driver Bruce McLaren to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans race in . Early life Amon was born in Bulls, and attended Whanganui Collegiate School. He was the only child of wealthy sheep-owners Ngaio and Betty Amon. He learned to drive at the age of six, taught by a farm worker on the family farm. On leaving school, he persuaded his father to buy him an Austin A40 Special, which he entered in some minor local races and hillclimbs along with practice on the family farm. He progressed to a 1.5-litre Cooper and then an old 2.5-litre Maserati 250F, but only began to draw attention when he drove the Cooper-Climax T51 which Bruce McLaren had used to win his maiden Grand Prix. In 1962 Amon entered the Cooper for the New Zealand winter series, but was hampered by mechanical problems. However, Scuderia Veloce entered him in a similar car, and, in the rain at Lakeside, he performed well. One of the spectators there was the English racing driver Reg Parnell who persuaded Amon to come to England and race for his team. In a test at Goodwood Amon continued to impress and was on the pace in the Goodwood International Trophy and Aintree 200 pre-season races. Racing career 1960s 1963 For the 1963 Formula One season the Parnell team were using the year old Lola Mk4A, powered by 1962 specification Climax V8 engines. Amon was teamed with the very experienced Maurice Trintignant for the first race of the season at Monaco and his Grand Prix career started with what was to become typical bad luck: Trintignant's Climax developed a misfire, so he took over Amon's car. At the 1963 Belgian Grand Prix, Amon was partnered by Lucien Bianchi and started ahead of him from 15th position. After nine laps, however, an oil fire ended his race. He continued to experience mechanical problems at the Dutch, Mexican and German Grands Prix; and after an accident in practice for the Italian Grand Prix left him hanging out of his car's cockpit with three broken ribs, he missed both the Italian and United States rounds. Amon usually qualified in the midfield and generally outpaced his teammates, who included his good friend Mike Hailwood. His best results of the year were seventh at the French and British Grands Prix. During this time, however, Amon's social life was attracting as much attention as his driving. He was a member of the Ditton Road Flyers, the social set named after the road in London where Amon shared an apartment with American Peter Revson, Hailwood and Tony Maggs. Parnell was nonetheless impressed with Amon's results in what was regarded as less-than-competitive machinery and promoted him to team leader. Parnell died from peritonitis in January 1964 and his son Tim took over the team. 1964 In a series of four pre-season races in Britain and Italy, Amon recorded three fifth places at Snetterton, Silverstone and Syracuse. He failed to qualify for the first F1 race of the season, the Monaco GP, but at the next race, the Dutch GP, he scored his first World Championship points. The rest of his season, however, was blighted by mechanical problems. 1965 Parnell was offered BRM engines for 1965, but only if it ran Richard Attwood as its regular driver. Reluctantly, Parnell agreed and Attwood took Amon's place. Spotting an opportunity, Bruce McLaren quickly signed Amon for his new McLaren team, but when no second McLaren F1 car materialised, Amon could only drive in sports car races. At the French GP Amon rejoined Parnell to stand in for an injured Attwood. Amon also competed in a Formula Two race in Stuttgart and won. He returned to Germany for the German GP as second Parnell driver, but mechanical failure again forced an early retirement. His last drive before Attwood's return, a non-championship race in Enna, Sicily, also ended in retirement. 1966 During 1966 Amon continued to race for McLaren in Can-Am. He was intended to drive the second McLaren M2B but difficulties with engine supply meant that the team never made the intended expansion to two cars. (James Garner's character Pete Aron's helmet and car livery in the film Grand Prix were modelled on Amon driving a McLaren, which caused the movie makers to have to encourage other cars to be painted in the 'Yamura' colours and other drivers (Bruce McLaren included) to wear Amon-style helmets.) However, an opportunity arose to drive for the Cooper F1 team after Richie Ginther left them for Honda. Amon drove for Cooper at the French GP and was scheduled to drive for them for the rest of the season, until the more successful John Surtees left Scuderia Ferrari to join Cooper and Amon found himself dropped. Amon made one other F1 appearance during the year, driving a Brabham BT11 powered by an old 2-litre BRM engine at the Italian GP under the banner of "Chris Amon Racing". He failed to qualify. Amon did however, score his biggest success to date when he partnered Bruce McLaren in a 7-litre Ford GT40 Mark II and Ken Miles to Ford's dead-heat "photo-finish" after Miles was instructed to slow down despite leading at the Le Mans 24-hour race, spearheading a formation finish. He subsequently received an invitation to meet Enzo Ferrari at the Ferrari home in Maranello, where he signed to race for Ferrari in 1967 alongside Lorenzo Bandini, Mike Parkes and Ludovico Scarfiotti. 1967 Amon's first year with Ferrari did not begin auspiciously. En route to Brands Hatch for the pre-season Formula One Race of Champions, he crashed his road car and, following race practice, had to withdraw. Tragedy then struck the Ferrari team when Bandini died following a crash during the 1967 Monaco Grand Prix, Mike Parkes broke both his legs at the Belgian Grand Prix and, in the aftermath, Ludovico Scarfiotti went into temporary retirement. Amon, therefore, became Ferrari's only driver for the rest of the season, until joined by Jonathan Williams for the final race in Mexico. Amon scored his first podium in his first official outing for the Scuderia in Monaco and at the end of 1967 had achieved four third places finishing fifth in the Drivers' Championship, in what was going to be the most successful season of his career. Amon's Ferrari contract also included sports car racing and he began 1967 by winning the Daytona 24 Hours and 1000km Monza events with Bandini in the 4-litre Ferrari 330-P4. He finished the year partnering Jackie Stewart to a second place at the BOAC 500, thereby clinching the manufacturer's world championship for Ferrari by one point over Porsche. 1968 1968 was the year aerodynamics first played a significant role in F1 car design and Amon worked with engineer Mauro Forghieri to place aerofoils on the Ferrari 312. In January 1968 Amon had returned home to New Zealand and Australia to compete in the 1968 Tasman Series which was used by many of the top Formula One drivers as a warm up series to the World Championship. Ferrari had been interested in the series for several years and in 1965 had reengineered 2.4 Dino engines used by Mike Hawthorn, Peter Collins and Phil Hill in 1958–60 with more torque and mid speed power for the planned use of team leader Surtees in the 1966 Tasman Series. After a late season crash in US Can-Am racing by Surtees, the entry was withdrawn but consideration was given to using NZ Gold star champion Jim Palmer in a semi-works Ferrari entry in the 1967 Tasman Series as it was viewed in a 2.4 car he would be competitive with Clark and Stewart in 2-litre F1 cars. Palmer had run world-class times in the 1966 Tasman Series, particularly in the Pukekohe practice and Longford race, and was tested in Italy at the same time as Amon by Ferrari, and ran competitive times at Modena but for whatever reason Ferrari did not compete in 1967 series. For the 1968 series Ferrari decided to use the 2.4 engines with a new Dino 166 F2 chassis rather than a downsized 3-litre V12. Using the 246T Amon won the first two rounds of the Tasman Series, including the 1968 New Zealand Grand Prix, before narrowly losing the series to the Lotus-Ford of Jim Clark. The Dino 246 Tasmania was better handling than Clark's Lotus 49T which was still wingless and a difficult proposition. Impressed by Amon's driving in the NZ rounds, Ferrari dispatched a new four-valve version of the 2.4 V6 for the Australian rounds and this gave another 15 hp, but with lesser reliability which, combined with the fact Clark was the best driver in the world at the time, cost Amon the series, although in the final round at Sandown Park he duelled wheel to wheel with Clark before being pipped at the line. After the first race of the F1 season in South Africa, Amon achieved pole positions in three of the following four races (at the Spanish, Belgian and Dutch Grands Prix) but ever-present mechanical problems meant he secured only a single Championship point from them. Throughout the rest of the season he never qualified lower than fifth place and nearly scored victories at the British and Canadian rounds and he suffered a 100 mph crash in Italy which demolished his car. In Britain, he duelled to the line with Jo Siffert's Lotus 49B and in Canada he dominated the race despite a malfunctioning clutch. Seventeen laps from the finish, however, his car's transmission failed and a distraught Amon had to be consoled by Jacky Ickx. From at least ten promising starts that season he was only able to finish five races and score ten Championship points. His best finish was second place to Siffert's Lotus-Cosworth at the British Grand Prix. Outside F1, Amon was runner-up in the Formula Two race at Zolder, Belgium, testing the Dino 166 F2. He also came third in that year's BRDC International Trophy. 1969 Amon began 1969 with success driving the Dino engined 246 Tasmania in the Tasman Series that included winning both the New Zealand and Australian Grands Prix. In straight fights, he beat new Gold Leaf Lotus team leader, Jochen Rindt, into second in the races at Pukekohe and Sandown. He would ultimately win the seven race Tasman Series, probably the best of the seven-year 2.5-litre international formula series in this country and the nearest to World Championship level racing in New Zealand, with ferocious competition between Rindt, Graham Hill, Amon and Williams driver Piers Courage. It was actually much more serious racing than the McLaren dominated Can-Am series in the US in which the big sports cars required few gear changes and were essentially cruised to victory with little real competition, where the Tasman cars were essentially marginally lower power F1 cars, as difficult to drive as GP cars on unforgiving very dangerous narrow tracks. Amon finished with four wins, two-thirds and one retirement, but in Formula One his poor luck continued. Despite six starts from top-six positions, he was only able to achieve a third-place at the Dutch GP. Ferrari's F1 V12 engine was too unreliable and although its replacement had proven very fast in testing, it had suffered many mechanical breakages. Amon had no reason to believe it would be any more dependable than the V12, so although the new engine was clearly more powerful, he decided to leave Ferrari for a Cosworth DFV powered team. Ironically, the new flat-12 engine would become one of the best Formula One engines of the 1970s. Jacky Ickx, Amon's old teammate did return to Ferrari for 1970, after a successful sabbatical with Brabham gained Ickx second in the 1969 World Championship. Ickx saw Enzo Ferrari had secured huge backing from Fiat who had taken partial ownership of the Marque, and believed Ferrari would be a renewed team and an effective proposition. Amon was more influenced by views of Jackie Stewart and Jochen Rindt, who believed it was essential to be Ford DFV-powered to be competitive. In addition to Formula One, Amon also drove for Ferrari in the 1969 International Championship for Makes, partnering Pedro Rodriguez to a fourth place in the BOAC 500 at Brands Hatch and coming second at the 12 Hours of Sebring, but retiring from the 1000km Nürburgring and 1000km Monza races, all in the Ferrari 312P sportscar. He also drove in a few Can-Am races. His last race for Ferrari would be the 1970 1000 km Monza, where he finished as runner-up. 1970s 1970 For the 1970 Formula One season, Amon made what was to be the first of several moves to smaller, newer teams. March Engineering had been formed the previous year to build custom chassis for Formulas 2 and 3, but quickly moved into F1, designing and building the March 701. Amon and Siffert were signed as drivers, with IndyCar driver Mario Andretti making an occasional appearance in a third car. March also sold their 701 chassis to Tyrrell, where Jackie Stewart drove it to its first victory in that year's Spanish GP. Amon won the pre-season Silverstone International Trophy, but once the F1 season began he found himself prevented from converting good qualifying positions into good results. He qualified second behind Stewart's Tyrrell-March for the season-opening South African Grand Prix only for his own March to overheat within fourteen laps. Amon then qualified sixth for the Spanish Grand Prix only for his March's Ford-Cosworth DFV engine to expire within ten laps. He qualified and ran second in the 1970 Monaco Grand Prix until his suspension failed twenty laps from the finish. This was the race where Amon refused to drive unless his entry number was changed from 18 – the number under which his then teammate Lorenzo Bandini had crashed and died in Monaco – to 28. Amon's close second place from a third-place start at the 1970 Belgian Grand Prix finally gave the March works team their first points finish. At that race, Amon set fastest lap at over 152 miles per hour, a lap record which still stands as of 2016, as it was the last race on the full-length Spa-Francorchamps circuit. However, after qualifying fourth for the next race, the Dutch Grand Prix, his car's clutch broke after just one lap. Amon duplicated his Belgian result at the 1970 French Grand Prix,. After a disappointing performance in the British GP at Brands Hatch where Amon finished fifth after being outqualified by tyro Ronnie Peterson in a private 701 on the same tyres, conflict with team boss Max Mosley over the non-delivery of three-quarters of Amon's expected pay for the season saw him provided with inferior DFVs and two backmarker 7th places in Austria and Italy, Amon finished the season strongly with strong drives to third at Mosport, fifth at Watkins Glen and fourth in Mexico. At Watkins Glen in the USGP he was robbed of a probably certain victory, in the opinion of March designer Robin Herd, by a puncture. By the end of the year, disagreements with March co-founders Mosley and Robin Herd meant that Amon had decided to move to another relatively new team, Matra. 1971 In 1971, Amon, now driving for the Matra factory team, once again scored a pre-season victory, this time at the Argentine Grand Prix. Once the Formula One season had begun, he managed to convert a third-place start at the Spanish GP into a third-place podium finish and scored a couple of fifth places in the South African and French GPs. Apart from these results, however, his run of poor F1 returns continued. He had a major accident at the Nürburgring and it sidelined him for the next race at the Österreichring. At the Italian GP he qualified in pole position and despite a poor start to the race looked as if he would capitalise on it – until the visor on his helmet became detached. Amon had to slow to avoid risking a major accident, thereby allowing other drivers to catch and overtake him. He finished the race in sixth place, scoring just one Championship point. During the year Amon also competed in the non-championship Questor Grand Prix at the new Ontario Motor Speedway, where he qualified second and, despite suffering a puncture during the race, managed to finish fourth. In the Tasman Series Amon started from fourth at the Levin Circuit and in the race, he battled with David Oxton and John Cannon but managed to finish third. Amon's third race at Wigram Airfield starting fifth and spun at the start to drop him to the back of the field but managed to climb up to fifth. 1972 In the 1972 Formula One season, Amon, again driving for Matra achieved a handful of points-scoring finishes, but only one podium appearance, at the French GP. Here he achieved the fifth and final pole position of his career and was leading the race until a puncture forced him to pit. However, he climbed back through the field, breaking the circuit's lap record to finish third. With the money he had made from motorsport, Amon decided to set up a racing engine firm with former BRM engineer Aubrey Woods. Amon Racing Engines supplied Formula 2 engines to a few drivers, but the company quickly became too expensive to run and was sold to March for a loss. Matra decided to end their participation in Formula One at the end of 1972, so Amon found himself looking to return to March as a driver. The place, however, was given to Jean-Pierre Jarier, purportedly for financial reasons. Amon therefore signed for another recently formed F1 team, Tecno. 1973 Tecno had entered F1 the previous year, having been a successful chassis-builder for other Formulæ and had developed a potentially powerful Flat 12 for F1. Their first year in F1 proved to be dismal, however with considerable backing from Martini Rossi they had jumped at the chance to sign Amon, and allocate David Yorke the former Vanwall and Gulf GT40 Team Manager to run the team and commission two new chassis designs by former Lotus and McLaren mechanic. Alan McCall who had worked on Clark and Hulme's F1 cars and unproven, British designer Gordon Fowell for a more radical back up design, in the hope he would help transform their performance. While McCalls car was built rapidly, testing it was more time-consuming and after its non-appearance, for the Spanish GP, Amon and team manager David Yorke met with Enzo Ferrari to see if Amon could be released from his contract to develop the new Ferrari B3 for Ickx and Mezarrio, in a supposedly one off GP drive at Monaco. Yorke rejected the release, and Amon admits he would not have left Ferrari if offered the drive for a season. Unfortunately, the team went from bad to worse and wasn't able to field the Tecno PA123/6 until the fifth GP of the season, the Belgian GP. Amon managed to finish in sixth position. At Monaco the car qualified a useful 12th and chassis felt good but Chris was unhappy with the car. He decided to concentrate on the undeveloped Gordon Fowell Goral car. This was against the view of the Techno team and the Pederanzi engine builders and Martini Rossi who required the car and driver to appear at races Amon commented at the time that it was "the best chassis I've ever sat in", it too proved virtually undriveable. Amon refused to drive the McCall, Techno in the Swedish or German Gps and withdrew from the Austrian GP after qualifying. By the time of the Austrian GP, four races from the end of the season, Amon's patience had run out and he left the team. He would later claim that the months he spent with the team "felt like ten [seasons]". Tyrrell offered Amon a third car – the 005 – in which to drive the last two races of the season. After a mediocre first outing at the Canadian GP, he and Jackie Stewart withdrew from the final race of the year, the United States GP, following the death of their teammate François Cevert during qualifying. 1974 For the 1974 F1 season, Amon revived Chris Amon Racing. Gordon Fowell designed the car, the AF101, which featured a single central fuel tank, titanium torsion bars and a forward driving position. Structurally, however, it proved to be weak and was not ready for an F1 appearance until the fourth race of the season, the Spanish GP. Amon was only able to qualify 23rd, thanks to brake-disc vibration that only became worse with the tyres for the wet race that followed. Despite cautious driving, a brake shaft finally broke and Amon was forced to retire after 22 laps. Following further work and testing, Amon returned for the Monaco GP and qualified twentieth, but, thanks to mechanical problems, he was unable to start the race. Further problems and illness meant Amon was not able to reappear with the F101 until the Italian GP, three races from the end of the season, but this time he was unable to qualify. That sealed the fate of both the car and Chris Amon Racing, leaving Amon to drive the season's last two races with the faltering BRM team. He would later reveal that he had turned down a chance to join the Brabham team earlier in the season. 1975 Amon contested the 1975 F5000 Tasman series against only local Australasian drivers, although Graham McRae, Warwick Brown and Kevin Bartlett were acknowledged internationally. Amon qualified on the front row of three of the four New Zealand rounds and scored a victory at Teretonga in January 1975 in rainy conditions by 24.2 seconds. In the Australian rounds, the competition was always harder with more good cars and the locals on their own tracks. Amon had a frustrating series of races unable to pass, South Australian Johnnie Walker, in a superior Lola T332 chassis with Repco-engineered V8. At Surfers Paradise, running from the back of the grid he managed to eventually pass Walker by widening the braking zone in the only corner where overtaking was usually possible. Amon brushed the edge of the track on repeated laps, got extra grip and passed Walker to take the lead. He had been forced to miss most of the practice session, when Customs seized his car's gearbox. In the race, the brilliant effort went for nothing as the Chev engine blew. At Oran Park and Adelaide he followed Walker the whole way to 4th and 3rd unable to pass. In the final deciding race for the Tasman Series with Brown, Walker and Lawrence still in contention, Walker lost his T332 on the first lap and it demolished on wooden barriers surrounding Sandown's car and horse racing tracks. Amon was never in contention and finished 4th. Amon intended to compete in F5000 in both Europe and the US in 1975 but started in only one round of both series, managing a pole in one Shellsport round in the UK and a 4th place overall at the Long Beach GP in a two heat race. He used different Talon F5000 cars for both races. The speed he showed in qualifying for a couple of UK F5000 races encouraged the small Ensign team to give him a race. Mo Nunn the Ensign team owner had been a Lotus F3 driver in 1966 and the Dave Baldwin designed chassis was in many ways a lightweight Lotus F1, which Ronnie Peterson wanted to test in 1975 out of frustration with his old 72 and which could have been used by Colin Chapman had he not decided to concentrate on developing chassis which would use ground effect technology, the Lotus 77 design for 1976 which was in many ways a test vehicle for the development of concepts, including the de facto legalisation of technology like plastic sliding skirts, introduced on Andretti's 77 from the 1976 Canadian Grand Prix, that would be used in future Lotus wing cars the Lotus 78 and Lotus 79. Apart from these successes, Amon's racing career seemed once again to have stalled. Apparently a chance meeting with Mo Nunn of Ensign Racing led to the Ensign drive, but in fact Mo Nunn thought his new N175 a very fast car and did not view the two Dutch drivers favoured by the Dutch HB Security company who sponsored Ensign fast enough. Gijs van Lennep, the 1973 European F5000 Champion in a Surtees TS11 who had won Le Mans in 1971 and 1976 was a very good driver but also one of the last racing aristocrats. Van Lennep, qualified the car on its debut in the French GP at Paul Ricard and finished 6th in the German GP at Nürburgring, and was faster on both circuits than Patrick Nève or Amon were in 1976. Amon managed 7th in the non-championship Swiss GP at Dijon chasing James Hunt debuting the disappointing Hesketh 308C and 12th in two GP drives in the Ensign N175 at the Austrian and Italian GPs. At Monza after a long pit stop he finally ran at competitive pace, running 4 laps down but keeping pace with the leading Ferrari 312T of Niki Lauda for a number of laps. Progressive evaluation of the possibilities of what was slowing the N175 led Amon to change the airbox alignment on the day of the Italian GP and this resulted in a 2-second gain (much like the change in air cooler position that lost and gained two seconds on Hunt's McLaren M23 resolved by the 1976 French GP). Ironically Amon never raced the N175 again and the high airboxes had been banned by the time N176 ran at Jarama the following year, but the flash of testing and driving genius was enough to give Amon another chance. Although the results were unremarkable, he and Nunn worked well together, so Amon joined Ensign for the 1976 F1 season. 1976 Ensign's first race of the season was the South African GP where Amon qualified 18th and showed a revival of form, climbing to seventh place, in the old Ensign N174 and contesting sixth with Mario Andretti in the Parnelli Ford, in the last laps before a last minute refueling stop left him 14th. Thereafter results began to improve, with Amon qualifying 17th and finishing eighth in the USA West GP; qualifying tenth and finishing fifth in the Spanish GP; and then qualifying eighth for the Belgian GP. More points then seemed likely from the race until his car lost a wheel 19 laps from the finish and Amon was lucky to escape unhurt from the ensuing accident. He then achieved a third-place grid position start for the Swedish GP using a Nicholson rebuilt Cosworth for the first time and in the race looked as if he would join Tyrrell drivers Jody Scheckter and Patrick Depailler on the podium, until suspension failure threw him from the track after 38 laps. Amon had again been lucky to escape serious injury and decided to miss the next race, the French GP. He returned for the British GP, qualifying in sixth and running fourth in the race when his Ford-Cosworth DFV engine developed a water leak. Rather than risk losing an engine, his team called him in to retire. At the German GP problems dogged his attempts to qualify well, but it was Niki Lauda's crash during the second lap of the race that had a far greater impact. Amon refused to restart the race and Nunn fired him from the team. Amon declared his retirement from the sport and returned to New Zealand. "I'd seen too many people fried in racing cars at that stage. When you've driven past Bandini, Schlesser, Courage and Williamson, another shunt like that was simply too much. It was a personal decision..." (Amon, on his retirement in 1976)However, Walter Wolf contacted Amon and persuaded him to drive for his Wolf–Williams team in the North American races near the end of the season. After recording some promising times in preparation for the Canadian GP, however, Amon was involved in a heavy collision with another car during qualifying and once again was lucky to walk away unharmed. He then did not take part in either the Canadian or United States Grands Prix. 1977 Amon turned down an offer of a full-time F1 drive for 1977, but did attempt a return to Can-Am racing in 1977 with a Wolf-Dallara WD1. However, after only one race he quit, saying "I'm just not enjoying this anymore". His place was taken by the young and then unknown Canadian Gilles Villeneuve, whom Amon would, later that year, recommend to Enzo Ferrari. In the meantime, Amon returned once again to New Zealand, this time to retire from F1 motor racing for good. 2000s 2003 Amon came out of retirement for a one-off appearance in the 2003 Dunlop Targa New Zealand with motorsport commentator Murray Walker as his navigator. The pair completed the week-long Auckland to Wellington Tarmac Rally in a Toyota Camry Sportivo, the same car previously used by Walker and Colin Bond in Australia's Targa Tasmania. Retirement After his retirement from F1, Amon dedicated himself to running the family farm in New Zealand's Manawatu District for many years. After retiring from farming, he lived in Taupo in New Zealand's North Island. In the early 1980s he became more well known in New Zealand from test-driving vehicles on the TV motoring series Motor Show and later consulted for Toyota New Zealand, tuning the 1984 Toyota Corolla and subsequent cars for sale there. He also appeared in TV commercials for the company, where much was made of the acclaim he won from Enzo Ferrari. Amon participated in the 2004 EnergyWise Rally where he won ahead of Brian Cowan. Amon drove a Toyota Prius for the event. In the 1993 Queen's Birthday Honours, Amon was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, for services to motor sport. Amon was involved in the design of the upgraded Taupo Motorsport Park circuit, used for the New Zealand round of the 2006–07 A1 Grand Prix season in January 2007. At the New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing in 2011, Amon's life and career were honoured with a selection of his cars being driven and also used the event to raise funds for the Bruce McLaren trust. Amon was also honoured at the festival in January 2013. Death Amon died in Rotorua Hospital on 3 August 2016, aged 73, of cancer. He was survived by his wife (they married in 1977) their three children and their grandchildren. One of his sons, James, is a qualified High Performance personal trainer. He trained Central Districts Stags cricket team, and was revealed to be Brendon Hartley's personal trainer. Legacy Despite never winning a championship Formula One Grand Prix, Amon won eight non-championship GPs, the Silverstone International Trophy, the 1000 km Monza, the Daytona 24 Hours, the Tasman Series and, perhaps most significant of all, the famous 24 Heures du Mans (alongside Bruce McLaren). These races included many of Amon's otherwise more successful fellow Formula One drivers. Amon also remains the only driver from New Zealand and Oceania to have raced for Scuderia Ferrari in Formula One. In Formula One, Chris Amon took part in 96 Grands Prix, achieving 5 poles, leading 183 laps in 7 races, reaching the podium 11 times and scoring a total of 83 Championship points. Amon holds the record for the most different makes of car raced by a Formula 1 World Championship driver, with thirteen. A biography Forza Amon by journalist Eoin Young charts Amon's racing career and gives some insights into his personal life. The book makes clear one point on which Amon himself disagrees with most commentators, the issue of his bad luck. Amon has pointed out on several occasions that he competed for a decade and a half in Formula One and survived some serious accidents, notably in 1976, whilst others, including friends like Bruce McLaren, suffered serious injury and death. In 2008, motorsport journalist Alan Henry rated Chris Amon as his 13th greatest driver. Reflecting on the 1968 racing death of Jim Clark, Amon said: "If this can happen to Jimmy, what chance do the rest of us have? I think we all felt that. It seemed like we'd lost our leader." In 1995, Amon was inducted into the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame. Amon's name has been given to the Toyota Racing Series driver's championship trophy, and the International Scholarship to support drivers who win his trophy to further their careers in single-seater racing. The Toyota Racing Series serves as motorsport's version of "winter ball" in New Zealand during January and February. Following his death, his name was also lent to the Manfeild Autocourse in Feilding, Manawatu. Racing record Formula One World Championship results (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap) Non-Championship Formula One results (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap) Complete Tasman Series results (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap) Complete 24 Hours of Le Mans results References External links Bruce McLaren Trust Official site Trio At The Top – a documentary about Bruce McLaren, Denny Hulme and Chris Amon on NZ On Screen Chris Amon 8W-Forix; Tom Prankard; 1 October 2000 New Zealand racing drivers New Zealand Formula One drivers Amon Formula One drivers BRM Formula One drivers Cooper Formula One drivers Ensign Formula One drivers Ferrari Formula One drivers March Formula One drivers Matra Formula One drivers Reg Parnell Racing Formula One drivers Tecno Formula One drivers Tyrrell Formula One drivers Williams Formula One drivers Formula One team owners 24 Hours of Le Mans drivers 24 Hours of Le Mans winning drivers 12 Hours of Reims drivers 24 Hours of Daytona drivers World Sportscar Championship drivers Tasman Series drivers New Zealand Members of the Order of the British Empire People from Bulls 1943 births 2016 deaths

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When was his more recent race?

When was Chris Amon's more recent race?

Chris Amon

After his retirement from F1, Amon dedicated himself to running the family farm in New Zealand's Manawatu District for many years. After retiring from farming, he lived in Taupo in New Zealand's North Island. In the early 1980s he became more well known in New Zealand from test-driving vehicles on the TV motoring series Motor Show and later consulted for Toyota New Zealand, tuning the 1984 Toyota Corolla and subsequent cars for sale there. He also appeared in TV commercials for the company, where much was made of the acclaim he won from Enzo Ferrari. Amon participated in the 2004 EnergyWise Rally where he won ahead of Brian Cowan. Amon drove a Toyota Prius for the event. Amon was involved in the design of the upgraded Taupo Motorsport Park circuit, used for the New Zealand round of the 2006-07 A1 Grand Prix season in January 2007. At the New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing in 2011, Amon's life and career were honoured with a selection of his cars being driven and also used the event to raise funds for the Bruce McLaren trust. Amon was also honoured at the festival in January 2013. Amon died in Rotorua Hospital on 3 August 2016, aged 73, of cancer. He was survived by his wife (they married in 1977) their three children and their grandchildren. One of his sons, James, is a qualified High Performance personal trainer. He trained Central Districts Stags cricket team, and was revealed to be Brendon Hartley's personal trainer. CANNOTANSWER

Amon participated in the 2004 EnergyWise Rally

Christopher Arthur Amon (20 July 1943 – 3 August 2016) was a New Zealand motor racing driver. He was active in Formula One racing in the 1960s and 1970s and is widely regarded as one of the best F1 drivers never to win a championship Grand Prix. His reputation for bad luck was such that fellow driver Mario Andretti once joked that "if he became an undertaker, people would stop dying". Former Ferrari Technical Director Mauro Forghieri stated that Amon was "by far the best test driver I have ever worked with. He had all the qualities to be a World Champion but bad luck just wouldn't let him be". Apart from driving, Chris Amon also ran his own Formula One team for a short period in 1974. Away from Formula One, Amon had some success in sports car racing, teaming with co-driver Bruce McLaren to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans race in . Early life Amon was born in Bulls, and attended Whanganui Collegiate School. He was the only child of wealthy sheep-owners Ngaio and Betty Amon. He learned to drive at the age of six, taught by a farm worker on the family farm. On leaving school, he persuaded his father to buy him an Austin A40 Special, which he entered in some minor local races and hillclimbs along with practice on the family farm. He progressed to a 1.5-litre Cooper and then an old 2.5-litre Maserati 250F, but only began to draw attention when he drove the Cooper-Climax T51 which Bruce McLaren had used to win his maiden Grand Prix. In 1962 Amon entered the Cooper for the New Zealand winter series, but was hampered by mechanical problems. However, Scuderia Veloce entered him in a similar car, and, in the rain at Lakeside, he performed well. One of the spectators there was the English racing driver Reg Parnell who persuaded Amon to come to England and race for his team. In a test at Goodwood Amon continued to impress and was on the pace in the Goodwood International Trophy and Aintree 200 pre-season races. Racing career 1960s 1963 For the 1963 Formula One season the Parnell team were using the year old Lola Mk4A, powered by 1962 specification Climax V8 engines. Amon was teamed with the very experienced Maurice Trintignant for the first race of the season at Monaco and his Grand Prix career started with what was to become typical bad luck: Trintignant's Climax developed a misfire, so he took over Amon's car. At the 1963 Belgian Grand Prix, Amon was partnered by Lucien Bianchi and started ahead of him from 15th position. After nine laps, however, an oil fire ended his race. He continued to experience mechanical problems at the Dutch, Mexican and German Grands Prix; and after an accident in practice for the Italian Grand Prix left him hanging out of his car's cockpit with three broken ribs, he missed both the Italian and United States rounds. Amon usually qualified in the midfield and generally outpaced his teammates, who included his good friend Mike Hailwood. His best results of the year were seventh at the French and British Grands Prix. During this time, however, Amon's social life was attracting as much attention as his driving. He was a member of the Ditton Road Flyers, the social set named after the road in London where Amon shared an apartment with American Peter Revson, Hailwood and Tony Maggs. Parnell was nonetheless impressed with Amon's results in what was regarded as less-than-competitive machinery and promoted him to team leader. Parnell died from peritonitis in January 1964 and his son Tim took over the team. 1964 In a series of four pre-season races in Britain and Italy, Amon recorded three fifth places at Snetterton, Silverstone and Syracuse. He failed to qualify for the first F1 race of the season, the Monaco GP, but at the next race, the Dutch GP, he scored his first World Championship points. The rest of his season, however, was blighted by mechanical problems. 1965 Parnell was offered BRM engines for 1965, but only if it ran Richard Attwood as its regular driver. Reluctantly, Parnell agreed and Attwood took Amon's place. Spotting an opportunity, Bruce McLaren quickly signed Amon for his new McLaren team, but when no second McLaren F1 car materialised, Amon could only drive in sports car races. At the French GP Amon rejoined Parnell to stand in for an injured Attwood. Amon also competed in a Formula Two race in Stuttgart and won. He returned to Germany for the German GP as second Parnell driver, but mechanical failure again forced an early retirement. His last drive before Attwood's return, a non-championship race in Enna, Sicily, also ended in retirement. 1966 During 1966 Amon continued to race for McLaren in Can-Am. He was intended to drive the second McLaren M2B but difficulties with engine supply meant that the team never made the intended expansion to two cars. (James Garner's character Pete Aron's helmet and car livery in the film Grand Prix were modelled on Amon driving a McLaren, which caused the movie makers to have to encourage other cars to be painted in the 'Yamura' colours and other drivers (Bruce McLaren included) to wear Amon-style helmets.) However, an opportunity arose to drive for the Cooper F1 team after Richie Ginther left them for Honda. Amon drove for Cooper at the French GP and was scheduled to drive for them for the rest of the season, until the more successful John Surtees left Scuderia Ferrari to join Cooper and Amon found himself dropped. Amon made one other F1 appearance during the year, driving a Brabham BT11 powered by an old 2-litre BRM engine at the Italian GP under the banner of "Chris Amon Racing". He failed to qualify. Amon did however, score his biggest success to date when he partnered Bruce McLaren in a 7-litre Ford GT40 Mark II and Ken Miles to Ford's dead-heat "photo-finish" after Miles was instructed to slow down despite leading at the Le Mans 24-hour race, spearheading a formation finish. He subsequently received an invitation to meet Enzo Ferrari at the Ferrari home in Maranello, where he signed to race for Ferrari in 1967 alongside Lorenzo Bandini, Mike Parkes and Ludovico Scarfiotti. 1967 Amon's first year with Ferrari did not begin auspiciously. En route to Brands Hatch for the pre-season Formula One Race of Champions, he crashed his road car and, following race practice, had to withdraw. Tragedy then struck the Ferrari team when Bandini died following a crash during the 1967 Monaco Grand Prix, Mike Parkes broke both his legs at the Belgian Grand Prix and, in the aftermath, Ludovico Scarfiotti went into temporary retirement. Amon, therefore, became Ferrari's only driver for the rest of the season, until joined by Jonathan Williams for the final race in Mexico. Amon scored his first podium in his first official outing for the Scuderia in Monaco and at the end of 1967 had achieved four third places finishing fifth in the Drivers' Championship, in what was going to be the most successful season of his career. Amon's Ferrari contract also included sports car racing and he began 1967 by winning the Daytona 24 Hours and 1000km Monza events with Bandini in the 4-litre Ferrari 330-P4. He finished the year partnering Jackie Stewart to a second place at the BOAC 500, thereby clinching the manufacturer's world championship for Ferrari by one point over Porsche. 1968 1968 was the year aerodynamics first played a significant role in F1 car design and Amon worked with engineer Mauro Forghieri to place aerofoils on the Ferrari 312. In January 1968 Amon had returned home to New Zealand and Australia to compete in the 1968 Tasman Series which was used by many of the top Formula One drivers as a warm up series to the World Championship. Ferrari had been interested in the series for several years and in 1965 had reengineered 2.4 Dino engines used by Mike Hawthorn, Peter Collins and Phil Hill in 1958–60 with more torque and mid speed power for the planned use of team leader Surtees in the 1966 Tasman Series. After a late season crash in US Can-Am racing by Surtees, the entry was withdrawn but consideration was given to using NZ Gold star champion Jim Palmer in a semi-works Ferrari entry in the 1967 Tasman Series as it was viewed in a 2.4 car he would be competitive with Clark and Stewart in 2-litre F1 cars. Palmer had run world-class times in the 1966 Tasman Series, particularly in the Pukekohe practice and Longford race, and was tested in Italy at the same time as Amon by Ferrari, and ran competitive times at Modena but for whatever reason Ferrari did not compete in 1967 series. For the 1968 series Ferrari decided to use the 2.4 engines with a new Dino 166 F2 chassis rather than a downsized 3-litre V12. Using the 246T Amon won the first two rounds of the Tasman Series, including the 1968 New Zealand Grand Prix, before narrowly losing the series to the Lotus-Ford of Jim Clark. The Dino 246 Tasmania was better handling than Clark's Lotus 49T which was still wingless and a difficult proposition. Impressed by Amon's driving in the NZ rounds, Ferrari dispatched a new four-valve version of the 2.4 V6 for the Australian rounds and this gave another 15 hp, but with lesser reliability which, combined with the fact Clark was the best driver in the world at the time, cost Amon the series, although in the final round at Sandown Park he duelled wheel to wheel with Clark before being pipped at the line. After the first race of the F1 season in South Africa, Amon achieved pole positions in three of the following four races (at the Spanish, Belgian and Dutch Grands Prix) but ever-present mechanical problems meant he secured only a single Championship point from them. Throughout the rest of the season he never qualified lower than fifth place and nearly scored victories at the British and Canadian rounds and he suffered a 100 mph crash in Italy which demolished his car. In Britain, he duelled to the line with Jo Siffert's Lotus 49B and in Canada he dominated the race despite a malfunctioning clutch. Seventeen laps from the finish, however, his car's transmission failed and a distraught Amon had to be consoled by Jacky Ickx. From at least ten promising starts that season he was only able to finish five races and score ten Championship points. His best finish was second place to Siffert's Lotus-Cosworth at the British Grand Prix. Outside F1, Amon was runner-up in the Formula Two race at Zolder, Belgium, testing the Dino 166 F2. He also came third in that year's BRDC International Trophy. 1969 Amon began 1969 with success driving the Dino engined 246 Tasmania in the Tasman Series that included winning both the New Zealand and Australian Grands Prix. In straight fights, he beat new Gold Leaf Lotus team leader, Jochen Rindt, into second in the races at Pukekohe and Sandown. He would ultimately win the seven race Tasman Series, probably the best of the seven-year 2.5-litre international formula series in this country and the nearest to World Championship level racing in New Zealand, with ferocious competition between Rindt, Graham Hill, Amon and Williams driver Piers Courage. It was actually much more serious racing than the McLaren dominated Can-Am series in the US in which the big sports cars required few gear changes and were essentially cruised to victory with little real competition, where the Tasman cars were essentially marginally lower power F1 cars, as difficult to drive as GP cars on unforgiving very dangerous narrow tracks. Amon finished with four wins, two-thirds and one retirement, but in Formula One his poor luck continued. Despite six starts from top-six positions, he was only able to achieve a third-place at the Dutch GP. Ferrari's F1 V12 engine was too unreliable and although its replacement had proven very fast in testing, it had suffered many mechanical breakages. Amon had no reason to believe it would be any more dependable than the V12, so although the new engine was clearly more powerful, he decided to leave Ferrari for a Cosworth DFV powered team. Ironically, the new flat-12 engine would become one of the best Formula One engines of the 1970s. Jacky Ickx, Amon's old teammate did return to Ferrari for 1970, after a successful sabbatical with Brabham gained Ickx second in the 1969 World Championship. Ickx saw Enzo Ferrari had secured huge backing from Fiat who had taken partial ownership of the Marque, and believed Ferrari would be a renewed team and an effective proposition. Amon was more influenced by views of Jackie Stewart and Jochen Rindt, who believed it was essential to be Ford DFV-powered to be competitive. In addition to Formula One, Amon also drove for Ferrari in the 1969 International Championship for Makes, partnering Pedro Rodriguez to a fourth place in the BOAC 500 at Brands Hatch and coming second at the 12 Hours of Sebring, but retiring from the 1000km Nürburgring and 1000km Monza races, all in the Ferrari 312P sportscar. He also drove in a few Can-Am races. His last race for Ferrari would be the 1970 1000 km Monza, where he finished as runner-up. 1970s 1970 For the 1970 Formula One season, Amon made what was to be the first of several moves to smaller, newer teams. March Engineering had been formed the previous year to build custom chassis for Formulas 2 and 3, but quickly moved into F1, designing and building the March 701. Amon and Siffert were signed as drivers, with IndyCar driver Mario Andretti making an occasional appearance in a third car. March also sold their 701 chassis to Tyrrell, where Jackie Stewart drove it to its first victory in that year's Spanish GP. Amon won the pre-season Silverstone International Trophy, but once the F1 season began he found himself prevented from converting good qualifying positions into good results. He qualified second behind Stewart's Tyrrell-March for the season-opening South African Grand Prix only for his own March to overheat within fourteen laps. Amon then qualified sixth for the Spanish Grand Prix only for his March's Ford-Cosworth DFV engine to expire within ten laps. He qualified and ran second in the 1970 Monaco Grand Prix until his suspension failed twenty laps from the finish. This was the race where Amon refused to drive unless his entry number was changed from 18 – the number under which his then teammate Lorenzo Bandini had crashed and died in Monaco – to 28. Amon's close second place from a third-place start at the 1970 Belgian Grand Prix finally gave the March works team their first points finish. At that race, Amon set fastest lap at over 152 miles per hour, a lap record which still stands as of 2016, as it was the last race on the full-length Spa-Francorchamps circuit. However, after qualifying fourth for the next race, the Dutch Grand Prix, his car's clutch broke after just one lap. Amon duplicated his Belgian result at the 1970 French Grand Prix,. After a disappointing performance in the British GP at Brands Hatch where Amon finished fifth after being outqualified by tyro Ronnie Peterson in a private 701 on the same tyres, conflict with team boss Max Mosley over the non-delivery of three-quarters of Amon's expected pay for the season saw him provided with inferior DFVs and two backmarker 7th places in Austria and Italy, Amon finished the season strongly with strong drives to third at Mosport, fifth at Watkins Glen and fourth in Mexico. At Watkins Glen in the USGP he was robbed of a probably certain victory, in the opinion of March designer Robin Herd, by a puncture. By the end of the year, disagreements with March co-founders Mosley and Robin Herd meant that Amon had decided to move to another relatively new team, Matra. 1971 In 1971, Amon, now driving for the Matra factory team, once again scored a pre-season victory, this time at the Argentine Grand Prix. Once the Formula One season had begun, he managed to convert a third-place start at the Spanish GP into a third-place podium finish and scored a couple of fifth places in the South African and French GPs. Apart from these results, however, his run of poor F1 returns continued. He had a major accident at the Nürburgring and it sidelined him for the next race at the Österreichring. At the Italian GP he qualified in pole position and despite a poor start to the race looked as if he would capitalise on it – until the visor on his helmet became detached. Amon had to slow to avoid risking a major accident, thereby allowing other drivers to catch and overtake him. He finished the race in sixth place, scoring just one Championship point. During the year Amon also competed in the non-championship Questor Grand Prix at the new Ontario Motor Speedway, where he qualified second and, despite suffering a puncture during the race, managed to finish fourth. In the Tasman Series Amon started from fourth at the Levin Circuit and in the race, he battled with David Oxton and John Cannon but managed to finish third. Amon's third race at Wigram Airfield starting fifth and spun at the start to drop him to the back of the field but managed to climb up to fifth. 1972 In the 1972 Formula One season, Amon, again driving for Matra achieved a handful of points-scoring finishes, but only one podium appearance, at the French GP. Here he achieved the fifth and final pole position of his career and was leading the race until a puncture forced him to pit. However, he climbed back through the field, breaking the circuit's lap record to finish third. With the money he had made from motorsport, Amon decided to set up a racing engine firm with former BRM engineer Aubrey Woods. Amon Racing Engines supplied Formula 2 engines to a few drivers, but the company quickly became too expensive to run and was sold to March for a loss. Matra decided to end their participation in Formula One at the end of 1972, so Amon found himself looking to return to March as a driver. The place, however, was given to Jean-Pierre Jarier, purportedly for financial reasons. Amon therefore signed for another recently formed F1 team, Tecno. 1973 Tecno had entered F1 the previous year, having been a successful chassis-builder for other Formulæ and had developed a potentially powerful Flat 12 for F1. Their first year in F1 proved to be dismal, however with considerable backing from Martini Rossi they had jumped at the chance to sign Amon, and allocate David Yorke the former Vanwall and Gulf GT40 Team Manager to run the team and commission two new chassis designs by former Lotus and McLaren mechanic. Alan McCall who had worked on Clark and Hulme's F1 cars and unproven, British designer Gordon Fowell for a more radical back up design, in the hope he would help transform their performance. While McCalls car was built rapidly, testing it was more time-consuming and after its non-appearance, for the Spanish GP, Amon and team manager David Yorke met with Enzo Ferrari to see if Amon could be released from his contract to develop the new Ferrari B3 for Ickx and Mezarrio, in a supposedly one off GP drive at Monaco. Yorke rejected the release, and Amon admits he would not have left Ferrari if offered the drive for a season. Unfortunately, the team went from bad to worse and wasn't able to field the Tecno PA123/6 until the fifth GP of the season, the Belgian GP. Amon managed to finish in sixth position. At Monaco the car qualified a useful 12th and chassis felt good but Chris was unhappy with the car. He decided to concentrate on the undeveloped Gordon Fowell Goral car. This was against the view of the Techno team and the Pederanzi engine builders and Martini Rossi who required the car and driver to appear at races Amon commented at the time that it was "the best chassis I've ever sat in", it too proved virtually undriveable. Amon refused to drive the McCall, Techno in the Swedish or German Gps and withdrew from the Austrian GP after qualifying. By the time of the Austrian GP, four races from the end of the season, Amon's patience had run out and he left the team. He would later claim that the months he spent with the team "felt like ten [seasons]". Tyrrell offered Amon a third car – the 005 – in which to drive the last two races of the season. After a mediocre first outing at the Canadian GP, he and Jackie Stewart withdrew from the final race of the year, the United States GP, following the death of their teammate François Cevert during qualifying. 1974 For the 1974 F1 season, Amon revived Chris Amon Racing. Gordon Fowell designed the car, the AF101, which featured a single central fuel tank, titanium torsion bars and a forward driving position. Structurally, however, it proved to be weak and was not ready for an F1 appearance until the fourth race of the season, the Spanish GP. Amon was only able to qualify 23rd, thanks to brake-disc vibration that only became worse with the tyres for the wet race that followed. Despite cautious driving, a brake shaft finally broke and Amon was forced to retire after 22 laps. Following further work and testing, Amon returned for the Monaco GP and qualified twentieth, but, thanks to mechanical problems, he was unable to start the race. Further problems and illness meant Amon was not able to reappear with the F101 until the Italian GP, three races from the end of the season, but this time he was unable to qualify. That sealed the fate of both the car and Chris Amon Racing, leaving Amon to drive the season's last two races with the faltering BRM team. He would later reveal that he had turned down a chance to join the Brabham team earlier in the season. 1975 Amon contested the 1975 F5000 Tasman series against only local Australasian drivers, although Graham McRae, Warwick Brown and Kevin Bartlett were acknowledged internationally. Amon qualified on the front row of three of the four New Zealand rounds and scored a victory at Teretonga in January 1975 in rainy conditions by 24.2 seconds. In the Australian rounds, the competition was always harder with more good cars and the locals on their own tracks. Amon had a frustrating series of races unable to pass, South Australian Johnnie Walker, in a superior Lola T332 chassis with Repco-engineered V8. At Surfers Paradise, running from the back of the grid he managed to eventually pass Walker by widening the braking zone in the only corner where overtaking was usually possible. Amon brushed the edge of the track on repeated laps, got extra grip and passed Walker to take the lead. He had been forced to miss most of the practice session, when Customs seized his car's gearbox. In the race, the brilliant effort went for nothing as the Chev engine blew. At Oran Park and Adelaide he followed Walker the whole way to 4th and 3rd unable to pass. In the final deciding race for the Tasman Series with Brown, Walker and Lawrence still in contention, Walker lost his T332 on the first lap and it demolished on wooden barriers surrounding Sandown's car and horse racing tracks. Amon was never in contention and finished 4th. Amon intended to compete in F5000 in both Europe and the US in 1975 but started in only one round of both series, managing a pole in one Shellsport round in the UK and a 4th place overall at the Long Beach GP in a two heat race. He used different Talon F5000 cars for both races. The speed he showed in qualifying for a couple of UK F5000 races encouraged the small Ensign team to give him a race. Mo Nunn the Ensign team owner had been a Lotus F3 driver in 1966 and the Dave Baldwin designed chassis was in many ways a lightweight Lotus F1, which Ronnie Peterson wanted to test in 1975 out of frustration with his old 72 and which could have been used by Colin Chapman had he not decided to concentrate on developing chassis which would use ground effect technology, the Lotus 77 design for 1976 which was in many ways a test vehicle for the development of concepts, including the de facto legalisation of technology like plastic sliding skirts, introduced on Andretti's 77 from the 1976 Canadian Grand Prix, that would be used in future Lotus wing cars the Lotus 78 and Lotus 79. Apart from these successes, Amon's racing career seemed once again to have stalled. Apparently a chance meeting with Mo Nunn of Ensign Racing led to the Ensign drive, but in fact Mo Nunn thought his new N175 a very fast car and did not view the two Dutch drivers favoured by the Dutch HB Security company who sponsored Ensign fast enough. Gijs van Lennep, the 1973 European F5000 Champion in a Surtees TS11 who had won Le Mans in 1971 and 1976 was a very good driver but also one of the last racing aristocrats. Van Lennep, qualified the car on its debut in the French GP at Paul Ricard and finished 6th in the German GP at Nürburgring, and was faster on both circuits than Patrick Nève or Amon were in 1976. Amon managed 7th in the non-championship Swiss GP at Dijon chasing James Hunt debuting the disappointing Hesketh 308C and 12th in two GP drives in the Ensign N175 at the Austrian and Italian GPs. At Monza after a long pit stop he finally ran at competitive pace, running 4 laps down but keeping pace with the leading Ferrari 312T of Niki Lauda for a number of laps. Progressive evaluation of the possibilities of what was slowing the N175 led Amon to change the airbox alignment on the day of the Italian GP and this resulted in a 2-second gain (much like the change in air cooler position that lost and gained two seconds on Hunt's McLaren M23 resolved by the 1976 French GP). Ironically Amon never raced the N175 again and the high airboxes had been banned by the time N176 ran at Jarama the following year, but the flash of testing and driving genius was enough to give Amon another chance. Although the results were unremarkable, he and Nunn worked well together, so Amon joined Ensign for the 1976 F1 season. 1976 Ensign's first race of the season was the South African GP where Amon qualified 18th and showed a revival of form, climbing to seventh place, in the old Ensign N174 and contesting sixth with Mario Andretti in the Parnelli Ford, in the last laps before a last minute refueling stop left him 14th. Thereafter results began to improve, with Amon qualifying 17th and finishing eighth in the USA West GP; qualifying tenth and finishing fifth in the Spanish GP; and then qualifying eighth for the Belgian GP. More points then seemed likely from the race until his car lost a wheel 19 laps from the finish and Amon was lucky to escape unhurt from the ensuing accident. He then achieved a third-place grid position start for the Swedish GP using a Nicholson rebuilt Cosworth for the first time and in the race looked as if he would join Tyrrell drivers Jody Scheckter and Patrick Depailler on the podium, until suspension failure threw him from the track after 38 laps. Amon had again been lucky to escape serious injury and decided to miss the next race, the French GP. He returned for the British GP, qualifying in sixth and running fourth in the race when his Ford-Cosworth DFV engine developed a water leak. Rather than risk losing an engine, his team called him in to retire. At the German GP problems dogged his attempts to qualify well, but it was Niki Lauda's crash during the second lap of the race that had a far greater impact. Amon refused to restart the race and Nunn fired him from the team. Amon declared his retirement from the sport and returned to New Zealand. "I'd seen too many people fried in racing cars at that stage. When you've driven past Bandini, Schlesser, Courage and Williamson, another shunt like that was simply too much. It was a personal decision..." (Amon, on his retirement in 1976)However, Walter Wolf contacted Amon and persuaded him to drive for his Wolf–Williams team in the North American races near the end of the season. After recording some promising times in preparation for the Canadian GP, however, Amon was involved in a heavy collision with another car during qualifying and once again was lucky to walk away unharmed. He then did not take part in either the Canadian or United States Grands Prix. 1977 Amon turned down an offer of a full-time F1 drive for 1977, but did attempt a return to Can-Am racing in 1977 with a Wolf-Dallara WD1. However, after only one race he quit, saying "I'm just not enjoying this anymore". His place was taken by the young and then unknown Canadian Gilles Villeneuve, whom Amon would, later that year, recommend to Enzo Ferrari. In the meantime, Amon returned once again to New Zealand, this time to retire from F1 motor racing for good. 2000s 2003 Amon came out of retirement for a one-off appearance in the 2003 Dunlop Targa New Zealand with motorsport commentator Murray Walker as his navigator. The pair completed the week-long Auckland to Wellington Tarmac Rally in a Toyota Camry Sportivo, the same car previously used by Walker and Colin Bond in Australia's Targa Tasmania. Retirement After his retirement from F1, Amon dedicated himself to running the family farm in New Zealand's Manawatu District for many years. After retiring from farming, he lived in Taupo in New Zealand's North Island. In the early 1980s he became more well known in New Zealand from test-driving vehicles on the TV motoring series Motor Show and later consulted for Toyota New Zealand, tuning the 1984 Toyota Corolla and subsequent cars for sale there. He also appeared in TV commercials for the company, where much was made of the acclaim he won from Enzo Ferrari. Amon participated in the 2004 EnergyWise Rally where he won ahead of Brian Cowan. Amon drove a Toyota Prius for the event. In the 1993 Queen's Birthday Honours, Amon was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, for services to motor sport. Amon was involved in the design of the upgraded Taupo Motorsport Park circuit, used for the New Zealand round of the 2006–07 A1 Grand Prix season in January 2007. At the New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing in 2011, Amon's life and career were honoured with a selection of his cars being driven and also used the event to raise funds for the Bruce McLaren trust. Amon was also honoured at the festival in January 2013. Death Amon died in Rotorua Hospital on 3 August 2016, aged 73, of cancer. He was survived by his wife (they married in 1977) their three children and their grandchildren. One of his sons, James, is a qualified High Performance personal trainer. He trained Central Districts Stags cricket team, and was revealed to be Brendon Hartley's personal trainer. Legacy Despite never winning a championship Formula One Grand Prix, Amon won eight non-championship GPs, the Silverstone International Trophy, the 1000 km Monza, the Daytona 24 Hours, the Tasman Series and, perhaps most significant of all, the famous 24 Heures du Mans (alongside Bruce McLaren). These races included many of Amon's otherwise more successful fellow Formula One drivers. Amon also remains the only driver from New Zealand and Oceania to have raced for Scuderia Ferrari in Formula One. In Formula One, Chris Amon took part in 96 Grands Prix, achieving 5 poles, leading 183 laps in 7 races, reaching the podium 11 times and scoring a total of 83 Championship points. Amon holds the record for the most different makes of car raced by a Formula 1 World Championship driver, with thirteen. A biography Forza Amon by journalist Eoin Young charts Amon's racing career and gives some insights into his personal life. The book makes clear one point on which Amon himself disagrees with most commentators, the issue of his bad luck. Amon has pointed out on several occasions that he competed for a decade and a half in Formula One and survived some serious accidents, notably in 1976, whilst others, including friends like Bruce McLaren, suffered serious injury and death. In 2008, motorsport journalist Alan Henry rated Chris Amon as his 13th greatest driver. Reflecting on the 1968 racing death of Jim Clark, Amon said: "If this can happen to Jimmy, what chance do the rest of us have? I think we all felt that. It seemed like we'd lost our leader." In 1995, Amon was inducted into the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame. Amon's name has been given to the Toyota Racing Series driver's championship trophy, and the International Scholarship to support drivers who win his trophy to further their careers in single-seater racing. The Toyota Racing Series serves as motorsport's version of "winter ball" in New Zealand during January and February. Following his death, his name was also lent to the Manfeild Autocourse in Feilding, Manawatu. Racing record Formula One World Championship results (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap) Non-Championship Formula One results (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap) Complete Tasman Series results (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap) Complete 24 Hours of Le Mans results References External links Bruce McLaren Trust Official site Trio At The Top – a documentary about Bruce McLaren, Denny Hulme and Chris Amon on NZ On Screen Chris Amon 8W-Forix; Tom Prankard; 1 October 2000 New Zealand racing drivers New Zealand Formula One drivers Amon Formula One drivers BRM Formula One drivers Cooper Formula One drivers Ensign Formula One drivers Ferrari Formula One drivers March Formula One drivers Matra Formula One drivers Reg Parnell Racing Formula One drivers Tecno Formula One drivers Tyrrell Formula One drivers Williams Formula One drivers Formula One team owners 24 Hours of Le Mans drivers 24 Hours of Le Mans winning drivers 12 Hours of Reims drivers 24 Hours of Daytona drivers World Sportscar Championship drivers Tasman Series drivers New Zealand Members of the Order of the British Empire People from Bulls 1943 births 2016 deaths

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Did he receive any awards?

Did Chris Amon receive any awards?

Chris Amon

After his retirement from F1, Amon dedicated himself to running the family farm in New Zealand's Manawatu District for many years. After retiring from farming, he lived in Taupo in New Zealand's North Island. In the early 1980s he became more well known in New Zealand from test-driving vehicles on the TV motoring series Motor Show and later consulted for Toyota New Zealand, tuning the 1984 Toyota Corolla and subsequent cars for sale there. He also appeared in TV commercials for the company, where much was made of the acclaim he won from Enzo Ferrari. Amon participated in the 2004 EnergyWise Rally where he won ahead of Brian Cowan. Amon drove a Toyota Prius for the event. Amon was involved in the design of the upgraded Taupo Motorsport Park circuit, used for the New Zealand round of the 2006-07 A1 Grand Prix season in January 2007. At the New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing in 2011, Amon's life and career were honoured with a selection of his cars being driven and also used the event to raise funds for the Bruce McLaren trust. Amon was also honoured at the festival in January 2013. Amon died in Rotorua Hospital on 3 August 2016, aged 73, of cancer. He was survived by his wife (they married in 1977) their three children and their grandchildren. One of his sons, James, is a qualified High Performance personal trainer. He trained Central Districts Stags cricket team, and was revealed to be Brendon Hartley's personal trainer. CANNOTANSWER

At the New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing in 2011, Amon's life and career were honoured with a selection of his cars being driven

Christopher Arthur Amon (20 July 1943 – 3 August 2016) was a New Zealand motor racing driver. He was active in Formula One racing in the 1960s and 1970s and is widely regarded as one of the best F1 drivers never to win a championship Grand Prix. His reputation for bad luck was such that fellow driver Mario Andretti once joked that "if he became an undertaker, people would stop dying". Former Ferrari Technical Director Mauro Forghieri stated that Amon was "by far the best test driver I have ever worked with. He had all the qualities to be a World Champion but bad luck just wouldn't let him be". Apart from driving, Chris Amon also ran his own Formula One team for a short period in 1974. Away from Formula One, Amon had some success in sports car racing, teaming with co-driver Bruce McLaren to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans race in . Early life Amon was born in Bulls, and attended Whanganui Collegiate School. He was the only child of wealthy sheep-owners Ngaio and Betty Amon. He learned to drive at the age of six, taught by a farm worker on the family farm. On leaving school, he persuaded his father to buy him an Austin A40 Special, which he entered in some minor local races and hillclimbs along with practice on the family farm. He progressed to a 1.5-litre Cooper and then an old 2.5-litre Maserati 250F, but only began to draw attention when he drove the Cooper-Climax T51 which Bruce McLaren had used to win his maiden Grand Prix. In 1962 Amon entered the Cooper for the New Zealand winter series, but was hampered by mechanical problems. However, Scuderia Veloce entered him in a similar car, and, in the rain at Lakeside, he performed well. One of the spectators there was the English racing driver Reg Parnell who persuaded Amon to come to England and race for his team. In a test at Goodwood Amon continued to impress and was on the pace in the Goodwood International Trophy and Aintree 200 pre-season races. Racing career 1960s 1963 For the 1963 Formula One season the Parnell team were using the year old Lola Mk4A, powered by 1962 specification Climax V8 engines. Amon was teamed with the very experienced Maurice Trintignant for the first race of the season at Monaco and his Grand Prix career started with what was to become typical bad luck: Trintignant's Climax developed a misfire, so he took over Amon's car. At the 1963 Belgian Grand Prix, Amon was partnered by Lucien Bianchi and started ahead of him from 15th position. After nine laps, however, an oil fire ended his race. He continued to experience mechanical problems at the Dutch, Mexican and German Grands Prix; and after an accident in practice for the Italian Grand Prix left him hanging out of his car's cockpit with three broken ribs, he missed both the Italian and United States rounds. Amon usually qualified in the midfield and generally outpaced his teammates, who included his good friend Mike Hailwood. His best results of the year were seventh at the French and British Grands Prix. During this time, however, Amon's social life was attracting as much attention as his driving. He was a member of the Ditton Road Flyers, the social set named after the road in London where Amon shared an apartment with American Peter Revson, Hailwood and Tony Maggs. Parnell was nonetheless impressed with Amon's results in what was regarded as less-than-competitive machinery and promoted him to team leader. Parnell died from peritonitis in January 1964 and his son Tim took over the team. 1964 In a series of four pre-season races in Britain and Italy, Amon recorded three fifth places at Snetterton, Silverstone and Syracuse. He failed to qualify for the first F1 race of the season, the Monaco GP, but at the next race, the Dutch GP, he scored his first World Championship points. The rest of his season, however, was blighted by mechanical problems. 1965 Parnell was offered BRM engines for 1965, but only if it ran Richard Attwood as its regular driver. Reluctantly, Parnell agreed and Attwood took Amon's place. Spotting an opportunity, Bruce McLaren quickly signed Amon for his new McLaren team, but when no second McLaren F1 car materialised, Amon could only drive in sports car races. At the French GP Amon rejoined Parnell to stand in for an injured Attwood. Amon also competed in a Formula Two race in Stuttgart and won. He returned to Germany for the German GP as second Parnell driver, but mechanical failure again forced an early retirement. His last drive before Attwood's return, a non-championship race in Enna, Sicily, also ended in retirement. 1966 During 1966 Amon continued to race for McLaren in Can-Am. He was intended to drive the second McLaren M2B but difficulties with engine supply meant that the team never made the intended expansion to two cars. (James Garner's character Pete Aron's helmet and car livery in the film Grand Prix were modelled on Amon driving a McLaren, which caused the movie makers to have to encourage other cars to be painted in the 'Yamura' colours and other drivers (Bruce McLaren included) to wear Amon-style helmets.) However, an opportunity arose to drive for the Cooper F1 team after Richie Ginther left them for Honda. Amon drove for Cooper at the French GP and was scheduled to drive for them for the rest of the season, until the more successful John Surtees left Scuderia Ferrari to join Cooper and Amon found himself dropped. Amon made one other F1 appearance during the year, driving a Brabham BT11 powered by an old 2-litre BRM engine at the Italian GP under the banner of "Chris Amon Racing". He failed to qualify. Amon did however, score his biggest success to date when he partnered Bruce McLaren in a 7-litre Ford GT40 Mark II and Ken Miles to Ford's dead-heat "photo-finish" after Miles was instructed to slow down despite leading at the Le Mans 24-hour race, spearheading a formation finish. He subsequently received an invitation to meet Enzo Ferrari at the Ferrari home in Maranello, where he signed to race for Ferrari in 1967 alongside Lorenzo Bandini, Mike Parkes and Ludovico Scarfiotti. 1967 Amon's first year with Ferrari did not begin auspiciously. En route to Brands Hatch for the pre-season Formula One Race of Champions, he crashed his road car and, following race practice, had to withdraw. Tragedy then struck the Ferrari team when Bandini died following a crash during the 1967 Monaco Grand Prix, Mike Parkes broke both his legs at the Belgian Grand Prix and, in the aftermath, Ludovico Scarfiotti went into temporary retirement. Amon, therefore, became Ferrari's only driver for the rest of the season, until joined by Jonathan Williams for the final race in Mexico. Amon scored his first podium in his first official outing for the Scuderia in Monaco and at the end of 1967 had achieved four third places finishing fifth in the Drivers' Championship, in what was going to be the most successful season of his career. Amon's Ferrari contract also included sports car racing and he began 1967 by winning the Daytona 24 Hours and 1000km Monza events with Bandini in the 4-litre Ferrari 330-P4. He finished the year partnering Jackie Stewart to a second place at the BOAC 500, thereby clinching the manufacturer's world championship for Ferrari by one point over Porsche. 1968 1968 was the year aerodynamics first played a significant role in F1 car design and Amon worked with engineer Mauro Forghieri to place aerofoils on the Ferrari 312. In January 1968 Amon had returned home to New Zealand and Australia to compete in the 1968 Tasman Series which was used by many of the top Formula One drivers as a warm up series to the World Championship. Ferrari had been interested in the series for several years and in 1965 had reengineered 2.4 Dino engines used by Mike Hawthorn, Peter Collins and Phil Hill in 1958–60 with more torque and mid speed power for the planned use of team leader Surtees in the 1966 Tasman Series. After a late season crash in US Can-Am racing by Surtees, the entry was withdrawn but consideration was given to using NZ Gold star champion Jim Palmer in a semi-works Ferrari entry in the 1967 Tasman Series as it was viewed in a 2.4 car he would be competitive with Clark and Stewart in 2-litre F1 cars. Palmer had run world-class times in the 1966 Tasman Series, particularly in the Pukekohe practice and Longford race, and was tested in Italy at the same time as Amon by Ferrari, and ran competitive times at Modena but for whatever reason Ferrari did not compete in 1967 series. For the 1968 series Ferrari decided to use the 2.4 engines with a new Dino 166 F2 chassis rather than a downsized 3-litre V12. Using the 246T Amon won the first two rounds of the Tasman Series, including the 1968 New Zealand Grand Prix, before narrowly losing the series to the Lotus-Ford of Jim Clark. The Dino 246 Tasmania was better handling than Clark's Lotus 49T which was still wingless and a difficult proposition. Impressed by Amon's driving in the NZ rounds, Ferrari dispatched a new four-valve version of the 2.4 V6 for the Australian rounds and this gave another 15 hp, but with lesser reliability which, combined with the fact Clark was the best driver in the world at the time, cost Amon the series, although in the final round at Sandown Park he duelled wheel to wheel with Clark before being pipped at the line. After the first race of the F1 season in South Africa, Amon achieved pole positions in three of the following four races (at the Spanish, Belgian and Dutch Grands Prix) but ever-present mechanical problems meant he secured only a single Championship point from them. Throughout the rest of the season he never qualified lower than fifth place and nearly scored victories at the British and Canadian rounds and he suffered a 100 mph crash in Italy which demolished his car. In Britain, he duelled to the line with Jo Siffert's Lotus 49B and in Canada he dominated the race despite a malfunctioning clutch. Seventeen laps from the finish, however, his car's transmission failed and a distraught Amon had to be consoled by Jacky Ickx. From at least ten promising starts that season he was only able to finish five races and score ten Championship points. His best finish was second place to Siffert's Lotus-Cosworth at the British Grand Prix. Outside F1, Amon was runner-up in the Formula Two race at Zolder, Belgium, testing the Dino 166 F2. He also came third in that year's BRDC International Trophy. 1969 Amon began 1969 with success driving the Dino engined 246 Tasmania in the Tasman Series that included winning both the New Zealand and Australian Grands Prix. In straight fights, he beat new Gold Leaf Lotus team leader, Jochen Rindt, into second in the races at Pukekohe and Sandown. He would ultimately win the seven race Tasman Series, probably the best of the seven-year 2.5-litre international formula series in this country and the nearest to World Championship level racing in New Zealand, with ferocious competition between Rindt, Graham Hill, Amon and Williams driver Piers Courage. It was actually much more serious racing than the McLaren dominated Can-Am series in the US in which the big sports cars required few gear changes and were essentially cruised to victory with little real competition, where the Tasman cars were essentially marginally lower power F1 cars, as difficult to drive as GP cars on unforgiving very dangerous narrow tracks. Amon finished with four wins, two-thirds and one retirement, but in Formula One his poor luck continued. Despite six starts from top-six positions, he was only able to achieve a third-place at the Dutch GP. Ferrari's F1 V12 engine was too unreliable and although its replacement had proven very fast in testing, it had suffered many mechanical breakages. Amon had no reason to believe it would be any more dependable than the V12, so although the new engine was clearly more powerful, he decided to leave Ferrari for a Cosworth DFV powered team. Ironically, the new flat-12 engine would become one of the best Formula One engines of the 1970s. Jacky Ickx, Amon's old teammate did return to Ferrari for 1970, after a successful sabbatical with Brabham gained Ickx second in the 1969 World Championship. Ickx saw Enzo Ferrari had secured huge backing from Fiat who had taken partial ownership of the Marque, and believed Ferrari would be a renewed team and an effective proposition. Amon was more influenced by views of Jackie Stewart and Jochen Rindt, who believed it was essential to be Ford DFV-powered to be competitive. In addition to Formula One, Amon also drove for Ferrari in the 1969 International Championship for Makes, partnering Pedro Rodriguez to a fourth place in the BOAC 500 at Brands Hatch and coming second at the 12 Hours of Sebring, but retiring from the 1000km Nürburgring and 1000km Monza races, all in the Ferrari 312P sportscar. He also drove in a few Can-Am races. His last race for Ferrari would be the 1970 1000 km Monza, where he finished as runner-up. 1970s 1970 For the 1970 Formula One season, Amon made what was to be the first of several moves to smaller, newer teams. March Engineering had been formed the previous year to build custom chassis for Formulas 2 and 3, but quickly moved into F1, designing and building the March 701. Amon and Siffert were signed as drivers, with IndyCar driver Mario Andretti making an occasional appearance in a third car. March also sold their 701 chassis to Tyrrell, where Jackie Stewart drove it to its first victory in that year's Spanish GP. Amon won the pre-season Silverstone International Trophy, but once the F1 season began he found himself prevented from converting good qualifying positions into good results. He qualified second behind Stewart's Tyrrell-March for the season-opening South African Grand Prix only for his own March to overheat within fourteen laps. Amon then qualified sixth for the Spanish Grand Prix only for his March's Ford-Cosworth DFV engine to expire within ten laps. He qualified and ran second in the 1970 Monaco Grand Prix until his suspension failed twenty laps from the finish. This was the race where Amon refused to drive unless his entry number was changed from 18 – the number under which his then teammate Lorenzo Bandini had crashed and died in Monaco – to 28. Amon's close second place from a third-place start at the 1970 Belgian Grand Prix finally gave the March works team their first points finish. At that race, Amon set fastest lap at over 152 miles per hour, a lap record which still stands as of 2016, as it was the last race on the full-length Spa-Francorchamps circuit. However, after qualifying fourth for the next race, the Dutch Grand Prix, his car's clutch broke after just one lap. Amon duplicated his Belgian result at the 1970 French Grand Prix,. After a disappointing performance in the British GP at Brands Hatch where Amon finished fifth after being outqualified by tyro Ronnie Peterson in a private 701 on the same tyres, conflict with team boss Max Mosley over the non-delivery of three-quarters of Amon's expected pay for the season saw him provided with inferior DFVs and two backmarker 7th places in Austria and Italy, Amon finished the season strongly with strong drives to third at Mosport, fifth at Watkins Glen and fourth in Mexico. At Watkins Glen in the USGP he was robbed of a probably certain victory, in the opinion of March designer Robin Herd, by a puncture. By the end of the year, disagreements with March co-founders Mosley and Robin Herd meant that Amon had decided to move to another relatively new team, Matra. 1971 In 1971, Amon, now driving for the Matra factory team, once again scored a pre-season victory, this time at the Argentine Grand Prix. Once the Formula One season had begun, he managed to convert a third-place start at the Spanish GP into a third-place podium finish and scored a couple of fifth places in the South African and French GPs. Apart from these results, however, his run of poor F1 returns continued. He had a major accident at the Nürburgring and it sidelined him for the next race at the Österreichring. At the Italian GP he qualified in pole position and despite a poor start to the race looked as if he would capitalise on it – until the visor on his helmet became detached. Amon had to slow to avoid risking a major accident, thereby allowing other drivers to catch and overtake him. He finished the race in sixth place, scoring just one Championship point. During the year Amon also competed in the non-championship Questor Grand Prix at the new Ontario Motor Speedway, where he qualified second and, despite suffering a puncture during the race, managed to finish fourth. In the Tasman Series Amon started from fourth at the Levin Circuit and in the race, he battled with David Oxton and John Cannon but managed to finish third. Amon's third race at Wigram Airfield starting fifth and spun at the start to drop him to the back of the field but managed to climb up to fifth. 1972 In the 1972 Formula One season, Amon, again driving for Matra achieved a handful of points-scoring finishes, but only one podium appearance, at the French GP. Here he achieved the fifth and final pole position of his career and was leading the race until a puncture forced him to pit. However, he climbed back through the field, breaking the circuit's lap record to finish third. With the money he had made from motorsport, Amon decided to set up a racing engine firm with former BRM engineer Aubrey Woods. Amon Racing Engines supplied Formula 2 engines to a few drivers, but the company quickly became too expensive to run and was sold to March for a loss. Matra decided to end their participation in Formula One at the end of 1972, so Amon found himself looking to return to March as a driver. The place, however, was given to Jean-Pierre Jarier, purportedly for financial reasons. Amon therefore signed for another recently formed F1 team, Tecno. 1973 Tecno had entered F1 the previous year, having been a successful chassis-builder for other Formulæ and had developed a potentially powerful Flat 12 for F1. Their first year in F1 proved to be dismal, however with considerable backing from Martini Rossi they had jumped at the chance to sign Amon, and allocate David Yorke the former Vanwall and Gulf GT40 Team Manager to run the team and commission two new chassis designs by former Lotus and McLaren mechanic. Alan McCall who had worked on Clark and Hulme's F1 cars and unproven, British designer Gordon Fowell for a more radical back up design, in the hope he would help transform their performance. While McCalls car was built rapidly, testing it was more time-consuming and after its non-appearance, for the Spanish GP, Amon and team manager David Yorke met with Enzo Ferrari to see if Amon could be released from his contract to develop the new Ferrari B3 for Ickx and Mezarrio, in a supposedly one off GP drive at Monaco. Yorke rejected the release, and Amon admits he would not have left Ferrari if offered the drive for a season. Unfortunately, the team went from bad to worse and wasn't able to field the Tecno PA123/6 until the fifth GP of the season, the Belgian GP. Amon managed to finish in sixth position. At Monaco the car qualified a useful 12th and chassis felt good but Chris was unhappy with the car. He decided to concentrate on the undeveloped Gordon Fowell Goral car. This was against the view of the Techno team and the Pederanzi engine builders and Martini Rossi who required the car and driver to appear at races Amon commented at the time that it was "the best chassis I've ever sat in", it too proved virtually undriveable. Amon refused to drive the McCall, Techno in the Swedish or German Gps and withdrew from the Austrian GP after qualifying. By the time of the Austrian GP, four races from the end of the season, Amon's patience had run out and he left the team. He would later claim that the months he spent with the team "felt like ten [seasons]". Tyrrell offered Amon a third car – the 005 – in which to drive the last two races of the season. After a mediocre first outing at the Canadian GP, he and Jackie Stewart withdrew from the final race of the year, the United States GP, following the death of their teammate François Cevert during qualifying. 1974 For the 1974 F1 season, Amon revived Chris Amon Racing. Gordon Fowell designed the car, the AF101, which featured a single central fuel tank, titanium torsion bars and a forward driving position. Structurally, however, it proved to be weak and was not ready for an F1 appearance until the fourth race of the season, the Spanish GP. Amon was only able to qualify 23rd, thanks to brake-disc vibration that only became worse with the tyres for the wet race that followed. Despite cautious driving, a brake shaft finally broke and Amon was forced to retire after 22 laps. Following further work and testing, Amon returned for the Monaco GP and qualified twentieth, but, thanks to mechanical problems, he was unable to start the race. Further problems and illness meant Amon was not able to reappear with the F101 until the Italian GP, three races from the end of the season, but this time he was unable to qualify. That sealed the fate of both the car and Chris Amon Racing, leaving Amon to drive the season's last two races with the faltering BRM team. He would later reveal that he had turned down a chance to join the Brabham team earlier in the season. 1975 Amon contested the 1975 F5000 Tasman series against only local Australasian drivers, although Graham McRae, Warwick Brown and Kevin Bartlett were acknowledged internationally. Amon qualified on the front row of three of the four New Zealand rounds and scored a victory at Teretonga in January 1975 in rainy conditions by 24.2 seconds. In the Australian rounds, the competition was always harder with more good cars and the locals on their own tracks. Amon had a frustrating series of races unable to pass, South Australian Johnnie Walker, in a superior Lola T332 chassis with Repco-engineered V8. At Surfers Paradise, running from the back of the grid he managed to eventually pass Walker by widening the braking zone in the only corner where overtaking was usually possible. Amon brushed the edge of the track on repeated laps, got extra grip and passed Walker to take the lead. He had been forced to miss most of the practice session, when Customs seized his car's gearbox. In the race, the brilliant effort went for nothing as the Chev engine blew. At Oran Park and Adelaide he followed Walker the whole way to 4th and 3rd unable to pass. In the final deciding race for the Tasman Series with Brown, Walker and Lawrence still in contention, Walker lost his T332 on the first lap and it demolished on wooden barriers surrounding Sandown's car and horse racing tracks. Amon was never in contention and finished 4th. Amon intended to compete in F5000 in both Europe and the US in 1975 but started in only one round of both series, managing a pole in one Shellsport round in the UK and a 4th place overall at the Long Beach GP in a two heat race. He used different Talon F5000 cars for both races. The speed he showed in qualifying for a couple of UK F5000 races encouraged the small Ensign team to give him a race. Mo Nunn the Ensign team owner had been a Lotus F3 driver in 1966 and the Dave Baldwin designed chassis was in many ways a lightweight Lotus F1, which Ronnie Peterson wanted to test in 1975 out of frustration with his old 72 and which could have been used by Colin Chapman had he not decided to concentrate on developing chassis which would use ground effect technology, the Lotus 77 design for 1976 which was in many ways a test vehicle for the development of concepts, including the de facto legalisation of technology like plastic sliding skirts, introduced on Andretti's 77 from the 1976 Canadian Grand Prix, that would be used in future Lotus wing cars the Lotus 78 and Lotus 79. Apart from these successes, Amon's racing career seemed once again to have stalled. Apparently a chance meeting with Mo Nunn of Ensign Racing led to the Ensign drive, but in fact Mo Nunn thought his new N175 a very fast car and did not view the two Dutch drivers favoured by the Dutch HB Security company who sponsored Ensign fast enough. Gijs van Lennep, the 1973 European F5000 Champion in a Surtees TS11 who had won Le Mans in 1971 and 1976 was a very good driver but also one of the last racing aristocrats. Van Lennep, qualified the car on its debut in the French GP at Paul Ricard and finished 6th in the German GP at Nürburgring, and was faster on both circuits than Patrick Nève or Amon were in 1976. Amon managed 7th in the non-championship Swiss GP at Dijon chasing James Hunt debuting the disappointing Hesketh 308C and 12th in two GP drives in the Ensign N175 at the Austrian and Italian GPs. At Monza after a long pit stop he finally ran at competitive pace, running 4 laps down but keeping pace with the leading Ferrari 312T of Niki Lauda for a number of laps. Progressive evaluation of the possibilities of what was slowing the N175 led Amon to change the airbox alignment on the day of the Italian GP and this resulted in a 2-second gain (much like the change in air cooler position that lost and gained two seconds on Hunt's McLaren M23 resolved by the 1976 French GP). Ironically Amon never raced the N175 again and the high airboxes had been banned by the time N176 ran at Jarama the following year, but the flash of testing and driving genius was enough to give Amon another chance. Although the results were unremarkable, he and Nunn worked well together, so Amon joined Ensign for the 1976 F1 season. 1976 Ensign's first race of the season was the South African GP where Amon qualified 18th and showed a revival of form, climbing to seventh place, in the old Ensign N174 and contesting sixth with Mario Andretti in the Parnelli Ford, in the last laps before a last minute refueling stop left him 14th. Thereafter results began to improve, with Amon qualifying 17th and finishing eighth in the USA West GP; qualifying tenth and finishing fifth in the Spanish GP; and then qualifying eighth for the Belgian GP. More points then seemed likely from the race until his car lost a wheel 19 laps from the finish and Amon was lucky to escape unhurt from the ensuing accident. He then achieved a third-place grid position start for the Swedish GP using a Nicholson rebuilt Cosworth for the first time and in the race looked as if he would join Tyrrell drivers Jody Scheckter and Patrick Depailler on the podium, until suspension failure threw him from the track after 38 laps. Amon had again been lucky to escape serious injury and decided to miss the next race, the French GP. He returned for the British GP, qualifying in sixth and running fourth in the race when his Ford-Cosworth DFV engine developed a water leak. Rather than risk losing an engine, his team called him in to retire. At the German GP problems dogged his attempts to qualify well, but it was Niki Lauda's crash during the second lap of the race that had a far greater impact. Amon refused to restart the race and Nunn fired him from the team. Amon declared his retirement from the sport and returned to New Zealand. "I'd seen too many people fried in racing cars at that stage. When you've driven past Bandini, Schlesser, Courage and Williamson, another shunt like that was simply too much. It was a personal decision..." (Amon, on his retirement in 1976)However, Walter Wolf contacted Amon and persuaded him to drive for his Wolf–Williams team in the North American races near the end of the season. After recording some promising times in preparation for the Canadian GP, however, Amon was involved in a heavy collision with another car during qualifying and once again was lucky to walk away unharmed. He then did not take part in either the Canadian or United States Grands Prix. 1977 Amon turned down an offer of a full-time F1 drive for 1977, but did attempt a return to Can-Am racing in 1977 with a Wolf-Dallara WD1. However, after only one race he quit, saying "I'm just not enjoying this anymore". His place was taken by the young and then unknown Canadian Gilles Villeneuve, whom Amon would, later that year, recommend to Enzo Ferrari. In the meantime, Amon returned once again to New Zealand, this time to retire from F1 motor racing for good. 2000s 2003 Amon came out of retirement for a one-off appearance in the 2003 Dunlop Targa New Zealand with motorsport commentator Murray Walker as his navigator. The pair completed the week-long Auckland to Wellington Tarmac Rally in a Toyota Camry Sportivo, the same car previously used by Walker and Colin Bond in Australia's Targa Tasmania. Retirement After his retirement from F1, Amon dedicated himself to running the family farm in New Zealand's Manawatu District for many years. After retiring from farming, he lived in Taupo in New Zealand's North Island. In the early 1980s he became more well known in New Zealand from test-driving vehicles on the TV motoring series Motor Show and later consulted for Toyota New Zealand, tuning the 1984 Toyota Corolla and subsequent cars for sale there. He also appeared in TV commercials for the company, where much was made of the acclaim he won from Enzo Ferrari. Amon participated in the 2004 EnergyWise Rally where he won ahead of Brian Cowan. Amon drove a Toyota Prius for the event. In the 1993 Queen's Birthday Honours, Amon was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, for services to motor sport. Amon was involved in the design of the upgraded Taupo Motorsport Park circuit, used for the New Zealand round of the 2006–07 A1 Grand Prix season in January 2007. At the New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing in 2011, Amon's life and career were honoured with a selection of his cars being driven and also used the event to raise funds for the Bruce McLaren trust. Amon was also honoured at the festival in January 2013. Death Amon died in Rotorua Hospital on 3 August 2016, aged 73, of cancer. He was survived by his wife (they married in 1977) their three children and their grandchildren. One of his sons, James, is a qualified High Performance personal trainer. He trained Central Districts Stags cricket team, and was revealed to be Brendon Hartley's personal trainer. Legacy Despite never winning a championship Formula One Grand Prix, Amon won eight non-championship GPs, the Silverstone International Trophy, the 1000 km Monza, the Daytona 24 Hours, the Tasman Series and, perhaps most significant of all, the famous 24 Heures du Mans (alongside Bruce McLaren). These races included many of Amon's otherwise more successful fellow Formula One drivers. Amon also remains the only driver from New Zealand and Oceania to have raced for Scuderia Ferrari in Formula One. In Formula One, Chris Amon took part in 96 Grands Prix, achieving 5 poles, leading 183 laps in 7 races, reaching the podium 11 times and scoring a total of 83 Championship points. Amon holds the record for the most different makes of car raced by a Formula 1 World Championship driver, with thirteen. A biography Forza Amon by journalist Eoin Young charts Amon's racing career and gives some insights into his personal life. The book makes clear one point on which Amon himself disagrees with most commentators, the issue of his bad luck. Amon has pointed out on several occasions that he competed for a decade and a half in Formula One and survived some serious accidents, notably in 1976, whilst others, including friends like Bruce McLaren, suffered serious injury and death. In 2008, motorsport journalist Alan Henry rated Chris Amon as his 13th greatest driver. Reflecting on the 1968 racing death of Jim Clark, Amon said: "If this can happen to Jimmy, what chance do the rest of us have? I think we all felt that. It seemed like we'd lost our leader." In 1995, Amon was inducted into the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame. Amon's name has been given to the Toyota Racing Series driver's championship trophy, and the International Scholarship to support drivers who win his trophy to further their careers in single-seater racing. The Toyota Racing Series serves as motorsport's version of "winter ball" in New Zealand during January and February. Following his death, his name was also lent to the Manfeild Autocourse in Feilding, Manawatu. Racing record Formula One World Championship results (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap) Non-Championship Formula One results (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap) Complete Tasman Series results (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap) Complete 24 Hours of Le Mans results References External links Bruce McLaren Trust Official site Trio At The Top – a documentary about Bruce McLaren, Denny Hulme and Chris Amon on NZ On Screen Chris Amon 8W-Forix; Tom Prankard; 1 October 2000 New Zealand racing drivers New Zealand Formula One drivers Amon Formula One drivers BRM Formula One drivers Cooper Formula One drivers Ensign Formula One drivers Ferrari Formula One drivers March Formula One drivers Matra Formula One drivers Reg Parnell Racing Formula One drivers Tecno Formula One drivers Tyrrell Formula One drivers Williams Formula One drivers Formula One team owners 24 Hours of Le Mans drivers 24 Hours of Le Mans winning drivers 12 Hours of Reims drivers 24 Hours of Daytona drivers World Sportscar Championship drivers Tasman Series drivers New Zealand Members of the Order of the British Empire People from Bulls 1943 births 2016 deaths

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When did Chris Amon's die?

Chris Amon

After his retirement from F1, Amon dedicated himself to running the family farm in New Zealand's Manawatu District for many years. After retiring from farming, he lived in Taupo in New Zealand's North Island. In the early 1980s he became more well known in New Zealand from test-driving vehicles on the TV motoring series Motor Show and later consulted for Toyota New Zealand, tuning the 1984 Toyota Corolla and subsequent cars for sale there. He also appeared in TV commercials for the company, where much was made of the acclaim he won from Enzo Ferrari. Amon participated in the 2004 EnergyWise Rally where he won ahead of Brian Cowan. Amon drove a Toyota Prius for the event. Amon was involved in the design of the upgraded Taupo Motorsport Park circuit, used for the New Zealand round of the 2006-07 A1 Grand Prix season in January 2007. At the New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing in 2011, Amon's life and career were honoured with a selection of his cars being driven and also used the event to raise funds for the Bruce McLaren trust. Amon was also honoured at the festival in January 2013. Amon died in Rotorua Hospital on 3 August 2016, aged 73, of cancer. He was survived by his wife (they married in 1977) their three children and their grandchildren. One of his sons, James, is a qualified High Performance personal trainer. He trained Central Districts Stags cricket team, and was revealed to be Brendon Hartley's personal trainer. CANNOTANSWER

Amon died in Rotorua Hospital on 3 August 2016, aged 73, of cancer.

Christopher Arthur Amon (20 July 1943 – 3 August 2016) was a New Zealand motor racing driver. He was active in Formula One racing in the 1960s and 1970s and is widely regarded as one of the best F1 drivers never to win a championship Grand Prix. His reputation for bad luck was such that fellow driver Mario Andretti once joked that "if he became an undertaker, people would stop dying". Former Ferrari Technical Director Mauro Forghieri stated that Amon was "by far the best test driver I have ever worked with. He had all the qualities to be a World Champion but bad luck just wouldn't let him be". Apart from driving, Chris Amon also ran his own Formula One team for a short period in 1974. Away from Formula One, Amon had some success in sports car racing, teaming with co-driver Bruce McLaren to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans race in . Early life Amon was born in Bulls, and attended Whanganui Collegiate School. He was the only child of wealthy sheep-owners Ngaio and Betty Amon. He learned to drive at the age of six, taught by a farm worker on the family farm. On leaving school, he persuaded his father to buy him an Austin A40 Special, which he entered in some minor local races and hillclimbs along with practice on the family farm. He progressed to a 1.5-litre Cooper and then an old 2.5-litre Maserati 250F, but only began to draw attention when he drove the Cooper-Climax T51 which Bruce McLaren had used to win his maiden Grand Prix. In 1962 Amon entered the Cooper for the New Zealand winter series, but was hampered by mechanical problems. However, Scuderia Veloce entered him in a similar car, and, in the rain at Lakeside, he performed well. One of the spectators there was the English racing driver Reg Parnell who persuaded Amon to come to England and race for his team. In a test at Goodwood Amon continued to impress and was on the pace in the Goodwood International Trophy and Aintree 200 pre-season races. Racing career 1960s 1963 For the 1963 Formula One season the Parnell team were using the year old Lola Mk4A, powered by 1962 specification Climax V8 engines. Amon was teamed with the very experienced Maurice Trintignant for the first race of the season at Monaco and his Grand Prix career started with what was to become typical bad luck: Trintignant's Climax developed a misfire, so he took over Amon's car. At the 1963 Belgian Grand Prix, Amon was partnered by Lucien Bianchi and started ahead of him from 15th position. After nine laps, however, an oil fire ended his race. He continued to experience mechanical problems at the Dutch, Mexican and German Grands Prix; and after an accident in practice for the Italian Grand Prix left him hanging out of his car's cockpit with three broken ribs, he missed both the Italian and United States rounds. Amon usually qualified in the midfield and generally outpaced his teammates, who included his good friend Mike Hailwood. His best results of the year were seventh at the French and British Grands Prix. During this time, however, Amon's social life was attracting as much attention as his driving. He was a member of the Ditton Road Flyers, the social set named after the road in London where Amon shared an apartment with American Peter Revson, Hailwood and Tony Maggs. Parnell was nonetheless impressed with Amon's results in what was regarded as less-than-competitive machinery and promoted him to team leader. Parnell died from peritonitis in January 1964 and his son Tim took over the team. 1964 In a series of four pre-season races in Britain and Italy, Amon recorded three fifth places at Snetterton, Silverstone and Syracuse. He failed to qualify for the first F1 race of the season, the Monaco GP, but at the next race, the Dutch GP, he scored his first World Championship points. The rest of his season, however, was blighted by mechanical problems. 1965 Parnell was offered BRM engines for 1965, but only if it ran Richard Attwood as its regular driver. Reluctantly, Parnell agreed and Attwood took Amon's place. Spotting an opportunity, Bruce McLaren quickly signed Amon for his new McLaren team, but when no second McLaren F1 car materialised, Amon could only drive in sports car races. At the French GP Amon rejoined Parnell to stand in for an injured Attwood. Amon also competed in a Formula Two race in Stuttgart and won. He returned to Germany for the German GP as second Parnell driver, but mechanical failure again forced an early retirement. His last drive before Attwood's return, a non-championship race in Enna, Sicily, also ended in retirement. 1966 During 1966 Amon continued to race for McLaren in Can-Am. He was intended to drive the second McLaren M2B but difficulties with engine supply meant that the team never made the intended expansion to two cars. (James Garner's character Pete Aron's helmet and car livery in the film Grand Prix were modelled on Amon driving a McLaren, which caused the movie makers to have to encourage other cars to be painted in the 'Yamura' colours and other drivers (Bruce McLaren included) to wear Amon-style helmets.) However, an opportunity arose to drive for the Cooper F1 team after Richie Ginther left them for Honda. Amon drove for Cooper at the French GP and was scheduled to drive for them for the rest of the season, until the more successful John Surtees left Scuderia Ferrari to join Cooper and Amon found himself dropped. Amon made one other F1 appearance during the year, driving a Brabham BT11 powered by an old 2-litre BRM engine at the Italian GP under the banner of "Chris Amon Racing". He failed to qualify. Amon did however, score his biggest success to date when he partnered Bruce McLaren in a 7-litre Ford GT40 Mark II and Ken Miles to Ford's dead-heat "photo-finish" after Miles was instructed to slow down despite leading at the Le Mans 24-hour race, spearheading a formation finish. He subsequently received an invitation to meet Enzo Ferrari at the Ferrari home in Maranello, where he signed to race for Ferrari in 1967 alongside Lorenzo Bandini, Mike Parkes and Ludovico Scarfiotti. 1967 Amon's first year with Ferrari did not begin auspiciously. En route to Brands Hatch for the pre-season Formula One Race of Champions, he crashed his road car and, following race practice, had to withdraw. Tragedy then struck the Ferrari team when Bandini died following a crash during the 1967 Monaco Grand Prix, Mike Parkes broke both his legs at the Belgian Grand Prix and, in the aftermath, Ludovico Scarfiotti went into temporary retirement. Amon, therefore, became Ferrari's only driver for the rest of the season, until joined by Jonathan Williams for the final race in Mexico. Amon scored his first podium in his first official outing for the Scuderia in Monaco and at the end of 1967 had achieved four third places finishing fifth in the Drivers' Championship, in what was going to be the most successful season of his career. Amon's Ferrari contract also included sports car racing and he began 1967 by winning the Daytona 24 Hours and 1000km Monza events with Bandini in the 4-litre Ferrari 330-P4. He finished the year partnering Jackie Stewart to a second place at the BOAC 500, thereby clinching the manufacturer's world championship for Ferrari by one point over Porsche. 1968 1968 was the year aerodynamics first played a significant role in F1 car design and Amon worked with engineer Mauro Forghieri to place aerofoils on the Ferrari 312. In January 1968 Amon had returned home to New Zealand and Australia to compete in the 1968 Tasman Series which was used by many of the top Formula One drivers as a warm up series to the World Championship. Ferrari had been interested in the series for several years and in 1965 had reengineered 2.4 Dino engines used by Mike Hawthorn, Peter Collins and Phil Hill in 1958–60 with more torque and mid speed power for the planned use of team leader Surtees in the 1966 Tasman Series. After a late season crash in US Can-Am racing by Surtees, the entry was withdrawn but consideration was given to using NZ Gold star champion Jim Palmer in a semi-works Ferrari entry in the 1967 Tasman Series as it was viewed in a 2.4 car he would be competitive with Clark and Stewart in 2-litre F1 cars. Palmer had run world-class times in the 1966 Tasman Series, particularly in the Pukekohe practice and Longford race, and was tested in Italy at the same time as Amon by Ferrari, and ran competitive times at Modena but for whatever reason Ferrari did not compete in 1967 series. For the 1968 series Ferrari decided to use the 2.4 engines with a new Dino 166 F2 chassis rather than a downsized 3-litre V12. Using the 246T Amon won the first two rounds of the Tasman Series, including the 1968 New Zealand Grand Prix, before narrowly losing the series to the Lotus-Ford of Jim Clark. The Dino 246 Tasmania was better handling than Clark's Lotus 49T which was still wingless and a difficult proposition. Impressed by Amon's driving in the NZ rounds, Ferrari dispatched a new four-valve version of the 2.4 V6 for the Australian rounds and this gave another 15 hp, but with lesser reliability which, combined with the fact Clark was the best driver in the world at the time, cost Amon the series, although in the final round at Sandown Park he duelled wheel to wheel with Clark before being pipped at the line. After the first race of the F1 season in South Africa, Amon achieved pole positions in three of the following four races (at the Spanish, Belgian and Dutch Grands Prix) but ever-present mechanical problems meant he secured only a single Championship point from them. Throughout the rest of the season he never qualified lower than fifth place and nearly scored victories at the British and Canadian rounds and he suffered a 100 mph crash in Italy which demolished his car. In Britain, he duelled to the line with Jo Siffert's Lotus 49B and in Canada he dominated the race despite a malfunctioning clutch. Seventeen laps from the finish, however, his car's transmission failed and a distraught Amon had to be consoled by Jacky Ickx. From at least ten promising starts that season he was only able to finish five races and score ten Championship points. His best finish was second place to Siffert's Lotus-Cosworth at the British Grand Prix. Outside F1, Amon was runner-up in the Formula Two race at Zolder, Belgium, testing the Dino 166 F2. He also came third in that year's BRDC International Trophy. 1969 Amon began 1969 with success driving the Dino engined 246 Tasmania in the Tasman Series that included winning both the New Zealand and Australian Grands Prix. In straight fights, he beat new Gold Leaf Lotus team leader, Jochen Rindt, into second in the races at Pukekohe and Sandown. He would ultimately win the seven race Tasman Series, probably the best of the seven-year 2.5-litre international formula series in this country and the nearest to World Championship level racing in New Zealand, with ferocious competition between Rindt, Graham Hill, Amon and Williams driver Piers Courage. It was actually much more serious racing than the McLaren dominated Can-Am series in the US in which the big sports cars required few gear changes and were essentially cruised to victory with little real competition, where the Tasman cars were essentially marginally lower power F1 cars, as difficult to drive as GP cars on unforgiving very dangerous narrow tracks. Amon finished with four wins, two-thirds and one retirement, but in Formula One his poor luck continued. Despite six starts from top-six positions, he was only able to achieve a third-place at the Dutch GP. Ferrari's F1 V12 engine was too unreliable and although its replacement had proven very fast in testing, it had suffered many mechanical breakages. Amon had no reason to believe it would be any more dependable than the V12, so although the new engine was clearly more powerful, he decided to leave Ferrari for a Cosworth DFV powered team. Ironically, the new flat-12 engine would become one of the best Formula One engines of the 1970s. Jacky Ickx, Amon's old teammate did return to Ferrari for 1970, after a successful sabbatical with Brabham gained Ickx second in the 1969 World Championship. Ickx saw Enzo Ferrari had secured huge backing from Fiat who had taken partial ownership of the Marque, and believed Ferrari would be a renewed team and an effective proposition. Amon was more influenced by views of Jackie Stewart and Jochen Rindt, who believed it was essential to be Ford DFV-powered to be competitive. In addition to Formula One, Amon also drove for Ferrari in the 1969 International Championship for Makes, partnering Pedro Rodriguez to a fourth place in the BOAC 500 at Brands Hatch and coming second at the 12 Hours of Sebring, but retiring from the 1000km Nürburgring and 1000km Monza races, all in the Ferrari 312P sportscar. He also drove in a few Can-Am races. His last race for Ferrari would be the 1970 1000 km Monza, where he finished as runner-up. 1970s 1970 For the 1970 Formula One season, Amon made what was to be the first of several moves to smaller, newer teams. March Engineering had been formed the previous year to build custom chassis for Formulas 2 and 3, but quickly moved into F1, designing and building the March 701. Amon and Siffert were signed as drivers, with IndyCar driver Mario Andretti making an occasional appearance in a third car. March also sold their 701 chassis to Tyrrell, where Jackie Stewart drove it to its first victory in that year's Spanish GP. Amon won the pre-season Silverstone International Trophy, but once the F1 season began he found himself prevented from converting good qualifying positions into good results. He qualified second behind Stewart's Tyrrell-March for the season-opening South African Grand Prix only for his own March to overheat within fourteen laps. Amon then qualified sixth for the Spanish Grand Prix only for his March's Ford-Cosworth DFV engine to expire within ten laps. He qualified and ran second in the 1970 Monaco Grand Prix until his suspension failed twenty laps from the finish. This was the race where Amon refused to drive unless his entry number was changed from 18 – the number under which his then teammate Lorenzo Bandini had crashed and died in Monaco – to 28. Amon's close second place from a third-place start at the 1970 Belgian Grand Prix finally gave the March works team their first points finish. At that race, Amon set fastest lap at over 152 miles per hour, a lap record which still stands as of 2016, as it was the last race on the full-length Spa-Francorchamps circuit. However, after qualifying fourth for the next race, the Dutch Grand Prix, his car's clutch broke after just one lap. Amon duplicated his Belgian result at the 1970 French Grand Prix,. After a disappointing performance in the British GP at Brands Hatch where Amon finished fifth after being outqualified by tyro Ronnie Peterson in a private 701 on the same tyres, conflict with team boss Max Mosley over the non-delivery of three-quarters of Amon's expected pay for the season saw him provided with inferior DFVs and two backmarker 7th places in Austria and Italy, Amon finished the season strongly with strong drives to third at Mosport, fifth at Watkins Glen and fourth in Mexico. At Watkins Glen in the USGP he was robbed of a probably certain victory, in the opinion of March designer Robin Herd, by a puncture. By the end of the year, disagreements with March co-founders Mosley and Robin Herd meant that Amon had decided to move to another relatively new team, Matra. 1971 In 1971, Amon, now driving for the Matra factory team, once again scored a pre-season victory, this time at the Argentine Grand Prix. Once the Formula One season had begun, he managed to convert a third-place start at the Spanish GP into a third-place podium finish and scored a couple of fifth places in the South African and French GPs. Apart from these results, however, his run of poor F1 returns continued. He had a major accident at the Nürburgring and it sidelined him for the next race at the Österreichring. At the Italian GP he qualified in pole position and despite a poor start to the race looked as if he would capitalise on it – until the visor on his helmet became detached. Amon had to slow to avoid risking a major accident, thereby allowing other drivers to catch and overtake him. He finished the race in sixth place, scoring just one Championship point. During the year Amon also competed in the non-championship Questor Grand Prix at the new Ontario Motor Speedway, where he qualified second and, despite suffering a puncture during the race, managed to finish fourth. In the Tasman Series Amon started from fourth at the Levin Circuit and in the race, he battled with David Oxton and John Cannon but managed to finish third. Amon's third race at Wigram Airfield starting fifth and spun at the start to drop him to the back of the field but managed to climb up to fifth. 1972 In the 1972 Formula One season, Amon, again driving for Matra achieved a handful of points-scoring finishes, but only one podium appearance, at the French GP. Here he achieved the fifth and final pole position of his career and was leading the race until a puncture forced him to pit. However, he climbed back through the field, breaking the circuit's lap record to finish third. With the money he had made from motorsport, Amon decided to set up a racing engine firm with former BRM engineer Aubrey Woods. Amon Racing Engines supplied Formula 2 engines to a few drivers, but the company quickly became too expensive to run and was sold to March for a loss. Matra decided to end their participation in Formula One at the end of 1972, so Amon found himself looking to return to March as a driver. The place, however, was given to Jean-Pierre Jarier, purportedly for financial reasons. Amon therefore signed for another recently formed F1 team, Tecno. 1973 Tecno had entered F1 the previous year, having been a successful chassis-builder for other Formulæ and had developed a potentially powerful Flat 12 for F1. Their first year in F1 proved to be dismal, however with considerable backing from Martini Rossi they had jumped at the chance to sign Amon, and allocate David Yorke the former Vanwall and Gulf GT40 Team Manager to run the team and commission two new chassis designs by former Lotus and McLaren mechanic. Alan McCall who had worked on Clark and Hulme's F1 cars and unproven, British designer Gordon Fowell for a more radical back up design, in the hope he would help transform their performance. While McCalls car was built rapidly, testing it was more time-consuming and after its non-appearance, for the Spanish GP, Amon and team manager David Yorke met with Enzo Ferrari to see if Amon could be released from his contract to develop the new Ferrari B3 for Ickx and Mezarrio, in a supposedly one off GP drive at Monaco. Yorke rejected the release, and Amon admits he would not have left Ferrari if offered the drive for a season. Unfortunately, the team went from bad to worse and wasn't able to field the Tecno PA123/6 until the fifth GP of the season, the Belgian GP. Amon managed to finish in sixth position. At Monaco the car qualified a useful 12th and chassis felt good but Chris was unhappy with the car. He decided to concentrate on the undeveloped Gordon Fowell Goral car. This was against the view of the Techno team and the Pederanzi engine builders and Martini Rossi who required the car and driver to appear at races Amon commented at the time that it was "the best chassis I've ever sat in", it too proved virtually undriveable. Amon refused to drive the McCall, Techno in the Swedish or German Gps and withdrew from the Austrian GP after qualifying. By the time of the Austrian GP, four races from the end of the season, Amon's patience had run out and he left the team. He would later claim that the months he spent with the team "felt like ten [seasons]". Tyrrell offered Amon a third car – the 005 – in which to drive the last two races of the season. After a mediocre first outing at the Canadian GP, he and Jackie Stewart withdrew from the final race of the year, the United States GP, following the death of their teammate François Cevert during qualifying. 1974 For the 1974 F1 season, Amon revived Chris Amon Racing. Gordon Fowell designed the car, the AF101, which featured a single central fuel tank, titanium torsion bars and a forward driving position. Structurally, however, it proved to be weak and was not ready for an F1 appearance until the fourth race of the season, the Spanish GP. Amon was only able to qualify 23rd, thanks to brake-disc vibration that only became worse with the tyres for the wet race that followed. Despite cautious driving, a brake shaft finally broke and Amon was forced to retire after 22 laps. Following further work and testing, Amon returned for the Monaco GP and qualified twentieth, but, thanks to mechanical problems, he was unable to start the race. Further problems and illness meant Amon was not able to reappear with the F101 until the Italian GP, three races from the end of the season, but this time he was unable to qualify. That sealed the fate of both the car and Chris Amon Racing, leaving Amon to drive the season's last two races with the faltering BRM team. He would later reveal that he had turned down a chance to join the Brabham team earlier in the season. 1975 Amon contested the 1975 F5000 Tasman series against only local Australasian drivers, although Graham McRae, Warwick Brown and Kevin Bartlett were acknowledged internationally. Amon qualified on the front row of three of the four New Zealand rounds and scored a victory at Teretonga in January 1975 in rainy conditions by 24.2 seconds. In the Australian rounds, the competition was always harder with more good cars and the locals on their own tracks. Amon had a frustrating series of races unable to pass, South Australian Johnnie Walker, in a superior Lola T332 chassis with Repco-engineered V8. At Surfers Paradise, running from the back of the grid he managed to eventually pass Walker by widening the braking zone in the only corner where overtaking was usually possible. Amon brushed the edge of the track on repeated laps, got extra grip and passed Walker to take the lead. He had been forced to miss most of the practice session, when Customs seized his car's gearbox. In the race, the brilliant effort went for nothing as the Chev engine blew. At Oran Park and Adelaide he followed Walker the whole way to 4th and 3rd unable to pass. In the final deciding race for the Tasman Series with Brown, Walker and Lawrence still in contention, Walker lost his T332 on the first lap and it demolished on wooden barriers surrounding Sandown's car and horse racing tracks. Amon was never in contention and finished 4th. Amon intended to compete in F5000 in both Europe and the US in 1975 but started in only one round of both series, managing a pole in one Shellsport round in the UK and a 4th place overall at the Long Beach GP in a two heat race. He used different Talon F5000 cars for both races. The speed he showed in qualifying for a couple of UK F5000 races encouraged the small Ensign team to give him a race. Mo Nunn the Ensign team owner had been a Lotus F3 driver in 1966 and the Dave Baldwin designed chassis was in many ways a lightweight Lotus F1, which Ronnie Peterson wanted to test in 1975 out of frustration with his old 72 and which could have been used by Colin Chapman had he not decided to concentrate on developing chassis which would use ground effect technology, the Lotus 77 design for 1976 which was in many ways a test vehicle for the development of concepts, including the de facto legalisation of technology like plastic sliding skirts, introduced on Andretti's 77 from the 1976 Canadian Grand Prix, that would be used in future Lotus wing cars the Lotus 78 and Lotus 79. Apart from these successes, Amon's racing career seemed once again to have stalled. Apparently a chance meeting with Mo Nunn of Ensign Racing led to the Ensign drive, but in fact Mo Nunn thought his new N175 a very fast car and did not view the two Dutch drivers favoured by the Dutch HB Security company who sponsored Ensign fast enough. Gijs van Lennep, the 1973 European F5000 Champion in a Surtees TS11 who had won Le Mans in 1971 and 1976 was a very good driver but also one of the last racing aristocrats. Van Lennep, qualified the car on its debut in the French GP at Paul Ricard and finished 6th in the German GP at Nürburgring, and was faster on both circuits than Patrick Nève or Amon were in 1976. Amon managed 7th in the non-championship Swiss GP at Dijon chasing James Hunt debuting the disappointing Hesketh 308C and 12th in two GP drives in the Ensign N175 at the Austrian and Italian GPs. At Monza after a long pit stop he finally ran at competitive pace, running 4 laps down but keeping pace with the leading Ferrari 312T of Niki Lauda for a number of laps. Progressive evaluation of the possibilities of what was slowing the N175 led Amon to change the airbox alignment on the day of the Italian GP and this resulted in a 2-second gain (much like the change in air cooler position that lost and gained two seconds on Hunt's McLaren M23 resolved by the 1976 French GP). Ironically Amon never raced the N175 again and the high airboxes had been banned by the time N176 ran at Jarama the following year, but the flash of testing and driving genius was enough to give Amon another chance. Although the results were unremarkable, he and Nunn worked well together, so Amon joined Ensign for the 1976 F1 season. 1976 Ensign's first race of the season was the South African GP where Amon qualified 18th and showed a revival of form, climbing to seventh place, in the old Ensign N174 and contesting sixth with Mario Andretti in the Parnelli Ford, in the last laps before a last minute refueling stop left him 14th. Thereafter results began to improve, with Amon qualifying 17th and finishing eighth in the USA West GP; qualifying tenth and finishing fifth in the Spanish GP; and then qualifying eighth for the Belgian GP. More points then seemed likely from the race until his car lost a wheel 19 laps from the finish and Amon was lucky to escape unhurt from the ensuing accident. He then achieved a third-place grid position start for the Swedish GP using a Nicholson rebuilt Cosworth for the first time and in the race looked as if he would join Tyrrell drivers Jody Scheckter and Patrick Depailler on the podium, until suspension failure threw him from the track after 38 laps. Amon had again been lucky to escape serious injury and decided to miss the next race, the French GP. He returned for the British GP, qualifying in sixth and running fourth in the race when his Ford-Cosworth DFV engine developed a water leak. Rather than risk losing an engine, his team called him in to retire. At the German GP problems dogged his attempts to qualify well, but it was Niki Lauda's crash during the second lap of the race that had a far greater impact. Amon refused to restart the race and Nunn fired him from the team. Amon declared his retirement from the sport and returned to New Zealand. "I'd seen too many people fried in racing cars at that stage. When you've driven past Bandini, Schlesser, Courage and Williamson, another shunt like that was simply too much. It was a personal decision..." (Amon, on his retirement in 1976)However, Walter Wolf contacted Amon and persuaded him to drive for his Wolf–Williams team in the North American races near the end of the season. After recording some promising times in preparation for the Canadian GP, however, Amon was involved in a heavy collision with another car during qualifying and once again was lucky to walk away unharmed. He then did not take part in either the Canadian or United States Grands Prix. 1977 Amon turned down an offer of a full-time F1 drive for 1977, but did attempt a return to Can-Am racing in 1977 with a Wolf-Dallara WD1. However, after only one race he quit, saying "I'm just not enjoying this anymore". His place was taken by the young and then unknown Canadian Gilles Villeneuve, whom Amon would, later that year, recommend to Enzo Ferrari. In the meantime, Amon returned once again to New Zealand, this time to retire from F1 motor racing for good. 2000s 2003 Amon came out of retirement for a one-off appearance in the 2003 Dunlop Targa New Zealand with motorsport commentator Murray Walker as his navigator. The pair completed the week-long Auckland to Wellington Tarmac Rally in a Toyota Camry Sportivo, the same car previously used by Walker and Colin Bond in Australia's Targa Tasmania. Retirement After his retirement from F1, Amon dedicated himself to running the family farm in New Zealand's Manawatu District for many years. After retiring from farming, he lived in Taupo in New Zealand's North Island. In the early 1980s he became more well known in New Zealand from test-driving vehicles on the TV motoring series Motor Show and later consulted for Toyota New Zealand, tuning the 1984 Toyota Corolla and subsequent cars for sale there. He also appeared in TV commercials for the company, where much was made of the acclaim he won from Enzo Ferrari. Amon participated in the 2004 EnergyWise Rally where he won ahead of Brian Cowan. Amon drove a Toyota Prius for the event. In the 1993 Queen's Birthday Honours, Amon was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, for services to motor sport. Amon was involved in the design of the upgraded Taupo Motorsport Park circuit, used for the New Zealand round of the 2006–07 A1 Grand Prix season in January 2007. At the New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing in 2011, Amon's life and career were honoured with a selection of his cars being driven and also used the event to raise funds for the Bruce McLaren trust. Amon was also honoured at the festival in January 2013. Death Amon died in Rotorua Hospital on 3 August 2016, aged 73, of cancer. He was survived by his wife (they married in 1977) their three children and their grandchildren. One of his sons, James, is a qualified High Performance personal trainer. He trained Central Districts Stags cricket team, and was revealed to be Brendon Hartley's personal trainer. Legacy Despite never winning a championship Formula One Grand Prix, Amon won eight non-championship GPs, the Silverstone International Trophy, the 1000 km Monza, the Daytona 24 Hours, the Tasman Series and, perhaps most significant of all, the famous 24 Heures du Mans (alongside Bruce McLaren). These races included many of Amon's otherwise more successful fellow Formula One drivers. Amon also remains the only driver from New Zealand and Oceania to have raced for Scuderia Ferrari in Formula One. In Formula One, Chris Amon took part in 96 Grands Prix, achieving 5 poles, leading 183 laps in 7 races, reaching the podium 11 times and scoring a total of 83 Championship points. Amon holds the record for the most different makes of car raced by a Formula 1 World Championship driver, with thirteen. A biography Forza Amon by journalist Eoin Young charts Amon's racing career and gives some insights into his personal life. The book makes clear one point on which Amon himself disagrees with most commentators, the issue of his bad luck. Amon has pointed out on several occasions that he competed for a decade and a half in Formula One and survived some serious accidents, notably in 1976, whilst others, including friends like Bruce McLaren, suffered serious injury and death. In 2008, motorsport journalist Alan Henry rated Chris Amon as his 13th greatest driver. Reflecting on the 1968 racing death of Jim Clark, Amon said: "If this can happen to Jimmy, what chance do the rest of us have? I think we all felt that. It seemed like we'd lost our leader." In 1995, Amon was inducted into the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame. Amon's name has been given to the Toyota Racing Series driver's championship trophy, and the International Scholarship to support drivers who win his trophy to further their careers in single-seater racing. The Toyota Racing Series serves as motorsport's version of "winter ball" in New Zealand during January and February. Following his death, his name was also lent to the Manfeild Autocourse in Feilding, Manawatu. Racing record Formula One World Championship results (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap) Non-Championship Formula One results (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap) Complete Tasman Series results (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap) Complete 24 Hours of Le Mans results References External links Bruce McLaren Trust Official site Trio At The Top – a documentary about Bruce McLaren, Denny Hulme and Chris Amon on NZ On Screen Chris Amon 8W-Forix; Tom Prankard; 1 October 2000 New Zealand racing drivers New Zealand Formula One drivers Amon Formula One drivers BRM Formula One drivers Cooper Formula One drivers Ensign Formula One drivers Ferrari Formula One drivers March Formula One drivers Matra Formula One drivers Reg Parnell Racing Formula One drivers Tecno Formula One drivers Tyrrell Formula One drivers Williams Formula One drivers Formula One team owners 24 Hours of Le Mans drivers 24 Hours of Le Mans winning drivers 12 Hours of Reims drivers 24 Hours of Daytona drivers World Sportscar Championship drivers Tasman Series drivers New Zealand Members of the Order of the British Empire People from Bulls 1943 births 2016 deaths

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Who was Lewis Fry Richardson?

Who was Lewis Fry Richardson?

Lewis Fry Richardson

Richardson decided to search for a relation between the probability of two countries going to war and the length of their common border. However, while collecting data, he found that there was considerable variation in the various published lengths of international borders. For example, that between Spain and Portugal was variously quoted as 987 or 1214 km, and that between the Netherlands and Belgium as 380 or 449 km. The reason for these inconsistencies is the "coastline paradox". Suppose the coast of Britain is measured using a 200 km ruler, specifying that both ends of the ruler must touch the coast. Now cut the ruler in half and repeat the measurement, then repeat: Notice that the smaller the ruler, the longer the resulting coastline. It might be supposed that these values would converge to a finite number representing the true length of the coastline. However, Richardson demonstrated that this is not the case: the measured length of coastlines, and other natural features, increases without limit as the unit of measurement is made smaller. This is known nowadays as the Richardson effect. At the time, Richardson's research was ignored by the scientific community. Today, it is considered an element of the beginning of the modern study of fractals. Richardson's research was quoted by mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot in his 1967 paper How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Richardson identified a value (between 1 and 2) that would describe the changes (with increasing measurement detail) in observed complexity for a particular coastline; this value served as a model for the concept of fractal dimension. CANNOTANSWER

Richardson identified a value (between 1 and 2) that would describe the changes (with increasing measurement detail) in observed complexity for a particular coastline;

Lewis Fry Richardson, FRS (11 October 1881 – 30 September 1953) was an English mathematician, physicist, meteorologist, psychologist and pacifist who pioneered modern mathematical techniques of weather forecasting, and the application of similar techniques to studying the causes of wars and how to prevent them. He is also noted for his pioneering work concerning fractals and a method for solving a system of linear equations known as modified Richardson iteration. Early life Lewis Fry Richardson was the youngest of seven children born to Catherine Fry (1838–1919) and David Richardson (1835–1913). They were a prosperous Quaker family, David Richardson operating a successful tanning and leather-manufacturing business. At age 12 he was sent to a Quaker boarding school, Bootham School in York, where he received an education in science, which stimulated an active interest in natural history. In 1898 he went on to Durham College of Science (a college of Durham University) where he took courses in mathematical physics, chemistry, botany, and zoology. He proceeded in 1900 to King's College, Cambridge, where he was taught physics in the natural sciences tripos by (among others) J. J. Thomson and graduated with a first-class degree in 1903. At age 47 he received a doctorate in mathematical psychology from the University of London. Career Richardson's working life represented his eclectic interests: National Physical Laboratory (1903–1904). University College Aberystwyth (1905–1906). Chemist, National Peat Industries (1906–1907). National Physical Laboratory (1907–1909). Manager of the physical and chemical laboratory, Sunbeam Lamp Company (1909–1912). Manchester College of Technology (1912–1913). Meteorological Office – as superintendent of Eskdalemuir Observatory (1913–1916). Friends Ambulance Unit in France (1916–1919). Meteorological Office at Benson, Oxfordshire (1919–1920). Head of the Physics Department at Westminster Training College (1920–1929). Principal, Paisley Technical College, now part of the University of the West of Scotland (1929–1940). In 1926, he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society Pacifism Richardson's Quaker beliefs entailed an ardent pacifism that exempted him from military service during World War I as a conscientious objector, though this subsequently disqualified him from having any academic post. Richardson worked from 1916 to 1919 for the Friends' Ambulance Unit attached to the 16th French Infantry Division. After the war, he rejoined the Meteorological Office but was compelled to resign on grounds of conscience when it was amalgamated into the Air Ministry in 1920. He subsequently pursued a career on the fringes of the academic world before retiring in 1940 to research his own ideas. His pacifism had direct consequences on his research interests. According to Thomas Körner, the discovery that his meteorological work was of value to chemical weapons designers caused him to abandon all his efforts in this field, and destroy findings that he had yet to publish. Weather forecasting Richardson's interest in meteorology led him to propose a scheme for weather forecasting by solution of differential equations, the method used nowadays, though when he published Weather Prediction by Numerical Process in 1922, suitable fast computing was unavailable. He described his ideas thus (his "computers" are human beings): "After so much hard reasoning, may one play with a fantasy? Imagine a large hall like a theatre, except that the circles and galleries go right round through the space usually occupied by the stage. The walls of this chamber are painted to form a map of the globe. The ceiling represents the north polar regions, England is in the gallery, the tropics in the upper circle, Australia on the dress circle and the Antarctic in the pit. A myriad computers are at work upon the weather of the part of the map where each sits, but each computer attends only to one equation or part of an equation. The work of each region is coordinated by an official of higher rank. Numerous little "night signs" display the instantaneous values so that neighbouring computers can read them. Each number is thus displayed in three adjacent zones so as to maintain communication to the North and South on the map. From the floor of the pit a tall pillar rises to half the height of the hall. It carries a large pulpit on its top. In this sits the man in charge of the whole theatre; he is surrounded by several assistants and messengers. One of his duties is to maintain a uniform speed of progress in all parts of the globe. In this respect he is like the conductor of an orchestra in which the instruments are slide-rules and calculating machines. But instead of waving a baton he turns a beam of rosy light upon any region that is running ahead of the rest, and a beam of blue light upon those who are behindhand. Four senior clerks in the central pulpit are collecting the future weather as fast as it is being computed, and despatching it by pneumatic carrier to a quiet room. There it will be coded and telephoned to the radio transmitting station. Messengers carry piles of used computing forms down to a storehouse in the cellar. In a neighbouring building there is a research department, where they invent improvements. But there is much experimenting on a small scale before any change is made in the complex routine of the computing theatre. In a basement an enthusiast is observing eddies in the liquid lining of a huge spinning bowl, but so far the arithmetic proves the better way. In another building are all the usual financial, correspondence and administrative offices. Outside are playing fields, houses, mountains and lakes, for it was thought that those who compute the weather should breathe of it freely." (Richardson 1922) (The word "computers" is used here in its original sense – people who did computations, not machines. "Calculator" also referred to people at this time.) When news of the first weather forecast by the first modern computer, ENIAC, was received by Richardson in 1950, he responded that the results were an "enormous scientific advance." The first calculations for a 24-hour forecast took ENIAC nearly 24 hours to produce. He was also interested in atmospheric turbulence and performed many terrestrial experiments. The Richardson number, a dimensionless parameter of the theory of turbulence is named for him. He famously summarised turbulence in rhyming verse in Weather Prediction by Numerical Process (p 66): Big whirls have little whirls that feed on their velocity, and little whirls have lesser whirls and so on to viscosity. [A play on Siphonaptera, Augustus De Morgan's rewording of Jonathan Swift, "Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum." (A Budget of Paradoxes, 1915)]. Richardson's attempt at numerical forecast One of Richardson's most celebrated achievements is his retroactive attempt to forecast the weather during a single day—20 May 1910—by direct computation. At the time, meteorologists performed forecasts principally by looking for similar weather patterns from records, and then extrapolating forward. Richardson attempted to use a mathematical model of the principal features of the atmosphere, and use data taken at a specific time (7 AM) to calculate the weather six hours later ab initio. As meteorologist Peter Lynch makes clear, Richardson's forecast failed dramatically, predicting a huge rise in pressure over six hours when the pressure actually was more or less static. However, detailed analysis by Lynch has shown that the cause was a failure to apply smoothing techniques to the data, which rule out unphysical surges in pressure. When these are applied, Richardson's forecast is revealed to be essentially accurate—a remarkable achievement considering the calculations were done by hand, and while Richardson was serving with the Quaker ambulance unit in northern France. Mathematical analysis of war Richardson also applied his mathematical skills in the service of his pacifist principles, in particular in understanding the basis of international conflict. For this reason, he is now considered the initiator, or co-initiator (with Quincy Wright and Pitirim Sorokin as well as others such as Kenneth Boulding, Anatol Rapaport and Adam Curle), of the scientific analysis of conflict—an interdisciplinary topic of quantitative and mathematical social science dedicated to systematic investigation of the causes of war and conditions of peace. As he had done with weather, he analysed war using mainly differential equations and probability theory. Considering the armament of two nations, Richardson posited an idealised system of equations whereby the rate of a nation's armament build-up is directly proportional to the amount of arms its rival has and also to the grievances felt toward the rival, and negatively proportional to the amount of arms it already has itself. Solution of this system of equations allows insightful conclusions to be made regarding the nature, and the stability or instability, of various hypothetical conditions which might obtain between nations. He also originated the theory that the propensity for war between two nations was a function of the length of their common border. And in Arms and Insecurity (1949), and Statistics of Deadly Quarrels (1960), he sought to analyse the causes of war statistically. Factors he assessed included economics, language, and religion. In the preface of the latter, he wrote: "There is in the world a great deal of brilliant, witty political discussion which leads to no settled convictions. My aim has been different: namely to examine a few notions by quantitative techniques in the hope of reaching a reliable answer." In Statistics of Deadly Quarrels Richardson presented data on virtually every war from 1815 to 1945. As a result, he hypothesized a base 10 logarithmic scale for conflicts. In other words, there are many more small fights, in which only a few people die, than large ones that kill many. While no conflict's size can be predicted beforehand—indeed, it is impossible to give an upper limit to the series—overall they do form a Poisson distribution. On a smaller scale he showed the same pattern for gang murders in Chicago and Shanghai. Others have noted that similar statistical patterns occur frequently, whether planned (lotteries, with many more small payoffs than large wins), or by natural organisation (there are more small towns with grocery stores than big cities with superstores). Research on the length of coastlines and borders Richardson decided to search for a relation between the probability of two countries going to war and the length of their common border. However, while collecting data, he found that there was considerable variation in the various published lengths of international borders. For example, that between Spain and Portugal was variously quoted as 987 or 1214 km, and that between the Netherlands and Belgium as 380 or 449 km. The reason for these inconsistencies is the "coastline paradox". Suppose the coast of Britain is measured using a 200 km ruler, specifying that both ends of the ruler must touch the coast. Now cut the ruler in half and repeat the measurement, then repeat: Notice that the smaller the ruler, the longer the resulting coastline. It might be supposed that these values would converge to a finite number representing the true length of the coastline. However, Richardson demonstrated that this is not the case: the measured length of coastlines, and other natural features, increases without limit as the unit of measurement is made smaller. This is known nowadays as the Richardson effect. At the time, Richardson's research was ignored by the scientific community. Today, it is considered an element of the beginning of the modern study of fractals. Richardson's research was quoted by mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot in his 1967 paper How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Richardson identified a value (between 1 and 2) that would describe the changes (with increasing measurement detail) in observed complexity for a particular coastline; this value served as a model for the concept of fractal dimension.<ref>P. G. Drazin, "Fractals"; Collected Papers of Lewis Fry Richardson, Volume 1; Cambridge University Press, 1993; p. 45.</ref> Patents for detection of icebergs In April 1912, soon after the loss of the ship Titanic, Richardson registered a patent for iceberg detection using acoustic echolocation in air. A month later he registered a similar patent for acoustic echolocation in water, anticipating the invention of sonar by Paul Langevin and Robert Boyle 6 years later. In popular culture A fictional version of Richardson, named Wallace Ryman, plays a pivotal role in Giles Foden's novel Turbulence. Richardson is mentioned in John Brunner's work, Stand on Zanzibar where Statistics of Deadly Quarrels is used as an argument that wars are inevitable. Richardson's work is also mentioned in Poul Anderson's speculative fiction novelette, Kings Who Die. Richardson is mentioned in Charlie Kaufman's 2020 novel Antkind. Richardson's famous quote, "Big whirls have little whirls that feed on their velocity; little whirls have lesser whirls & so on to viscosity" is mentioned in the song "Dots & Lines" written and performed by lyricist/rapper Lupe Fiasco. Personal life In 1909 he married Dorothy Garnett (1885–1956), daughter of the mathematician and physicist William Garnett. They were unable to have children due to an incompatibility of blood types, but they adopted two sons and a daughter between 1920 and 1927. Richardson's nephew Ralph Richardson became a noted actor. His great-nephew (through his wife Dorothy's eldest brother, (James Clerk) Maxwell Garnett, C.B.E.), Julian Hunt, went on to become a meteorologist and director general and chief executive of the British Meteorological Office from 1992 to 1997. A great-niece – of the same line of descent – is the former politician Virginia Bottomley, now Baroness Bottomley. Legacy Since 1997, the Lewis Fry Richardson Medal has been awarded by the European Geosciences Union for "exceptional contributions to nonlinear geophysics in general" (by EGS until 2003 and by EGU since 2004). Winners have been: 2020: Valerio Lucarini 2019: Shaun Lovejoy 2018: Timothy N. Palmer 2017: Edward Ott 2016: Peter L. Read 2015: Daniel Schertzer 2014: Olivier Talagrand 2013: Jürgen Kurths 2012: Harry Swinney 2011: Catherine Nicolis 2010: Klaus Fraedrich 2009: Stéphan Fauve 2008: Akiva Yaglom 2007: Ulrich Schumann 2006: Roberto Benzi 2005: Henk A. Dijkstra 2004: Michael Ghil 2003: Uriel Frisch 2002: 2001: Julian Hunt 2000: Benoit Mandelbrot 1999: Raymond Hide 1998: Vladimir Keilis-Borok Since 1959, there has been a Peace Studies centre at Lancaster University named the Richardson Institute which carries out interdisciplinary research on peace and conflict in the spirit of Lewis Fry Richardson. See also Anomalous diffusion Arms race Coastline paradox Energy cascade War cycles Magnetic helicity Richardson extrapolation Richardson number Modified Richardson iteration Richards equation Multiscale turbulence Takebe Kenko Frederick W. Lanchester List of peace activists Notes References Wilkinson, David. Deadly Quarrels: Lewis F. Richardson and the Statistical Study of War (University of California Press, 2018) online review 320pp P.A. Davidson, Y. Kaneda, K. Moffatt, and K.R. Sreenivasan (eds, 2011). A Voyage Through Turbulence, chapter 5, pp 187–208, Cambridge University Press 544pp "A Quaker mathematician" (Ch 8) and "Richardson on war" (Ch 9) 290pp Richardson, L.F. (1939). "Generalized foreign politics". The British Journal of Psychology, monograph supplement No. 23. Richardson, L.F. (1960). Statistics of deadly quarrels. Pacific Grove, CA: Boxwood Press. 1030pp; Volume 2: Quantitative psychology and studies of conflict. , 778pp 353pp Angeletti Ferdinando (2021) Storicismo matematico e pacifismo scientifico: due esempi di determinismo storico della metà del XX secolo in Iconografie europee'' di Walter Montanari e Shirin Zakeri (a cura di), Roma, Nuova Cultura ISBN 978-8-833-65368-6; External links 1881 births 1953 deaths 20th-century mathematicians Academics of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology Academics of Aberystwyth University Alumni of King's College, Cambridge People educated at Bootham School English cartographers British conscientious objectors English mathematicians English meteorologists English physicists English psychologists English Quakers Fellows of the Royal Society Lewis People associated with the University of the West of Scotland People from Newcastle upon Tyne English Christian pacifists Fluid dynamicists People associated with the Friends' Ambulance Unit 20th-century psychologists Alumni of Armstrong College, Durham 20th-century English businesspeople

C_de38cd49a72248c2ae5e822e8961c1d3_0

What is he best known for?

What is Lewis Fry Richardson best known for?

Lewis Fry Richardson

Richardson decided to search for a relation between the probability of two countries going to war and the length of their common border. However, while collecting data, he found that there was considerable variation in the various published lengths of international borders. For example, that between Spain and Portugal was variously quoted as 987 or 1214 km, and that between the Netherlands and Belgium as 380 or 449 km. The reason for these inconsistencies is the "coastline paradox". Suppose the coast of Britain is measured using a 200 km ruler, specifying that both ends of the ruler must touch the coast. Now cut the ruler in half and repeat the measurement, then repeat: Notice that the smaller the ruler, the longer the resulting coastline. It might be supposed that these values would converge to a finite number representing the true length of the coastline. However, Richardson demonstrated that this is not the case: the measured length of coastlines, and other natural features, increases without limit as the unit of measurement is made smaller. This is known nowadays as the Richardson effect. At the time, Richardson's research was ignored by the scientific community. Today, it is considered an element of the beginning of the modern study of fractals. Richardson's research was quoted by mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot in his 1967 paper How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Richardson identified a value (between 1 and 2) that would describe the changes (with increasing measurement detail) in observed complexity for a particular coastline; this value served as a model for the concept of fractal dimension. CANNOTANSWER

Richardson effect.

Lewis Fry Richardson, FRS (11 October 1881 – 30 September 1953) was an English mathematician, physicist, meteorologist, psychologist and pacifist who pioneered modern mathematical techniques of weather forecasting, and the application of similar techniques to studying the causes of wars and how to prevent them. He is also noted for his pioneering work concerning fractals and a method for solving a system of linear equations known as modified Richardson iteration. Early life Lewis Fry Richardson was the youngest of seven children born to Catherine Fry (1838–1919) and David Richardson (1835–1913). They were a prosperous Quaker family, David Richardson operating a successful tanning and leather-manufacturing business. At age 12 he was sent to a Quaker boarding school, Bootham School in York, where he received an education in science, which stimulated an active interest in natural history. In 1898 he went on to Durham College of Science (a college of Durham University) where he took courses in mathematical physics, chemistry, botany, and zoology. He proceeded in 1900 to King's College, Cambridge, where he was taught physics in the natural sciences tripos by (among others) J. J. Thomson and graduated with a first-class degree in 1903. At age 47 he received a doctorate in mathematical psychology from the University of London. Career Richardson's working life represented his eclectic interests: National Physical Laboratory (1903–1904). University College Aberystwyth (1905–1906). Chemist, National Peat Industries (1906–1907). National Physical Laboratory (1907–1909). Manager of the physical and chemical laboratory, Sunbeam Lamp Company (1909–1912). Manchester College of Technology (1912–1913). Meteorological Office – as superintendent of Eskdalemuir Observatory (1913–1916). Friends Ambulance Unit in France (1916–1919). Meteorological Office at Benson, Oxfordshire (1919–1920). Head of the Physics Department at Westminster Training College (1920–1929). Principal, Paisley Technical College, now part of the University of the West of Scotland (1929–1940). In 1926, he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society Pacifism Richardson's Quaker beliefs entailed an ardent pacifism that exempted him from military service during World War I as a conscientious objector, though this subsequently disqualified him from having any academic post. Richardson worked from 1916 to 1919 for the Friends' Ambulance Unit attached to the 16th French Infantry Division. After the war, he rejoined the Meteorological Office but was compelled to resign on grounds of conscience when it was amalgamated into the Air Ministry in 1920. He subsequently pursued a career on the fringes of the academic world before retiring in 1940 to research his own ideas. His pacifism had direct consequences on his research interests. According to Thomas Körner, the discovery that his meteorological work was of value to chemical weapons designers caused him to abandon all his efforts in this field, and destroy findings that he had yet to publish. Weather forecasting Richardson's interest in meteorology led him to propose a scheme for weather forecasting by solution of differential equations, the method used nowadays, though when he published Weather Prediction by Numerical Process in 1922, suitable fast computing was unavailable. He described his ideas thus (his "computers" are human beings): "After so much hard reasoning, may one play with a fantasy? Imagine a large hall like a theatre, except that the circles and galleries go right round through the space usually occupied by the stage. The walls of this chamber are painted to form a map of the globe. The ceiling represents the north polar regions, England is in the gallery, the tropics in the upper circle, Australia on the dress circle and the Antarctic in the pit. A myriad computers are at work upon the weather of the part of the map where each sits, but each computer attends only to one equation or part of an equation. The work of each region is coordinated by an official of higher rank. Numerous little "night signs" display the instantaneous values so that neighbouring computers can read them. Each number is thus displayed in three adjacent zones so as to maintain communication to the North and South on the map. From the floor of the pit a tall pillar rises to half the height of the hall. It carries a large pulpit on its top. In this sits the man in charge of the whole theatre; he is surrounded by several assistants and messengers. One of his duties is to maintain a uniform speed of progress in all parts of the globe. In this respect he is like the conductor of an orchestra in which the instruments are slide-rules and calculating machines. But instead of waving a baton he turns a beam of rosy light upon any region that is running ahead of the rest, and a beam of blue light upon those who are behindhand. Four senior clerks in the central pulpit are collecting the future weather as fast as it is being computed, and despatching it by pneumatic carrier to a quiet room. There it will be coded and telephoned to the radio transmitting station. Messengers carry piles of used computing forms down to a storehouse in the cellar. In a neighbouring building there is a research department, where they invent improvements. But there is much experimenting on a small scale before any change is made in the complex routine of the computing theatre. In a basement an enthusiast is observing eddies in the liquid lining of a huge spinning bowl, but so far the arithmetic proves the better way. In another building are all the usual financial, correspondence and administrative offices. Outside are playing fields, houses, mountains and lakes, for it was thought that those who compute the weather should breathe of it freely." (Richardson 1922) (The word "computers" is used here in its original sense – people who did computations, not machines. "Calculator" also referred to people at this time.) When news of the first weather forecast by the first modern computer, ENIAC, was received by Richardson in 1950, he responded that the results were an "enormous scientific advance." The first calculations for a 24-hour forecast took ENIAC nearly 24 hours to produce. He was also interested in atmospheric turbulence and performed many terrestrial experiments. The Richardson number, a dimensionless parameter of the theory of turbulence is named for him. He famously summarised turbulence in rhyming verse in Weather Prediction by Numerical Process (p 66): Big whirls have little whirls that feed on their velocity, and little whirls have lesser whirls and so on to viscosity. [A play on Siphonaptera, Augustus De Morgan's rewording of Jonathan Swift, "Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum." (A Budget of Paradoxes, 1915)]. Richardson's attempt at numerical forecast One of Richardson's most celebrated achievements is his retroactive attempt to forecast the weather during a single day—20 May 1910—by direct computation. At the time, meteorologists performed forecasts principally by looking for similar weather patterns from records, and then extrapolating forward. Richardson attempted to use a mathematical model of the principal features of the atmosphere, and use data taken at a specific time (7 AM) to calculate the weather six hours later ab initio. As meteorologist Peter Lynch makes clear, Richardson's forecast failed dramatically, predicting a huge rise in pressure over six hours when the pressure actually was more or less static. However, detailed analysis by Lynch has shown that the cause was a failure to apply smoothing techniques to the data, which rule out unphysical surges in pressure. When these are applied, Richardson's forecast is revealed to be essentially accurate—a remarkable achievement considering the calculations were done by hand, and while Richardson was serving with the Quaker ambulance unit in northern France. Mathematical analysis of war Richardson also applied his mathematical skills in the service of his pacifist principles, in particular in understanding the basis of international conflict. For this reason, he is now considered the initiator, or co-initiator (with Quincy Wright and Pitirim Sorokin as well as others such as Kenneth Boulding, Anatol Rapaport and Adam Curle), of the scientific analysis of conflict—an interdisciplinary topic of quantitative and mathematical social science dedicated to systematic investigation of the causes of war and conditions of peace. As he had done with weather, he analysed war using mainly differential equations and probability theory. Considering the armament of two nations, Richardson posited an idealised system of equations whereby the rate of a nation's armament build-up is directly proportional to the amount of arms its rival has and also to the grievances felt toward the rival, and negatively proportional to the amount of arms it already has itself. Solution of this system of equations allows insightful conclusions to be made regarding the nature, and the stability or instability, of various hypothetical conditions which might obtain between nations. He also originated the theory that the propensity for war between two nations was a function of the length of their common border. And in Arms and Insecurity (1949), and Statistics of Deadly Quarrels (1960), he sought to analyse the causes of war statistically. Factors he assessed included economics, language, and religion. In the preface of the latter, he wrote: "There is in the world a great deal of brilliant, witty political discussion which leads to no settled convictions. My aim has been different: namely to examine a few notions by quantitative techniques in the hope of reaching a reliable answer." In Statistics of Deadly Quarrels Richardson presented data on virtually every war from 1815 to 1945. As a result, he hypothesized a base 10 logarithmic scale for conflicts. In other words, there are many more small fights, in which only a few people die, than large ones that kill many. While no conflict's size can be predicted beforehand—indeed, it is impossible to give an upper limit to the series—overall they do form a Poisson distribution. On a smaller scale he showed the same pattern for gang murders in Chicago and Shanghai. Others have noted that similar statistical patterns occur frequently, whether planned (lotteries, with many more small payoffs than large wins), or by natural organisation (there are more small towns with grocery stores than big cities with superstores). Research on the length of coastlines and borders Richardson decided to search for a relation between the probability of two countries going to war and the length of their common border. However, while collecting data, he found that there was considerable variation in the various published lengths of international borders. For example, that between Spain and Portugal was variously quoted as 987 or 1214 km, and that between the Netherlands and Belgium as 380 or 449 km. The reason for these inconsistencies is the "coastline paradox". Suppose the coast of Britain is measured using a 200 km ruler, specifying that both ends of the ruler must touch the coast. Now cut the ruler in half and repeat the measurement, then repeat: Notice that the smaller the ruler, the longer the resulting coastline. It might be supposed that these values would converge to a finite number representing the true length of the coastline. However, Richardson demonstrated that this is not the case: the measured length of coastlines, and other natural features, increases without limit as the unit of measurement is made smaller. This is known nowadays as the Richardson effect. At the time, Richardson's research was ignored by the scientific community. Today, it is considered an element of the beginning of the modern study of fractals. Richardson's research was quoted by mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot in his 1967 paper How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Richardson identified a value (between 1 and 2) that would describe the changes (with increasing measurement detail) in observed complexity for a particular coastline; this value served as a model for the concept of fractal dimension.<ref>P. G. Drazin, "Fractals"; Collected Papers of Lewis Fry Richardson, Volume 1; Cambridge University Press, 1993; p. 45.</ref> Patents for detection of icebergs In April 1912, soon after the loss of the ship Titanic, Richardson registered a patent for iceberg detection using acoustic echolocation in air. A month later he registered a similar patent for acoustic echolocation in water, anticipating the invention of sonar by Paul Langevin and Robert Boyle 6 years later. In popular culture A fictional version of Richardson, named Wallace Ryman, plays a pivotal role in Giles Foden's novel Turbulence. Richardson is mentioned in John Brunner's work, Stand on Zanzibar where Statistics of Deadly Quarrels is used as an argument that wars are inevitable. Richardson's work is also mentioned in Poul Anderson's speculative fiction novelette, Kings Who Die. Richardson is mentioned in Charlie Kaufman's 2020 novel Antkind. Richardson's famous quote, "Big whirls have little whirls that feed on their velocity; little whirls have lesser whirls & so on to viscosity" is mentioned in the song "Dots & Lines" written and performed by lyricist/rapper Lupe Fiasco. Personal life In 1909 he married Dorothy Garnett (1885–1956), daughter of the mathematician and physicist William Garnett. They were unable to have children due to an incompatibility of blood types, but they adopted two sons and a daughter between 1920 and 1927. Richardson's nephew Ralph Richardson became a noted actor. His great-nephew (through his wife Dorothy's eldest brother, (James Clerk) Maxwell Garnett, C.B.E.), Julian Hunt, went on to become a meteorologist and director general and chief executive of the British Meteorological Office from 1992 to 1997. A great-niece – of the same line of descent – is the former politician Virginia Bottomley, now Baroness Bottomley. Legacy Since 1997, the Lewis Fry Richardson Medal has been awarded by the European Geosciences Union for "exceptional contributions to nonlinear geophysics in general" (by EGS until 2003 and by EGU since 2004). Winners have been: 2020: Valerio Lucarini 2019: Shaun Lovejoy 2018: Timothy N. Palmer 2017: Edward Ott 2016: Peter L. Read 2015: Daniel Schertzer 2014: Olivier Talagrand 2013: Jürgen Kurths 2012: Harry Swinney 2011: Catherine Nicolis 2010: Klaus Fraedrich 2009: Stéphan Fauve 2008: Akiva Yaglom 2007: Ulrich Schumann 2006: Roberto Benzi 2005: Henk A. Dijkstra 2004: Michael Ghil 2003: Uriel Frisch 2002: 2001: Julian Hunt 2000: Benoit Mandelbrot 1999: Raymond Hide 1998: Vladimir Keilis-Borok Since 1959, there has been a Peace Studies centre at Lancaster University named the Richardson Institute which carries out interdisciplinary research on peace and conflict in the spirit of Lewis Fry Richardson. See also Anomalous diffusion Arms race Coastline paradox Energy cascade War cycles Magnetic helicity Richardson extrapolation Richardson number Modified Richardson iteration Richards equation Multiscale turbulence Takebe Kenko Frederick W. Lanchester List of peace activists Notes References Wilkinson, David. Deadly Quarrels: Lewis F. Richardson and the Statistical Study of War (University of California Press, 2018) online review 320pp P.A. Davidson, Y. Kaneda, K. Moffatt, and K.R. Sreenivasan (eds, 2011). A Voyage Through Turbulence, chapter 5, pp 187–208, Cambridge University Press 544pp "A Quaker mathematician" (Ch 8) and "Richardson on war" (Ch 9) 290pp Richardson, L.F. (1939). "Generalized foreign politics". The British Journal of Psychology, monograph supplement No. 23. Richardson, L.F. (1960). Statistics of deadly quarrels. Pacific Grove, CA: Boxwood Press. 1030pp; Volume 2: Quantitative psychology and studies of conflict. , 778pp 353pp Angeletti Ferdinando (2021) Storicismo matematico e pacifismo scientifico: due esempi di determinismo storico della metà del XX secolo in Iconografie europee'' di Walter Montanari e Shirin Zakeri (a cura di), Roma, Nuova Cultura ISBN 978-8-833-65368-6; External links 1881 births 1953 deaths 20th-century mathematicians Academics of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology Academics of Aberystwyth University Alumni of King's College, Cambridge People educated at Bootham School English cartographers British conscientious objectors English mathematicians English meteorologists English physicists English psychologists English Quakers Fellows of the Royal Society Lewis People associated with the University of the West of Scotland People from Newcastle upon Tyne English Christian pacifists Fluid dynamicists People associated with the Friends' Ambulance Unit 20th-century psychologists Alumni of Armstrong College, Durham 20th-century English businesspeople

C_de38cd49a72248c2ae5e822e8961c1d3_0

What is the Richardson effect?

What is the Richardson effect, that Lewis Fry Richardson is known for?

Lewis Fry Richardson

Richardson decided to search for a relation between the probability of two countries going to war and the length of their common border. However, while collecting data, he found that there was considerable variation in the various published lengths of international borders. For example, that between Spain and Portugal was variously quoted as 987 or 1214 km, and that between the Netherlands and Belgium as 380 or 449 km. The reason for these inconsistencies is the "coastline paradox". Suppose the coast of Britain is measured using a 200 km ruler, specifying that both ends of the ruler must touch the coast. Now cut the ruler in half and repeat the measurement, then repeat: Notice that the smaller the ruler, the longer the resulting coastline. It might be supposed that these values would converge to a finite number representing the true length of the coastline. However, Richardson demonstrated that this is not the case: the measured length of coastlines, and other natural features, increases without limit as the unit of measurement is made smaller. This is known nowadays as the Richardson effect. At the time, Richardson's research was ignored by the scientific community. Today, it is considered an element of the beginning of the modern study of fractals. Richardson's research was quoted by mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot in his 1967 paper How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Richardson identified a value (between 1 and 2) that would describe the changes (with increasing measurement detail) in observed complexity for a particular coastline; this value served as a model for the concept of fractal dimension. CANNOTANSWER

Richardson demonstrated that this is not the case: the measured length of coastlines, and other natural features, increases without limit as the unit of measurement is made smaller.

Lewis Fry Richardson, FRS (11 October 1881 – 30 September 1953) was an English mathematician, physicist, meteorologist, psychologist and pacifist who pioneered modern mathematical techniques of weather forecasting, and the application of similar techniques to studying the causes of wars and how to prevent them. He is also noted for his pioneering work concerning fractals and a method for solving a system of linear equations known as modified Richardson iteration. Early life Lewis Fry Richardson was the youngest of seven children born to Catherine Fry (1838–1919) and David Richardson (1835–1913). They were a prosperous Quaker family, David Richardson operating a successful tanning and leather-manufacturing business. At age 12 he was sent to a Quaker boarding school, Bootham School in York, where he received an education in science, which stimulated an active interest in natural history. In 1898 he went on to Durham College of Science (a college of Durham University) where he took courses in mathematical physics, chemistry, botany, and zoology. He proceeded in 1900 to King's College, Cambridge, where he was taught physics in the natural sciences tripos by (among others) J. J. Thomson and graduated with a first-class degree in 1903. At age 47 he received a doctorate in mathematical psychology from the University of London. Career Richardson's working life represented his eclectic interests: National Physical Laboratory (1903–1904). University College Aberystwyth (1905–1906). Chemist, National Peat Industries (1906–1907). National Physical Laboratory (1907–1909). Manager of the physical and chemical laboratory, Sunbeam Lamp Company (1909–1912). Manchester College of Technology (1912–1913). Meteorological Office – as superintendent of Eskdalemuir Observatory (1913–1916). Friends Ambulance Unit in France (1916–1919). Meteorological Office at Benson, Oxfordshire (1919–1920). Head of the Physics Department at Westminster Training College (1920–1929). Principal, Paisley Technical College, now part of the University of the West of Scotland (1929–1940). In 1926, he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society Pacifism Richardson's Quaker beliefs entailed an ardent pacifism that exempted him from military service during World War I as a conscientious objector, though this subsequently disqualified him from having any academic post. Richardson worked from 1916 to 1919 for the Friends' Ambulance Unit attached to the 16th French Infantry Division. After the war, he rejoined the Meteorological Office but was compelled to resign on grounds of conscience when it was amalgamated into the Air Ministry in 1920. He subsequently pursued a career on the fringes of the academic world before retiring in 1940 to research his own ideas. His pacifism had direct consequences on his research interests. According to Thomas Körner, the discovery that his meteorological work was of value to chemical weapons designers caused him to abandon all his efforts in this field, and destroy findings that he had yet to publish. Weather forecasting Richardson's interest in meteorology led him to propose a scheme for weather forecasting by solution of differential equations, the method used nowadays, though when he published Weather Prediction by Numerical Process in 1922, suitable fast computing was unavailable. He described his ideas thus (his "computers" are human beings): "After so much hard reasoning, may one play with a fantasy? Imagine a large hall like a theatre, except that the circles and galleries go right round through the space usually occupied by the stage. The walls of this chamber are painted to form a map of the globe. The ceiling represents the north polar regions, England is in the gallery, the tropics in the upper circle, Australia on the dress circle and the Antarctic in the pit. A myriad computers are at work upon the weather of the part of the map where each sits, but each computer attends only to one equation or part of an equation. The work of each region is coordinated by an official of higher rank. Numerous little "night signs" display the instantaneous values so that neighbouring computers can read them. Each number is thus displayed in three adjacent zones so as to maintain communication to the North and South on the map. From the floor of the pit a tall pillar rises to half the height of the hall. It carries a large pulpit on its top. In this sits the man in charge of the whole theatre; he is surrounded by several assistants and messengers. One of his duties is to maintain a uniform speed of progress in all parts of the globe. In this respect he is like the conductor of an orchestra in which the instruments are slide-rules and calculating machines. But instead of waving a baton he turns a beam of rosy light upon any region that is running ahead of the rest, and a beam of blue light upon those who are behindhand. Four senior clerks in the central pulpit are collecting the future weather as fast as it is being computed, and despatching it by pneumatic carrier to a quiet room. There it will be coded and telephoned to the radio transmitting station. Messengers carry piles of used computing forms down to a storehouse in the cellar. In a neighbouring building there is a research department, where they invent improvements. But there is much experimenting on a small scale before any change is made in the complex routine of the computing theatre. In a basement an enthusiast is observing eddies in the liquid lining of a huge spinning bowl, but so far the arithmetic proves the better way. In another building are all the usual financial, correspondence and administrative offices. Outside are playing fields, houses, mountains and lakes, for it was thought that those who compute the weather should breathe of it freely." (Richardson 1922) (The word "computers" is used here in its original sense – people who did computations, not machines. "Calculator" also referred to people at this time.) When news of the first weather forecast by the first modern computer, ENIAC, was received by Richardson in 1950, he responded that the results were an "enormous scientific advance." The first calculations for a 24-hour forecast took ENIAC nearly 24 hours to produce. He was also interested in atmospheric turbulence and performed many terrestrial experiments. The Richardson number, a dimensionless parameter of the theory of turbulence is named for him. He famously summarised turbulence in rhyming verse in Weather Prediction by Numerical Process (p 66): Big whirls have little whirls that feed on their velocity, and little whirls have lesser whirls and so on to viscosity. [A play on Siphonaptera, Augustus De Morgan's rewording of Jonathan Swift, "Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum." (A Budget of Paradoxes, 1915)]. Richardson's attempt at numerical forecast One of Richardson's most celebrated achievements is his retroactive attempt to forecast the weather during a single day—20 May 1910—by direct computation. At the time, meteorologists performed forecasts principally by looking for similar weather patterns from records, and then extrapolating forward. Richardson attempted to use a mathematical model of the principal features of the atmosphere, and use data taken at a specific time (7 AM) to calculate the weather six hours later ab initio. As meteorologist Peter Lynch makes clear, Richardson's forecast failed dramatically, predicting a huge rise in pressure over six hours when the pressure actually was more or less static. However, detailed analysis by Lynch has shown that the cause was a failure to apply smoothing techniques to the data, which rule out unphysical surges in pressure. When these are applied, Richardson's forecast is revealed to be essentially accurate—a remarkable achievement considering the calculations were done by hand, and while Richardson was serving with the Quaker ambulance unit in northern France. Mathematical analysis of war Richardson also applied his mathematical skills in the service of his pacifist principles, in particular in understanding the basis of international conflict. For this reason, he is now considered the initiator, or co-initiator (with Quincy Wright and Pitirim Sorokin as well as others such as Kenneth Boulding, Anatol Rapaport and Adam Curle), of the scientific analysis of conflict—an interdisciplinary topic of quantitative and mathematical social science dedicated to systematic investigation of the causes of war and conditions of peace. As he had done with weather, he analysed war using mainly differential equations and probability theory. Considering the armament of two nations, Richardson posited an idealised system of equations whereby the rate of a nation's armament build-up is directly proportional to the amount of arms its rival has and also to the grievances felt toward the rival, and negatively proportional to the amount of arms it already has itself. Solution of this system of equations allows insightful conclusions to be made regarding the nature, and the stability or instability, of various hypothetical conditions which might obtain between nations. He also originated the theory that the propensity for war between two nations was a function of the length of their common border. And in Arms and Insecurity (1949), and Statistics of Deadly Quarrels (1960), he sought to analyse the causes of war statistically. Factors he assessed included economics, language, and religion. In the preface of the latter, he wrote: "There is in the world a great deal of brilliant, witty political discussion which leads to no settled convictions. My aim has been different: namely to examine a few notions by quantitative techniques in the hope of reaching a reliable answer." In Statistics of Deadly Quarrels Richardson presented data on virtually every war from 1815 to 1945. As a result, he hypothesized a base 10 logarithmic scale for conflicts. In other words, there are many more small fights, in which only a few people die, than large ones that kill many. While no conflict's size can be predicted beforehand—indeed, it is impossible to give an upper limit to the series—overall they do form a Poisson distribution. On a smaller scale he showed the same pattern for gang murders in Chicago and Shanghai. Others have noted that similar statistical patterns occur frequently, whether planned (lotteries, with many more small payoffs than large wins), or by natural organisation (there are more small towns with grocery stores than big cities with superstores). Research on the length of coastlines and borders Richardson decided to search for a relation between the probability of two countries going to war and the length of their common border. However, while collecting data, he found that there was considerable variation in the various published lengths of international borders. For example, that between Spain and Portugal was variously quoted as 987 or 1214 km, and that between the Netherlands and Belgium as 380 or 449 km. The reason for these inconsistencies is the "coastline paradox". Suppose the coast of Britain is measured using a 200 km ruler, specifying that both ends of the ruler must touch the coast. Now cut the ruler in half and repeat the measurement, then repeat: Notice that the smaller the ruler, the longer the resulting coastline. It might be supposed that these values would converge to a finite number representing the true length of the coastline. However, Richardson demonstrated that this is not the case: the measured length of coastlines, and other natural features, increases without limit as the unit of measurement is made smaller. This is known nowadays as the Richardson effect. At the time, Richardson's research was ignored by the scientific community. Today, it is considered an element of the beginning of the modern study of fractals. Richardson's research was quoted by mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot in his 1967 paper How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Richardson identified a value (between 1 and 2) that would describe the changes (with increasing measurement detail) in observed complexity for a particular coastline; this value served as a model for the concept of fractal dimension.<ref>P. G. Drazin, "Fractals"; Collected Papers of Lewis Fry Richardson, Volume 1; Cambridge University Press, 1993; p. 45.</ref> Patents for detection of icebergs In April 1912, soon after the loss of the ship Titanic, Richardson registered a patent for iceberg detection using acoustic echolocation in air. A month later he registered a similar patent for acoustic echolocation in water, anticipating the invention of sonar by Paul Langevin and Robert Boyle 6 years later. In popular culture A fictional version of Richardson, named Wallace Ryman, plays a pivotal role in Giles Foden's novel Turbulence. Richardson is mentioned in John Brunner's work, Stand on Zanzibar where Statistics of Deadly Quarrels is used as an argument that wars are inevitable. Richardson's work is also mentioned in Poul Anderson's speculative fiction novelette, Kings Who Die. Richardson is mentioned in Charlie Kaufman's 2020 novel Antkind. Richardson's famous quote, "Big whirls have little whirls that feed on their velocity; little whirls have lesser whirls & so on to viscosity" is mentioned in the song "Dots & Lines" written and performed by lyricist/rapper Lupe Fiasco. Personal life In 1909 he married Dorothy Garnett (1885–1956), daughter of the mathematician and physicist William Garnett. They were unable to have children due to an incompatibility of blood types, but they adopted two sons and a daughter between 1920 and 1927. Richardson's nephew Ralph Richardson became a noted actor. His great-nephew (through his wife Dorothy's eldest brother, (James Clerk) Maxwell Garnett, C.B.E.), Julian Hunt, went on to become a meteorologist and director general and chief executive of the British Meteorological Office from 1992 to 1997. A great-niece – of the same line of descent – is the former politician Virginia Bottomley, now Baroness Bottomley. Legacy Since 1997, the Lewis Fry Richardson Medal has been awarded by the European Geosciences Union for "exceptional contributions to nonlinear geophysics in general" (by EGS until 2003 and by EGU since 2004). Winners have been: 2020: Valerio Lucarini 2019: Shaun Lovejoy 2018: Timothy N. Palmer 2017: Edward Ott 2016: Peter L. Read 2015: Daniel Schertzer 2014: Olivier Talagrand 2013: Jürgen Kurths 2012: Harry Swinney 2011: Catherine Nicolis 2010: Klaus Fraedrich 2009: Stéphan Fauve 2008: Akiva Yaglom 2007: Ulrich Schumann 2006: Roberto Benzi 2005: Henk A. Dijkstra 2004: Michael Ghil 2003: Uriel Frisch 2002: 2001: Julian Hunt 2000: Benoit Mandelbrot 1999: Raymond Hide 1998: Vladimir Keilis-Borok Since 1959, there has been a Peace Studies centre at Lancaster University named the Richardson Institute which carries out interdisciplinary research on peace and conflict in the spirit of Lewis Fry Richardson. See also Anomalous diffusion Arms race Coastline paradox Energy cascade War cycles Magnetic helicity Richardson extrapolation Richardson number Modified Richardson iteration Richards equation Multiscale turbulence Takebe Kenko Frederick W. Lanchester List of peace activists Notes References Wilkinson, David. Deadly Quarrels: Lewis F. Richardson and the Statistical Study of War (University of California Press, 2018) online review 320pp P.A. Davidson, Y. Kaneda, K. Moffatt, and K.R. Sreenivasan (eds, 2011). A Voyage Through Turbulence, chapter 5, pp 187–208, Cambridge University Press 544pp "A Quaker mathematician" (Ch 8) and "Richardson on war" (Ch 9) 290pp Richardson, L.F. (1939). "Generalized foreign politics". The British Journal of Psychology, monograph supplement No. 23. Richardson, L.F. (1960). Statistics of deadly quarrels. Pacific Grove, CA: Boxwood Press. 1030pp; Volume 2: Quantitative psychology and studies of conflict. , 778pp 353pp Angeletti Ferdinando (2021) Storicismo matematico e pacifismo scientifico: due esempi di determinismo storico della metà del XX secolo in Iconografie europee'' di Walter Montanari e Shirin Zakeri (a cura di), Roma, Nuova Cultura ISBN 978-8-833-65368-6; External links 1881 births 1953 deaths 20th-century mathematicians Academics of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology Academics of Aberystwyth University Alumni of King's College, Cambridge People educated at Bootham School English cartographers British conscientious objectors English mathematicians English meteorologists English physicists English psychologists English Quakers Fellows of the Royal Society Lewis People associated with the University of the West of Scotland People from Newcastle upon Tyne English Christian pacifists Fluid dynamicists People associated with the Friends' Ambulance Unit 20th-century psychologists Alumni of Armstrong College, Durham 20th-century English businesspeople

C_de38cd49a72248c2ae5e822e8961c1d3_0

Did he win an award because of this?

Did Lewis Fry Richardson win an award because of the Richardson effect?

Lewis Fry Richardson

Richardson decided to search for a relation between the probability of two countries going to war and the length of their common border. However, while collecting data, he found that there was considerable variation in the various published lengths of international borders. For example, that between Spain and Portugal was variously quoted as 987 or 1214 km, and that between the Netherlands and Belgium as 380 or 449 km. The reason for these inconsistencies is the "coastline paradox". Suppose the coast of Britain is measured using a 200 km ruler, specifying that both ends of the ruler must touch the coast. Now cut the ruler in half and repeat the measurement, then repeat: Notice that the smaller the ruler, the longer the resulting coastline. It might be supposed that these values would converge to a finite number representing the true length of the coastline. However, Richardson demonstrated that this is not the case: the measured length of coastlines, and other natural features, increases without limit as the unit of measurement is made smaller. This is known nowadays as the Richardson effect. At the time, Richardson's research was ignored by the scientific community. Today, it is considered an element of the beginning of the modern study of fractals. Richardson's research was quoted by mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot in his 1967 paper How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Richardson identified a value (between 1 and 2) that would describe the changes (with increasing measurement detail) in observed complexity for a particular coastline; this value served as a model for the concept of fractal dimension. CANNOTANSWER

At the time, Richardson's research was ignored by the scientific community.

Lewis Fry Richardson, FRS (11 October 1881 – 30 September 1953) was an English mathematician, physicist, meteorologist, psychologist and pacifist who pioneered modern mathematical techniques of weather forecasting, and the application of similar techniques to studying the causes of wars and how to prevent them. He is also noted for his pioneering work concerning fractals and a method for solving a system of linear equations known as modified Richardson iteration. Early life Lewis Fry Richardson was the youngest of seven children born to Catherine Fry (1838–1919) and David Richardson (1835–1913). They were a prosperous Quaker family, David Richardson operating a successful tanning and leather-manufacturing business. At age 12 he was sent to a Quaker boarding school, Bootham School in York, where he received an education in science, which stimulated an active interest in natural history. In 1898 he went on to Durham College of Science (a college of Durham University) where he took courses in mathematical physics, chemistry, botany, and zoology. He proceeded in 1900 to King's College, Cambridge, where he was taught physics in the natural sciences tripos by (among others) J. J. Thomson and graduated with a first-class degree in 1903. At age 47 he received a doctorate in mathematical psychology from the University of London. Career Richardson's working life represented his eclectic interests: National Physical Laboratory (1903–1904). University College Aberystwyth (1905–1906). Chemist, National Peat Industries (1906–1907). National Physical Laboratory (1907–1909). Manager of the physical and chemical laboratory, Sunbeam Lamp Company (1909–1912). Manchester College of Technology (1912–1913). Meteorological Office – as superintendent of Eskdalemuir Observatory (1913–1916). Friends Ambulance Unit in France (1916–1919). Meteorological Office at Benson, Oxfordshire (1919–1920). Head of the Physics Department at Westminster Training College (1920–1929). Principal, Paisley Technical College, now part of the University of the West of Scotland (1929–1940). In 1926, he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society Pacifism Richardson's Quaker beliefs entailed an ardent pacifism that exempted him from military service during World War I as a conscientious objector, though this subsequently disqualified him from having any academic post. Richardson worked from 1916 to 1919 for the Friends' Ambulance Unit attached to the 16th French Infantry Division. After the war, he rejoined the Meteorological Office but was compelled to resign on grounds of conscience when it was amalgamated into the Air Ministry in 1920. He subsequently pursued a career on the fringes of the academic world before retiring in 1940 to research his own ideas. His pacifism had direct consequences on his research interests. According to Thomas Körner, the discovery that his meteorological work was of value to chemical weapons designers caused him to abandon all his efforts in this field, and destroy findings that he had yet to publish. Weather forecasting Richardson's interest in meteorology led him to propose a scheme for weather forecasting by solution of differential equations, the method used nowadays, though when he published Weather Prediction by Numerical Process in 1922, suitable fast computing was unavailable. He described his ideas thus (his "computers" are human beings): "After so much hard reasoning, may one play with a fantasy? Imagine a large hall like a theatre, except that the circles and galleries go right round through the space usually occupied by the stage. The walls of this chamber are painted to form a map of the globe. The ceiling represents the north polar regions, England is in the gallery, the tropics in the upper circle, Australia on the dress circle and the Antarctic in the pit. A myriad computers are at work upon the weather of the part of the map where each sits, but each computer attends only to one equation or part of an equation. The work of each region is coordinated by an official of higher rank. Numerous little "night signs" display the instantaneous values so that neighbouring computers can read them. Each number is thus displayed in three adjacent zones so as to maintain communication to the North and South on the map. From the floor of the pit a tall pillar rises to half the height of the hall. It carries a large pulpit on its top. In this sits the man in charge of the whole theatre; he is surrounded by several assistants and messengers. One of his duties is to maintain a uniform speed of progress in all parts of the globe. In this respect he is like the conductor of an orchestra in which the instruments are slide-rules and calculating machines. But instead of waving a baton he turns a beam of rosy light upon any region that is running ahead of the rest, and a beam of blue light upon those who are behindhand. Four senior clerks in the central pulpit are collecting the future weather as fast as it is being computed, and despatching it by pneumatic carrier to a quiet room. There it will be coded and telephoned to the radio transmitting station. Messengers carry piles of used computing forms down to a storehouse in the cellar. In a neighbouring building there is a research department, where they invent improvements. But there is much experimenting on a small scale before any change is made in the complex routine of the computing theatre. In a basement an enthusiast is observing eddies in the liquid lining of a huge spinning bowl, but so far the arithmetic proves the better way. In another building are all the usual financial, correspondence and administrative offices. Outside are playing fields, houses, mountains and lakes, for it was thought that those who compute the weather should breathe of it freely." (Richardson 1922) (The word "computers" is used here in its original sense – people who did computations, not machines. "Calculator" also referred to people at this time.) When news of the first weather forecast by the first modern computer, ENIAC, was received by Richardson in 1950, he responded that the results were an "enormous scientific advance." The first calculations for a 24-hour forecast took ENIAC nearly 24 hours to produce. He was also interested in atmospheric turbulence and performed many terrestrial experiments. The Richardson number, a dimensionless parameter of the theory of turbulence is named for him. He famously summarised turbulence in rhyming verse in Weather Prediction by Numerical Process (p 66): Big whirls have little whirls that feed on their velocity, and little whirls have lesser whirls and so on to viscosity. [A play on Siphonaptera, Augustus De Morgan's rewording of Jonathan Swift, "Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum." (A Budget of Paradoxes, 1915)]. Richardson's attempt at numerical forecast One of Richardson's most celebrated achievements is his retroactive attempt to forecast the weather during a single day—20 May 1910—by direct computation. At the time, meteorologists performed forecasts principally by looking for similar weather patterns from records, and then extrapolating forward. Richardson attempted to use a mathematical model of the principal features of the atmosphere, and use data taken at a specific time (7 AM) to calculate the weather six hours later ab initio. As meteorologist Peter Lynch makes clear, Richardson's forecast failed dramatically, predicting a huge rise in pressure over six hours when the pressure actually was more or less static. However, detailed analysis by Lynch has shown that the cause was a failure to apply smoothing techniques to the data, which rule out unphysical surges in pressure. When these are applied, Richardson's forecast is revealed to be essentially accurate—a remarkable achievement considering the calculations were done by hand, and while Richardson was serving with the Quaker ambulance unit in northern France. Mathematical analysis of war Richardson also applied his mathematical skills in the service of his pacifist principles, in particular in understanding the basis of international conflict. For this reason, he is now considered the initiator, or co-initiator (with Quincy Wright and Pitirim Sorokin as well as others such as Kenneth Boulding, Anatol Rapaport and Adam Curle), of the scientific analysis of conflict—an interdisciplinary topic of quantitative and mathematical social science dedicated to systematic investigation of the causes of war and conditions of peace. As he had done with weather, he analysed war using mainly differential equations and probability theory. Considering the armament of two nations, Richardson posited an idealised system of equations whereby the rate of a nation's armament build-up is directly proportional to the amount of arms its rival has and also to the grievances felt toward the rival, and negatively proportional to the amount of arms it already has itself. Solution of this system of equations allows insightful conclusions to be made regarding the nature, and the stability or instability, of various hypothetical conditions which might obtain between nations. He also originated the theory that the propensity for war between two nations was a function of the length of their common border. And in Arms and Insecurity (1949), and Statistics of Deadly Quarrels (1960), he sought to analyse the causes of war statistically. Factors he assessed included economics, language, and religion. In the preface of the latter, he wrote: "There is in the world a great deal of brilliant, witty political discussion which leads to no settled convictions. My aim has been different: namely to examine a few notions by quantitative techniques in the hope of reaching a reliable answer." In Statistics of Deadly Quarrels Richardson presented data on virtually every war from 1815 to 1945. As a result, he hypothesized a base 10 logarithmic scale for conflicts. In other words, there are many more small fights, in which only a few people die, than large ones that kill many. While no conflict's size can be predicted beforehand—indeed, it is impossible to give an upper limit to the series—overall they do form a Poisson distribution. On a smaller scale he showed the same pattern for gang murders in Chicago and Shanghai. Others have noted that similar statistical patterns occur frequently, whether planned (lotteries, with many more small payoffs than large wins), or by natural organisation (there are more small towns with grocery stores than big cities with superstores). Research on the length of coastlines and borders Richardson decided to search for a relation between the probability of two countries going to war and the length of their common border. However, while collecting data, he found that there was considerable variation in the various published lengths of international borders. For example, that between Spain and Portugal was variously quoted as 987 or 1214 km, and that between the Netherlands and Belgium as 380 or 449 km. The reason for these inconsistencies is the "coastline paradox". Suppose the coast of Britain is measured using a 200 km ruler, specifying that both ends of the ruler must touch the coast. Now cut the ruler in half and repeat the measurement, then repeat: Notice that the smaller the ruler, the longer the resulting coastline. It might be supposed that these values would converge to a finite number representing the true length of the coastline. However, Richardson demonstrated that this is not the case: the measured length of coastlines, and other natural features, increases without limit as the unit of measurement is made smaller. This is known nowadays as the Richardson effect. At the time, Richardson's research was ignored by the scientific community. Today, it is considered an element of the beginning of the modern study of fractals. Richardson's research was quoted by mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot in his 1967 paper How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Richardson identified a value (between 1 and 2) that would describe the changes (with increasing measurement detail) in observed complexity for a particular coastline; this value served as a model for the concept of fractal dimension.<ref>P. G. Drazin, "Fractals"; Collected Papers of Lewis Fry Richardson, Volume 1; Cambridge University Press, 1993; p. 45.</ref> Patents for detection of icebergs In April 1912, soon after the loss of the ship Titanic, Richardson registered a patent for iceberg detection using acoustic echolocation in air. A month later he registered a similar patent for acoustic echolocation in water, anticipating the invention of sonar by Paul Langevin and Robert Boyle 6 years later. In popular culture A fictional version of Richardson, named Wallace Ryman, plays a pivotal role in Giles Foden's novel Turbulence. Richardson is mentioned in John Brunner's work, Stand on Zanzibar where Statistics of Deadly Quarrels is used as an argument that wars are inevitable. Richardson's work is also mentioned in Poul Anderson's speculative fiction novelette, Kings Who Die. Richardson is mentioned in Charlie Kaufman's 2020 novel Antkind. Richardson's famous quote, "Big whirls have little whirls that feed on their velocity; little whirls have lesser whirls & so on to viscosity" is mentioned in the song "Dots & Lines" written and performed by lyricist/rapper Lupe Fiasco. Personal life In 1909 he married Dorothy Garnett (1885–1956), daughter of the mathematician and physicist William Garnett. They were unable to have children due to an incompatibility of blood types, but they adopted two sons and a daughter between 1920 and 1927. Richardson's nephew Ralph Richardson became a noted actor. His great-nephew (through his wife Dorothy's eldest brother, (James Clerk) Maxwell Garnett, C.B.E.), Julian Hunt, went on to become a meteorologist and director general and chief executive of the British Meteorological Office from 1992 to 1997. A great-niece – of the same line of descent – is the former politician Virginia Bottomley, now Baroness Bottomley. Legacy Since 1997, the Lewis Fry Richardson Medal has been awarded by the European Geosciences Union for "exceptional contributions to nonlinear geophysics in general" (by EGS until 2003 and by EGU since 2004). Winners have been: 2020: Valerio Lucarini 2019: Shaun Lovejoy 2018: Timothy N. Palmer 2017: Edward Ott 2016: Peter L. Read 2015: Daniel Schertzer 2014: Olivier Talagrand 2013: Jürgen Kurths 2012: Harry Swinney 2011: Catherine Nicolis 2010: Klaus Fraedrich 2009: Stéphan Fauve 2008: Akiva Yaglom 2007: Ulrich Schumann 2006: Roberto Benzi 2005: Henk A. Dijkstra 2004: Michael Ghil 2003: Uriel Frisch 2002: 2001: Julian Hunt 2000: Benoit Mandelbrot 1999: Raymond Hide 1998: Vladimir Keilis-Borok Since 1959, there has been a Peace Studies centre at Lancaster University named the Richardson Institute which carries out interdisciplinary research on peace and conflict in the spirit of Lewis Fry Richardson. See also Anomalous diffusion Arms race Coastline paradox Energy cascade War cycles Magnetic helicity Richardson extrapolation Richardson number Modified Richardson iteration Richards equation Multiscale turbulence Takebe Kenko Frederick W. Lanchester List of peace activists Notes References Wilkinson, David. Deadly Quarrels: Lewis F. Richardson and the Statistical Study of War (University of California Press, 2018) online review 320pp P.A. Davidson, Y. Kaneda, K. Moffatt, and K.R. Sreenivasan (eds, 2011). A Voyage Through Turbulence, chapter 5, pp 187–208, Cambridge University Press 544pp "A Quaker mathematician" (Ch 8) and "Richardson on war" (Ch 9) 290pp Richardson, L.F. (1939). "Generalized foreign politics". The British Journal of Psychology, monograph supplement No. 23. Richardson, L.F. (1960). Statistics of deadly quarrels. Pacific Grove, CA: Boxwood Press. 1030pp; Volume 2: Quantitative psychology and studies of conflict. , 778pp 353pp Angeletti Ferdinando (2021) Storicismo matematico e pacifismo scientifico: due esempi di determinismo storico della metà del XX secolo in Iconografie europee'' di Walter Montanari e Shirin Zakeri (a cura di), Roma, Nuova Cultura ISBN 978-8-833-65368-6; External links 1881 births 1953 deaths 20th-century mathematicians Academics of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology Academics of Aberystwyth University Alumni of King's College, Cambridge People educated at Bootham School English cartographers British conscientious objectors English mathematicians English meteorologists English physicists English psychologists English Quakers Fellows of the Royal Society Lewis People associated with the University of the West of Scotland People from Newcastle upon Tyne English Christian pacifists Fluid dynamicists People associated with the Friends' Ambulance Unit 20th-century psychologists Alumni of Armstrong College, Durham 20th-century English businesspeople

C_de38cd49a72248c2ae5e822e8961c1d3_0

Was it ever recognized later on?

Was Lewis Fry Richardson's research ever recognized later on?

Lewis Fry Richardson

Richardson decided to search for a relation between the probability of two countries going to war and the length of their common border. However, while collecting data, he found that there was considerable variation in the various published lengths of international borders. For example, that between Spain and Portugal was variously quoted as 987 or 1214 km, and that between the Netherlands and Belgium as 380 or 449 km. The reason for these inconsistencies is the "coastline paradox". Suppose the coast of Britain is measured using a 200 km ruler, specifying that both ends of the ruler must touch the coast. Now cut the ruler in half and repeat the measurement, then repeat: Notice that the smaller the ruler, the longer the resulting coastline. It might be supposed that these values would converge to a finite number representing the true length of the coastline. However, Richardson demonstrated that this is not the case: the measured length of coastlines, and other natural features, increases without limit as the unit of measurement is made smaller. This is known nowadays as the Richardson effect. At the time, Richardson's research was ignored by the scientific community. Today, it is considered an element of the beginning of the modern study of fractals. Richardson's research was quoted by mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot in his 1967 paper How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Richardson identified a value (between 1 and 2) that would describe the changes (with increasing measurement detail) in observed complexity for a particular coastline; this value served as a model for the concept of fractal dimension. CANNOTANSWER

Today, it is considered an element of the beginning of the modern study of fractals.

Lewis Fry Richardson, FRS (11 October 1881 – 30 September 1953) was an English mathematician, physicist, meteorologist, psychologist and pacifist who pioneered modern mathematical techniques of weather forecasting, and the application of similar techniques to studying the causes of wars and how to prevent them. He is also noted for his pioneering work concerning fractals and a method for solving a system of linear equations known as modified Richardson iteration. Early life Lewis Fry Richardson was the youngest of seven children born to Catherine Fry (1838–1919) and David Richardson (1835–1913). They were a prosperous Quaker family, David Richardson operating a successful tanning and leather-manufacturing business. At age 12 he was sent to a Quaker boarding school, Bootham School in York, where he received an education in science, which stimulated an active interest in natural history. In 1898 he went on to Durham College of Science (a college of Durham University) where he took courses in mathematical physics, chemistry, botany, and zoology. He proceeded in 1900 to King's College, Cambridge, where he was taught physics in the natural sciences tripos by (among others) J. J. Thomson and graduated with a first-class degree in 1903. At age 47 he received a doctorate in mathematical psychology from the University of London. Career Richardson's working life represented his eclectic interests: National Physical Laboratory (1903–1904). University College Aberystwyth (1905–1906). Chemist, National Peat Industries (1906–1907). National Physical Laboratory (1907–1909). Manager of the physical and chemical laboratory, Sunbeam Lamp Company (1909–1912). Manchester College of Technology (1912–1913). Meteorological Office – as superintendent of Eskdalemuir Observatory (1913–1916). Friends Ambulance Unit in France (1916–1919). Meteorological Office at Benson, Oxfordshire (1919–1920). Head of the Physics Department at Westminster Training College (1920–1929). Principal, Paisley Technical College, now part of the University of the West of Scotland (1929–1940). In 1926, he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society Pacifism Richardson's Quaker beliefs entailed an ardent pacifism that exempted him from military service during World War I as a conscientious objector, though this subsequently disqualified him from having any academic post. Richardson worked from 1916 to 1919 for the Friends' Ambulance Unit attached to the 16th French Infantry Division. After the war, he rejoined the Meteorological Office but was compelled to resign on grounds of conscience when it was amalgamated into the Air Ministry in 1920. He subsequently pursued a career on the fringes of the academic world before retiring in 1940 to research his own ideas. His pacifism had direct consequences on his research interests. According to Thomas Körner, the discovery that his meteorological work was of value to chemical weapons designers caused him to abandon all his efforts in this field, and destroy findings that he had yet to publish. Weather forecasting Richardson's interest in meteorology led him to propose a scheme for weather forecasting by solution of differential equations, the method used nowadays, though when he published Weather Prediction by Numerical Process in 1922, suitable fast computing was unavailable. He described his ideas thus (his "computers" are human beings): "After so much hard reasoning, may one play with a fantasy? Imagine a large hall like a theatre, except that the circles and galleries go right round through the space usually occupied by the stage. The walls of this chamber are painted to form a map of the globe. The ceiling represents the north polar regions, England is in the gallery, the tropics in the upper circle, Australia on the dress circle and the Antarctic in the pit. A myriad computers are at work upon the weather of the part of the map where each sits, but each computer attends only to one equation or part of an equation. The work of each region is coordinated by an official of higher rank. Numerous little "night signs" display the instantaneous values so that neighbouring computers can read them. Each number is thus displayed in three adjacent zones so as to maintain communication to the North and South on the map. From the floor of the pit a tall pillar rises to half the height of the hall. It carries a large pulpit on its top. In this sits the man in charge of the whole theatre; he is surrounded by several assistants and messengers. One of his duties is to maintain a uniform speed of progress in all parts of the globe. In this respect he is like the conductor of an orchestra in which the instruments are slide-rules and calculating machines. But instead of waving a baton he turns a beam of rosy light upon any region that is running ahead of the rest, and a beam of blue light upon those who are behindhand. Four senior clerks in the central pulpit are collecting the future weather as fast as it is being computed, and despatching it by pneumatic carrier to a quiet room. There it will be coded and telephoned to the radio transmitting station. Messengers carry piles of used computing forms down to a storehouse in the cellar. In a neighbouring building there is a research department, where they invent improvements. But there is much experimenting on a small scale before any change is made in the complex routine of the computing theatre. In a basement an enthusiast is observing eddies in the liquid lining of a huge spinning bowl, but so far the arithmetic proves the better way. In another building are all the usual financial, correspondence and administrative offices. Outside are playing fields, houses, mountains and lakes, for it was thought that those who compute the weather should breathe of it freely." (Richardson 1922) (The word "computers" is used here in its original sense – people who did computations, not machines. "Calculator" also referred to people at this time.) When news of the first weather forecast by the first modern computer, ENIAC, was received by Richardson in 1950, he responded that the results were an "enormous scientific advance." The first calculations for a 24-hour forecast took ENIAC nearly 24 hours to produce. He was also interested in atmospheric turbulence and performed many terrestrial experiments. The Richardson number, a dimensionless parameter of the theory of turbulence is named for him. He famously summarised turbulence in rhyming verse in Weather Prediction by Numerical Process (p 66): Big whirls have little whirls that feed on their velocity, and little whirls have lesser whirls and so on to viscosity. [A play on Siphonaptera, Augustus De Morgan's rewording of Jonathan Swift, "Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum." (A Budget of Paradoxes, 1915)]. Richardson's attempt at numerical forecast One of Richardson's most celebrated achievements is his retroactive attempt to forecast the weather during a single day—20 May 1910—by direct computation. At the time, meteorologists performed forecasts principally by looking for similar weather patterns from records, and then extrapolating forward. Richardson attempted to use a mathematical model of the principal features of the atmosphere, and use data taken at a specific time (7 AM) to calculate the weather six hours later ab initio. As meteorologist Peter Lynch makes clear, Richardson's forecast failed dramatically, predicting a huge rise in pressure over six hours when the pressure actually was more or less static. However, detailed analysis by Lynch has shown that the cause was a failure to apply smoothing techniques to the data, which rule out unphysical surges in pressure. When these are applied, Richardson's forecast is revealed to be essentially accurate—a remarkable achievement considering the calculations were done by hand, and while Richardson was serving with the Quaker ambulance unit in northern France. Mathematical analysis of war Richardson also applied his mathematical skills in the service of his pacifist principles, in particular in understanding the basis of international conflict. For this reason, he is now considered the initiator, or co-initiator (with Quincy Wright and Pitirim Sorokin as well as others such as Kenneth Boulding, Anatol Rapaport and Adam Curle), of the scientific analysis of conflict—an interdisciplinary topic of quantitative and mathematical social science dedicated to systematic investigation of the causes of war and conditions of peace. As he had done with weather, he analysed war using mainly differential equations and probability theory. Considering the armament of two nations, Richardson posited an idealised system of equations whereby the rate of a nation's armament build-up is directly proportional to the amount of arms its rival has and also to the grievances felt toward the rival, and negatively proportional to the amount of arms it already has itself. Solution of this system of equations allows insightful conclusions to be made regarding the nature, and the stability or instability, of various hypothetical conditions which might obtain between nations. He also originated the theory that the propensity for war between two nations was a function of the length of their common border. And in Arms and Insecurity (1949), and Statistics of Deadly Quarrels (1960), he sought to analyse the causes of war statistically. Factors he assessed included economics, language, and religion. In the preface of the latter, he wrote: "There is in the world a great deal of brilliant, witty political discussion which leads to no settled convictions. My aim has been different: namely to examine a few notions by quantitative techniques in the hope of reaching a reliable answer." In Statistics of Deadly Quarrels Richardson presented data on virtually every war from 1815 to 1945. As a result, he hypothesized a base 10 logarithmic scale for conflicts. In other words, there are many more small fights, in which only a few people die, than large ones that kill many. While no conflict's size can be predicted beforehand—indeed, it is impossible to give an upper limit to the series—overall they do form a Poisson distribution. On a smaller scale he showed the same pattern for gang murders in Chicago and Shanghai. Others have noted that similar statistical patterns occur frequently, whether planned (lotteries, with many more small payoffs than large wins), or by natural organisation (there are more small towns with grocery stores than big cities with superstores). Research on the length of coastlines and borders Richardson decided to search for a relation between the probability of two countries going to war and the length of their common border. However, while collecting data, he found that there was considerable variation in the various published lengths of international borders. For example, that between Spain and Portugal was variously quoted as 987 or 1214 km, and that between the Netherlands and Belgium as 380 or 449 km. The reason for these inconsistencies is the "coastline paradox". Suppose the coast of Britain is measured using a 200 km ruler, specifying that both ends of the ruler must touch the coast. Now cut the ruler in half and repeat the measurement, then repeat: Notice that the smaller the ruler, the longer the resulting coastline. It might be supposed that these values would converge to a finite number representing the true length of the coastline. However, Richardson demonstrated that this is not the case: the measured length of coastlines, and other natural features, increases without limit as the unit of measurement is made smaller. This is known nowadays as the Richardson effect. At the time, Richardson's research was ignored by the scientific community. Today, it is considered an element of the beginning of the modern study of fractals. Richardson's research was quoted by mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot in his 1967 paper How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Richardson identified a value (between 1 and 2) that would describe the changes (with increasing measurement detail) in observed complexity for a particular coastline; this value served as a model for the concept of fractal dimension.<ref>P. G. Drazin, "Fractals"; Collected Papers of Lewis Fry Richardson, Volume 1; Cambridge University Press, 1993; p. 45.</ref> Patents for detection of icebergs In April 1912, soon after the loss of the ship Titanic, Richardson registered a patent for iceberg detection using acoustic echolocation in air. A month later he registered a similar patent for acoustic echolocation in water, anticipating the invention of sonar by Paul Langevin and Robert Boyle 6 years later. In popular culture A fictional version of Richardson, named Wallace Ryman, plays a pivotal role in Giles Foden's novel Turbulence. Richardson is mentioned in John Brunner's work, Stand on Zanzibar where Statistics of Deadly Quarrels is used as an argument that wars are inevitable. Richardson's work is also mentioned in Poul Anderson's speculative fiction novelette, Kings Who Die. Richardson is mentioned in Charlie Kaufman's 2020 novel Antkind. Richardson's famous quote, "Big whirls have little whirls that feed on their velocity; little whirls have lesser whirls & so on to viscosity" is mentioned in the song "Dots & Lines" written and performed by lyricist/rapper Lupe Fiasco. Personal life In 1909 he married Dorothy Garnett (1885–1956), daughter of the mathematician and physicist William Garnett. They were unable to have children due to an incompatibility of blood types, but they adopted two sons and a daughter between 1920 and 1927. Richardson's nephew Ralph Richardson became a noted actor. His great-nephew (through his wife Dorothy's eldest brother, (James Clerk) Maxwell Garnett, C.B.E.), Julian Hunt, went on to become a meteorologist and director general and chief executive of the British Meteorological Office from 1992 to 1997. A great-niece – of the same line of descent – is the former politician Virginia Bottomley, now Baroness Bottomley. Legacy Since 1997, the Lewis Fry Richardson Medal has been awarded by the European Geosciences Union for "exceptional contributions to nonlinear geophysics in general" (by EGS until 2003 and by EGU since 2004). Winners have been: 2020: Valerio Lucarini 2019: Shaun Lovejoy 2018: Timothy N. Palmer 2017: Edward Ott 2016: Peter L. Read 2015: Daniel Schertzer 2014: Olivier Talagrand 2013: Jürgen Kurths 2012: Harry Swinney 2011: Catherine Nicolis 2010: Klaus Fraedrich 2009: Stéphan Fauve 2008: Akiva Yaglom 2007: Ulrich Schumann 2006: Roberto Benzi 2005: Henk A. Dijkstra 2004: Michael Ghil 2003: Uriel Frisch 2002: 2001: Julian Hunt 2000: Benoit Mandelbrot 1999: Raymond Hide 1998: Vladimir Keilis-Borok Since 1959, there has been a Peace Studies centre at Lancaster University named the Richardson Institute which carries out interdisciplinary research on peace and conflict in the spirit of Lewis Fry Richardson. See also Anomalous diffusion Arms race Coastline paradox Energy cascade War cycles Magnetic helicity Richardson extrapolation Richardson number Modified Richardson iteration Richards equation Multiscale turbulence Takebe Kenko Frederick W. Lanchester List of peace activists Notes References Wilkinson, David. Deadly Quarrels: Lewis F. Richardson and the Statistical Study of War (University of California Press, 2018) online review 320pp P.A. Davidson, Y. Kaneda, K. Moffatt, and K.R. Sreenivasan (eds, 2011). A Voyage Through Turbulence, chapter 5, pp 187–208, Cambridge University Press 544pp "A Quaker mathematician" (Ch 8) and "Richardson on war" (Ch 9) 290pp Richardson, L.F. (1939). "Generalized foreign politics". The British Journal of Psychology, monograph supplement No. 23. Richardson, L.F. (1960). Statistics of deadly quarrels. Pacific Grove, CA: Boxwood Press. 1030pp; Volume 2: Quantitative psychology and studies of conflict. , 778pp 353pp Angeletti Ferdinando (2021) Storicismo matematico e pacifismo scientifico: due esempi di determinismo storico della metà del XX secolo in Iconografie europee'' di Walter Montanari e Shirin Zakeri (a cura di), Roma, Nuova Cultura ISBN 978-8-833-65368-6; External links 1881 births 1953 deaths 20th-century mathematicians Academics of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology Academics of Aberystwyth University Alumni of King's College, Cambridge People educated at Bootham School English cartographers British conscientious objectors English mathematicians English meteorologists English physicists English psychologists English Quakers Fellows of the Royal Society Lewis People associated with the University of the West of Scotland People from Newcastle upon Tyne English Christian pacifists Fluid dynamicists People associated with the Friends' Ambulance Unit 20th-century psychologists Alumni of Armstrong College, Durham 20th-century English businesspeople

C_de38cd49a72248c2ae5e822e8961c1d3_0

Later on did he win any awards?

Later on did Lewis Fry Richardson win any awards?

Lewis Fry Richardson

Richardson decided to search for a relation between the probability of two countries going to war and the length of their common border. However, while collecting data, he found that there was considerable variation in the various published lengths of international borders. For example, that between Spain and Portugal was variously quoted as 987 or 1214 km, and that between the Netherlands and Belgium as 380 or 449 km. The reason for these inconsistencies is the "coastline paradox". Suppose the coast of Britain is measured using a 200 km ruler, specifying that both ends of the ruler must touch the coast. Now cut the ruler in half and repeat the measurement, then repeat: Notice that the smaller the ruler, the longer the resulting coastline. It might be supposed that these values would converge to a finite number representing the true length of the coastline. However, Richardson demonstrated that this is not the case: the measured length of coastlines, and other natural features, increases without limit as the unit of measurement is made smaller. This is known nowadays as the Richardson effect. At the time, Richardson's research was ignored by the scientific community. Today, it is considered an element of the beginning of the modern study of fractals. Richardson's research was quoted by mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot in his 1967 paper How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Richardson identified a value (between 1 and 2) that would describe the changes (with increasing measurement detail) in observed complexity for a particular coastline; this value served as a model for the concept of fractal dimension. CANNOTANSWER

CANNOTANSWER

Lewis Fry Richardson, FRS (11 October 1881 – 30 September 1953) was an English mathematician, physicist, meteorologist, psychologist and pacifist who pioneered modern mathematical techniques of weather forecasting, and the application of similar techniques to studying the causes of wars and how to prevent them. He is also noted for his pioneering work concerning fractals and a method for solving a system of linear equations known as modified Richardson iteration. Early life Lewis Fry Richardson was the youngest of seven children born to Catherine Fry (1838–1919) and David Richardson (1835–1913). They were a prosperous Quaker family, David Richardson operating a successful tanning and leather-manufacturing business. At age 12 he was sent to a Quaker boarding school, Bootham School in York, where he received an education in science, which stimulated an active interest in natural history. In 1898 he went on to Durham College of Science (a college of Durham University) where he took courses in mathematical physics, chemistry, botany, and zoology. He proceeded in 1900 to King's College, Cambridge, where he was taught physics in the natural sciences tripos by (among others) J. J. Thomson and graduated with a first-class degree in 1903. At age 47 he received a doctorate in mathematical psychology from the University of London. Career Richardson's working life represented his eclectic interests: National Physical Laboratory (1903–1904). University College Aberystwyth (1905–1906). Chemist, National Peat Industries (1906–1907). National Physical Laboratory (1907–1909). Manager of the physical and chemical laboratory, Sunbeam Lamp Company (1909–1912). Manchester College of Technology (1912–1913). Meteorological Office – as superintendent of Eskdalemuir Observatory (1913–1916). Friends Ambulance Unit in France (1916–1919). Meteorological Office at Benson, Oxfordshire (1919–1920). Head of the Physics Department at Westminster Training College (1920–1929). Principal, Paisley Technical College, now part of the University of the West of Scotland (1929–1940). In 1926, he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society Pacifism Richardson's Quaker beliefs entailed an ardent pacifism that exempted him from military service during World War I as a conscientious objector, though this subsequently disqualified him from having any academic post. Richardson worked from 1916 to 1919 for the Friends' Ambulance Unit attached to the 16th French Infantry Division. After the war, he rejoined the Meteorological Office but was compelled to resign on grounds of conscience when it was amalgamated into the Air Ministry in 1920. He subsequently pursued a career on the fringes of the academic world before retiring in 1940 to research his own ideas. His pacifism had direct consequences on his research interests. According to Thomas Körner, the discovery that his meteorological work was of value to chemical weapons designers caused him to abandon all his efforts in this field, and destroy findings that he had yet to publish. Weather forecasting Richardson's interest in meteorology led him to propose a scheme for weather forecasting by solution of differential equations, the method used nowadays, though when he published Weather Prediction by Numerical Process in 1922, suitable fast computing was unavailable. He described his ideas thus (his "computers" are human beings): "After so much hard reasoning, may one play with a fantasy? Imagine a large hall like a theatre, except that the circles and galleries go right round through the space usually occupied by the stage. The walls of this chamber are painted to form a map of the globe. The ceiling represents the north polar regions, England is in the gallery, the tropics in the upper circle, Australia on the dress circle and the Antarctic in the pit. A myriad computers are at work upon the weather of the part of the map where each sits, but each computer attends only to one equation or part of an equation. The work of each region is coordinated by an official of higher rank. Numerous little "night signs" display the instantaneous values so that neighbouring computers can read them. Each number is thus displayed in three adjacent zones so as to maintain communication to the North and South on the map. From the floor of the pit a tall pillar rises to half the height of the hall. It carries a large pulpit on its top. In this sits the man in charge of the whole theatre; he is surrounded by several assistants and messengers. One of his duties is to maintain a uniform speed of progress in all parts of the globe. In this respect he is like the conductor of an orchestra in which the instruments are slide-rules and calculating machines. But instead of waving a baton he turns a beam of rosy light upon any region that is running ahead of the rest, and a beam of blue light upon those who are behindhand. Four senior clerks in the central pulpit are collecting the future weather as fast as it is being computed, and despatching it by pneumatic carrier to a quiet room. There it will be coded and telephoned to the radio transmitting station. Messengers carry piles of used computing forms down to a storehouse in the cellar. In a neighbouring building there is a research department, where they invent improvements. But there is much experimenting on a small scale before any change is made in the complex routine of the computing theatre. In a basement an enthusiast is observing eddies in the liquid lining of a huge spinning bowl, but so far the arithmetic proves the better way. In another building are all the usual financial, correspondence and administrative offices. Outside are playing fields, houses, mountains and lakes, for it was thought that those who compute the weather should breathe of it freely." (Richardson 1922) (The word "computers" is used here in its original sense – people who did computations, not machines. "Calculator" also referred to people at this time.) When news of the first weather forecast by the first modern computer, ENIAC, was received by Richardson in 1950, he responded that the results were an "enormous scientific advance." The first calculations for a 24-hour forecast took ENIAC nearly 24 hours to produce. He was also interested in atmospheric turbulence and performed many terrestrial experiments. The Richardson number, a dimensionless parameter of the theory of turbulence is named for him. He famously summarised turbulence in rhyming verse in Weather Prediction by Numerical Process (p 66): Big whirls have little whirls that feed on their velocity, and little whirls have lesser whirls and so on to viscosity. [A play on Siphonaptera, Augustus De Morgan's rewording of Jonathan Swift, "Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum." (A Budget of Paradoxes, 1915)]. Richardson's attempt at numerical forecast One of Richardson's most celebrated achievements is his retroactive attempt to forecast the weather during a single day—20 May 1910—by direct computation. At the time, meteorologists performed forecasts principally by looking for similar weather patterns from records, and then extrapolating forward. Richardson attempted to use a mathematical model of the principal features of the atmosphere, and use data taken at a specific time (7 AM) to calculate the weather six hours later ab initio. As meteorologist Peter Lynch makes clear, Richardson's forecast failed dramatically, predicting a huge rise in pressure over six hours when the pressure actually was more or less static. However, detailed analysis by Lynch has shown that the cause was a failure to apply smoothing techniques to the data, which rule out unphysical surges in pressure. When these are applied, Richardson's forecast is revealed to be essentially accurate—a remarkable achievement considering the calculations were done by hand, and while Richardson was serving with the Quaker ambulance unit in northern France. Mathematical analysis of war Richardson also applied his mathematical skills in the service of his pacifist principles, in particular in understanding the basis of international conflict. For this reason, he is now considered the initiator, or co-initiator (with Quincy Wright and Pitirim Sorokin as well as others such as Kenneth Boulding, Anatol Rapaport and Adam Curle), of the scientific analysis of conflict—an interdisciplinary topic of quantitative and mathematical social science dedicated to systematic investigation of the causes of war and conditions of peace. As he had done with weather, he analysed war using mainly differential equations and probability theory. Considering the armament of two nations, Richardson posited an idealised system of equations whereby the rate of a nation's armament build-up is directly proportional to the amount of arms its rival has and also to the grievances felt toward the rival, and negatively proportional to the amount of arms it already has itself. Solution of this system of equations allows insightful conclusions to be made regarding the nature, and the stability or instability, of various hypothetical conditions which might obtain between nations. He also originated the theory that the propensity for war between two nations was a function of the length of their common border. And in Arms and Insecurity (1949), and Statistics of Deadly Quarrels (1960), he sought to analyse the causes of war statistically. Factors he assessed included economics, language, and religion. In the preface of the latter, he wrote: "There is in the world a great deal of brilliant, witty political discussion which leads to no settled convictions. My aim has been different: namely to examine a few notions by quantitative techniques in the hope of reaching a reliable answer." In Statistics of Deadly Quarrels Richardson presented data on virtually every war from 1815 to 1945. As a result, he hypothesized a base 10 logarithmic scale for conflicts. In other words, there are many more small fights, in which only a few people die, than large ones that kill many. While no conflict's size can be predicted beforehand—indeed, it is impossible to give an upper limit to the series—overall they do form a Poisson distribution. On a smaller scale he showed the same pattern for gang murders in Chicago and Shanghai. Others have noted that similar statistical patterns occur frequently, whether planned (lotteries, with many more small payoffs than large wins), or by natural organisation (there are more small towns with grocery stores than big cities with superstores). Research on the length of coastlines and borders Richardson decided to search for a relation between the probability of two countries going to war and the length of their common border. However, while collecting data, he found that there was considerable variation in the various published lengths of international borders. For example, that between Spain and Portugal was variously quoted as 987 or 1214 km, and that between the Netherlands and Belgium as 380 or 449 km. The reason for these inconsistencies is the "coastline paradox". Suppose the coast of Britain is measured using a 200 km ruler, specifying that both ends of the ruler must touch the coast. Now cut the ruler in half and repeat the measurement, then repeat: Notice that the smaller the ruler, the longer the resulting coastline. It might be supposed that these values would converge to a finite number representing the true length of the coastline. However, Richardson demonstrated that this is not the case: the measured length of coastlines, and other natural features, increases without limit as the unit of measurement is made smaller. This is known nowadays as the Richardson effect. At the time, Richardson's research was ignored by the scientific community. Today, it is considered an element of the beginning of the modern study of fractals. Richardson's research was quoted by mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot in his 1967 paper How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Richardson identified a value (between 1 and 2) that would describe the changes (with increasing measurement detail) in observed complexity for a particular coastline; this value served as a model for the concept of fractal dimension.<ref>P. G. Drazin, "Fractals"; Collected Papers of Lewis Fry Richardson, Volume 1; Cambridge University Press, 1993; p. 45.</ref> Patents for detection of icebergs In April 1912, soon after the loss of the ship Titanic, Richardson registered a patent for iceberg detection using acoustic echolocation in air. A month later he registered a similar patent for acoustic echolocation in water, anticipating the invention of sonar by Paul Langevin and Robert Boyle 6 years later. In popular culture A fictional version of Richardson, named Wallace Ryman, plays a pivotal role in Giles Foden's novel Turbulence. Richardson is mentioned in John Brunner's work, Stand on Zanzibar where Statistics of Deadly Quarrels is used as an argument that wars are inevitable. Richardson's work is also mentioned in Poul Anderson's speculative fiction novelette, Kings Who Die. Richardson is mentioned in Charlie Kaufman's 2020 novel Antkind. Richardson's famous quote, "Big whirls have little whirls that feed on their velocity; little whirls have lesser whirls & so on to viscosity" is mentioned in the song "Dots & Lines" written and performed by lyricist/rapper Lupe Fiasco. Personal life In 1909 he married Dorothy Garnett (1885–1956), daughter of the mathematician and physicist William Garnett. They were unable to have children due to an incompatibility of blood types, but they adopted two sons and a daughter between 1920 and 1927. Richardson's nephew Ralph Richardson became a noted actor. His great-nephew (through his wife Dorothy's eldest brother, (James Clerk) Maxwell Garnett, C.B.E.), Julian Hunt, went on to become a meteorologist and director general and chief executive of the British Meteorological Office from 1992 to 1997. A great-niece – of the same line of descent – is the former politician Virginia Bottomley, now Baroness Bottomley. Legacy Since 1997, the Lewis Fry Richardson Medal has been awarded by the European Geosciences Union for "exceptional contributions to nonlinear geophysics in general" (by EGS until 2003 and by EGU since 2004). Winners have been: 2020: Valerio Lucarini 2019: Shaun Lovejoy 2018: Timothy N. Palmer 2017: Edward Ott 2016: Peter L. Read 2015: Daniel Schertzer 2014: Olivier Talagrand 2013: Jürgen Kurths 2012: Harry Swinney 2011: Catherine Nicolis 2010: Klaus Fraedrich 2009: Stéphan Fauve 2008: Akiva Yaglom 2007: Ulrich Schumann 2006: Roberto Benzi 2005: Henk A. Dijkstra 2004: Michael Ghil 2003: Uriel Frisch 2002: 2001: Julian Hunt 2000: Benoit Mandelbrot 1999: Raymond Hide 1998: Vladimir Keilis-Borok Since 1959, there has been a Peace Studies centre at Lancaster University named the Richardson Institute which carries out interdisciplinary research on peace and conflict in the spirit of Lewis Fry Richardson. See also Anomalous diffusion Arms race Coastline paradox Energy cascade War cycles Magnetic helicity Richardson extrapolation Richardson number Modified Richardson iteration Richards equation Multiscale turbulence Takebe Kenko Frederick W. Lanchester List of peace activists Notes References Wilkinson, David. Deadly Quarrels: Lewis F. Richardson and the Statistical Study of War (University of California Press, 2018) online review 320pp P.A. Davidson, Y. Kaneda, K. Moffatt, and K.R. Sreenivasan (eds, 2011). A Voyage Through Turbulence, chapter 5, pp 187–208, Cambridge University Press 544pp "A Quaker mathematician" (Ch 8) and "Richardson on war" (Ch 9) 290pp Richardson, L.F. (1939). "Generalized foreign politics". The British Journal of Psychology, monograph supplement No. 23. Richardson, L.F. (1960). Statistics of deadly quarrels. Pacific Grove, CA: Boxwood Press. 1030pp; Volume 2: Quantitative psychology and studies of conflict. , 778pp 353pp Angeletti Ferdinando (2021) Storicismo matematico e pacifismo scientifico: due esempi di determinismo storico della metà del XX secolo in Iconografie europee'' di Walter Montanari e Shirin Zakeri (a cura di), Roma, Nuova Cultura ISBN 978-8-833-65368-6; External links 1881 births 1953 deaths 20th-century mathematicians Academics of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology Academics of Aberystwyth University Alumni of King's College, Cambridge People educated at Bootham School English cartographers British conscientious objectors English mathematicians English meteorologists English physicists English psychologists English Quakers Fellows of the Royal Society Lewis People associated with the University of the West of Scotland People from Newcastle upon Tyne English Christian pacifists Fluid dynamicists People associated with the Friends' Ambulance Unit 20th-century psychologists Alumni of Armstrong College, Durham 20th-century English businesspeople

C_4d673f03f1d64a48b4323c3fe9d3cda7_1

where did he study?

where did Israel Finkelstein study?

Israel Finkelstein

From 1976 to 1990 Finkelstein taught at the Department of Land of Israel Studies, Bar-Ilan University, beginning as a teaching assistant. He spent the academic year of 1983-84 in a research group led by Prof. Yigael Yadin in the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. In 1986-87 Finkelstein taught at the Department for Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago. In 1987 he was appointed an associate professor with tenure at Bar-Ilan University and in 1990 moved to the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations at Tel Aviv University. In 1992/93 Finkelstein spent a sabbatical year as a visiting scholar at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University. Since 1992, he has been a Full Professor at Tel Aviv University. He served as the chairperson of the Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Studies (1994-98) and as Director of The Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology (1996-2003). In 1998-99 Finkelstein was a visiting scholar in the Centre de Recherche d'Archeologie Orientale and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in the Sorbonne, Paris. Finkelstein delivered series of lectures on the history and archaeology of Ancient Israel at the Texas Christian University (2002), the University of Buenos Aires (2011), the College de France in Paris (2012) and the Methodist University of Sao Paulo (2015). He is scheduled to deliver similar lectures at the Tokyo Christian University (2017) and the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome (2017). Finkelstein has read over 100 papers in international conferences and given numerous talks in universities around the globe. Finkelstein has been the Editor of Tel Aviv, the journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, since 2008 and Executive Editor of the Monograph Series by the Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, since 2005. He is a member of editorial boards, including the Palestine Exploration Journal and the Archaeology and Biblical Studies series, the Society of Biblical Literature. CANNOTANSWER

From 1976 to 1990 Finkelstein taught at the Department of Land of Israel Studies, Bar-Ilan University, beginning as a teaching assistant.

Israel Finkelstein (, born March 29, 1949) is an Israeli archaeologist, professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University. Finkelstein is active in the archaeology of the Levant and is an applicant of archaeological data in reconstructing biblical history. He is also known for applying the exact and life sciences in archaeological and historical reconstruction. Finkelstein is the current excavator of Megiddo, a key site for the study of the Bronze and Iron Ages in the Levant. Finkelstein is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and an associé étranger of the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Finkelstein has received several noteworthy academic and writing awards. In 2005, he won the Dan David Prize for his revision of the history of Israel in the 10th and 9th centuries BCE. In 2009 he was named chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture, and in 2010, received a doctorate honoris causa from the University of Lausanne. He is a member of the selection committee of the Shanghai Archaeology Forum, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Among Finkelstein's books are The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts (2001) and David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition (2006), both written with Neil Asher Silberman. Also he wrote the textbooks on the emergence of Ancient Israel, titled The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement (1988); on the archaeology and history of the arid zones of the Levant, titled Living on the Fringe (1995); and on the Northern Kingdom of Israel, titled The Forgotten Kingdom (2013). Background Family Israel Finkelstein was born to an Ashkenazi Jewish family in Tel Aviv, Israel, on March 29, 1949. His parents were Zvi (Grisha) Finkelstein (born 1908) and Miriam Finkelstein (maiden name Ellenhorn, born 1910). His great grandfather on his mother's side, Shlomo Ellenhorn, came to Palestine from Grodno (today in Belarus) in the 1850s and settled in Hebron. He was one of the first physicians in the Bikur Cholim Hospital in Jerusalem, and is listed among the group of people who purchased the land in 1878 in order to establish Petah Tikva – the first modern Jewish settlement in Palestine outside the four holy cities. Finkelstein's grandfather, Israel Jacob Ellenhorn, was the first pharmacist in Petah Tikva. Finkelstein’s father was born in Melitopol (Ukraine). He came to Palestine with his family in 1920. He was in the orange-growing business and was active in the sports organisations of Israel. He served as vice chairman of the Israel Football Association, chairman of Maccabi Israel and was a member of the Israel Olympic Committee. Finkelstein is married to Joelle (maiden name Cohen). They are the parents of two daughters – Adar (born 1992) and Sarai (born 1996). Education Israel Finkelstein attended the PICA elementary school (1956–1963) and Ahad Ha'am High School (1963–1967), both in Petah Tikva. He then served in the Israel Defense Forces (1967–1970). He studied archaeology and Near Eastern civilizations, and geography at Tel Aviv University, receiving his BA in 1974. While there, Finkelstein was a student of Prof. Yohanan Aharoni. He continued as a research student under the supervision of Prof. Moshe Kochavi, receiving his MA in 1978 (thesis on Rural Settlement in the Yarkon Basin in the Iron Age and Persian-Hellenistic Periods). He graduated as a PhD in 1983 with a thesis titled "The Izbet Sartah Excavations and the Israelite Settlement in the Hill Country". Academic career From 1976 to 1990, Finkelstein taught at the Department of Land of Israel Studies, Bar-Ilan University, beginning as a teaching assistant. He spent the academic year of 1983–84 in a research group led by Prof. Yigael Yadin in the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. In 1986 and 1987, Finkelstein taught at the Department for Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago. In 1987 he was appointed an associate professor with tenure at Bar-Ilan University and in 1990 moved to the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations at Tel Aviv University. In 1992/93 Finkelstein spent a sabbatical year as a visiting scholar at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University. Since 1992, he has been a Full Professor at Tel Aviv University. He served as the chairperson of the Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Studies (1994–98) and as Director of The Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology (1996–2003). In 1998–99 Finkelstein was a visiting scholar in the Centre de Recherche d’Archéologie Orientale and the École Pratique des Hautes Études in the Sorbonne, Paris. Finkelstein delivered series of lectures on the history and archaeology of Ancient Israel at the Texas Christian University (2002), the University of Buenos Aires (2011), the College de France in Paris (2012) and the Methodist University of São Paulo (2015), the Tokyo Christian University (2017), the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome (2017) and the University of Zurich (2018). Finkelstein has read over 100 papers in international conferences and given numerous talks in universities around the globe. Finkelstein has been the Editor of Tel Aviv, the journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, since 2008 and Executive Editor of the Monograph Series by the Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, since 2005. He is a member of editorial boards, including the Palestine Exploration Quarterly and the Archaeology and Biblical Studies series of the Society of Biblical Literature. Fieldwork Finkelstein was trained as a field archaeologist in the excavations of Tel Beer Sheva (1971, Director: Yohanan Aharoni) and Tel Aphek (1973–1978, Directors: Moshe Kochavi and Pirhiya Beck). Starting in 1976, he carried out his own fieldwork in a variety of sites and regions: Past excavations and surveys ‘Izbet Sartah, 1976–1978: Field Director (under Prof. Moshe Kochavi) of excavations at ‘Izbet Sartah, an Iron I-Iron IIA village-site near Rosh Ha‘ayin, east of Tel Aviv. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, Izbet Sartah: An Early Iron Age Site near Rosh Ha‘ayin, Israel, Oxford 1986 (BAR International Series 299). Southern Sinai, 1976–1978: Surveys of Byzantine monastic remains in southern Sinai. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, Byzantine Monastic Remains in Southern Sinai, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 39 (1985), pp. 39–75. Bene Beraq, 1977: Director of salvage excavations at the mound of ancient Bene Beraq near Tel Aviv. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, Soundings at Ancient Bene-Beraq, ‘Atiqot 10 (1990), pp. 29–40 (Hebrew). Tel Ira, 1980: Co-Director of the excavations of the Iron II site of Tel Ira in the Beer-sheba Valley (together with I. Beit-Arieh and B. Cresson). For the results see: I. Finkelstein and I. Beit-Arieh, Area E, in I. Beit-Arieh (ed.), Tel Ira: A Stronghold in the Biblical Negev (monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 15), Tel Aviv 1999, pp. 67–96. Shiloh, 1981–1984: Director of the excavations at biblical Shiloh in the highlands north of Jerusalem. The site features Middle Bronze, Late Bronze and Iron I remains. For the results see: I. Finkelstein (ed.), Shiloh: The Archaeology of a Biblical Site (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 10), Tel Aviv 1993. Southern Samaria Survey, 1981–1987: Director of the survey, ca. 1000 km2. in the highlands north of Jerusalem. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, Z. Lederman and S. Bunimovitz, Highlands of Many Cultures, The Southern Samaria Survey, The Sites (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 14). Tel Aviv Khirbet ed-Dawwara, 1985–86: Director, excavations at Khirbet ed-Dawwara, an Iron I-early Iron IIA site in the desert fringe northeast of Jerusalem. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, Excavations at Kh. ed-Dawwara: An Iron Age Site Northeast of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv 17 (1990), pp. 163–208. Dhahr Mirzbaneh, 1987: Sounding at the Intermediate Bronze site of Dhahr Mirzbaneh in the desert fringe northeast of Jerusalem. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, The Central Hill Country in the Intermediate Bronze Age, Israel Exploration Journal 41 (1991), pp. 19–45. Present excavations Megiddo, 1994–present: co-Director, the Megiddo Excavations (1994–2012 with David Ussishkin, since 2014 with Matthew J. Adams and Mario A.S. Martin). Megiddo is considered as one of the most important Bronze and Iron Age sites in the Levant. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, D. Ussishkin and B. Halpern (eds.), Megiddo III: The 1992–1996 Seasons (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 18). Tel Aviv 2000. I. Finkelstein, D. Ussishkin and B. Halpern (eds.), Megiddo IV: The 1998–2002 Seasons (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 24), Tel Aviv 2006. I. Finkelstein, D. Ussishkin and E.H. Cline (editors), Megiddo V: The 2004–2008 Seasons (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 31), Winona Lake 2013. I. Finkelstein, M.A.S. Martin and M.J. Adams (eds.), Megiddo VI: The 2010–2014 Seasons (forthcoming). The Negev Highlands, 2006–present: co-Director of excavations in the Iron Age sites of Atar Haroa and Nahal Boqer, and the Intermediate Bronze Age sites of Mashabe Sade and En Ziq (with Ruth Shahack-Gross). For the results see: R. Shahack-Gross and I. Finkelstein, Settlement Oscillations in the Negev Highlands Revisited: The Impact of Microarchaeological Methods, Radiocarbon 57/2 (2015), pp. 253–264. Kiriath-Jearim, 2017–present: co-Director, the Shmunis Family excavations at Kiriath-Jearim – a biblical site in the highlands west of Jerusalem associated with the Ark Narrative in the Book of Samuel (with Christophe Nicolle and Thomas Römer, the College de France). Other projects In the past 1997–2002: Petrographic study of the Amarna tablets (with Yuval Goren and Nadav Na'aman). For the results see: Y. Goren, I. Finkelstein and N. Na'aman, Inscribed in Clay: Provenance Study of the Amarna Letters and other Ancient Near Eastern Texts (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 23), Tel Aviv 2004. 2009–2014: Principal Investigator of a European Research Council-funded project titled Reconstructing Ancient Israel: The Exact and Life Sciences Perspectives (with Steve Weiner, Weizmann Institute of Science, co-Principal Investigator). The project was organized into 10 tracks: Radiocarbon dating, ancient DNA, geoarchaeology, paleoclimate, petrography, metallurgy, daily mathematics, advanced imaging of ostraca, residue analysis and archaeozoology. Over 40 scholars, advanced students and post-docs were involved in the project. Samples were taken from a large number of sites in Israel and Greece. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, S. Weiner and E. Boaretto (eds.), Reconstructing Ancient Israel: The Exact and Life Sciences Perspectives, special issue of Radiocarbon (57/2), 2015, with a list of all publications until 2015. Paleoclimate of the Levant (2009-2019), with Dafna Langgut (Tel Aviv University) and Thomas Litt (University of Bonn). The Archaeological and Historical Realities behind the Pentateuch (2016-2019), with Konrad Schmid (University of Zurich), Thomas Römer and Christophe Nihan (University of Lausanne) and Oded Lipschits (Tel Aviv University). Ongoing research projects Geoarchaeological Investigations in the Negev Highlands (2006-) with Ruth Shahack-Gross (University of Haifa). Iron Age Hebrew Ostraca in the Silicon Age: Computerized Paleography (2008-), directed with Eli Piasetzky (Tel Aviv University). For results see list of publications in http://www-nuclear.tau.ac.il/~eip/ostraca/Publications/Publications.html Ancient DNA, animals and Humans (2009-), with Meirav Meiri (Tel Aviv University); current cooperation with Joseph Maran and Philipp Stockhammer (Universities of Heidelberg and Munich), Liran Carmel (Hebrew University) and David Reich (Harvard University). Scholarly contributions Finkelstein has written on a variety of topics, including the archaeology of the Bronze Age and the exact and life sciences contribution to archaeology. Much of his work has been devoted to the Iron Age and, more specifically, to questions related to the history of Ancient Israel. The Emergence of Ancient Israel The classical theories on the emergence of Israel viewed the process as a unique event in the history of the region. Finkelstein suggested that we are dealing with a long-term process of a cyclical nature. He demonstrated that the wave of settlement in the highlands in the Iron Age I (ca. 1150-950 BCE) was the last in a series of such demographic developments – the first had taken place in the Early Bronze and the second in the Middle Bronze. The periods between these peaks were characterized by low settlement activity. Finkelstein explained these oscillations as representing changes along the sedentary/ pastoral-nomadic continuum, which were caused by socioeconomic and political dynamics. Hence, a big portion of the people who settled in the highlands in the early Iron Age were locals of a pastoral-nomadic background. Others, who originated from local sedentary background, moved to the highlands as a result of the Bronze Age collapse – which in turn was related to a long period of dry climate in ca. 1250-1100 BCE. Since eventually these groups formed the Northern Kingdom of Israel, they can be labeled "Israelites" as early as their initial settlement process. The same holds true for the contemporary settlement process in Transjordan and western Syria, which brought about the rise of Moab, Ammon and the Aramean kingdoms of the later phases of the Iron Age. Finkelstein regards the biblical account on the Conquest of Canaan in the Book of Joshua as an ideological manifesto of the Deuteronomistic author/s of the late 7th century BCE, describing a "conquest to be" under King Josiah of Judah rather than a historical event at the end of the Bronze Age. He proposed that the original Conquest Account may have originated in the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the early 8th century BCE; it could have been influenced by memories of the turmoil that had taken place in the lowlands in the late Iron I (10th century BCE), rather than the end of the Late Bronze Age (late 12th century BCE). The Low Chronology Until the 1990s, the chronology of the Iron Age in the Levant had been anchored in the biblical account of the great United Monarchy of David and Solomon. Accordingly, the Iron I ended ca. 1000 BCE and the Iron IIA was dated from 1000 BCE until the campaign of Pharaoh Sheshonq I (biblical Shishak) ca. 925 BCE. The two Iron IIA palaces at Megiddo were conceived as the material manifestation for the Solomonic Empire. While preparing for the excavations at Megiddo in the early 1990s, Finkelstein noticed difficulties in this scheme. Noteworthy among them is the appearance of similar traits of material culture at Megiddo in a layer that was dated to the time of King Solomon in the middle of the 10th century, and at Samaria and Jezreel in contexts dated to the time of the Omride Dynasty (of the Northern Kingdom of Israel) in the early 9th century BCE. To resolve these difficulties, Finkelstein proposed to "lower" the dates of the Iron Age strata in the Levant by several decades. According to Finkelstein's Low Chronology, the Iron Age I lasted until the middle of the 10th century BCE, while the Iron IIA is dated between the middle of the 10th century and ca. 800 BCE, if not slightly later. This means that the Megiddo palaces and other features which had traditionally been attributed to the time of King Solomon – features which date to the late Iron IIA – should indeed be associated with the endeavors of the Omride Dynasty in the first half of the 9th century BCE. A big debate ensued. Starting in the late 1990s, the focus of the discussion shifted to the interpretation of radiocarbon determinations for organic samples from key sites, such as Tel Rehov and Megiddo. All in all, the radiocarbon results put the Iron I/IIA transition ca. the middle of the 10th century (rather than 1000 BCE as had traditionally been proposed), and the Iron IIA/B transition in the early days of the 8th century (rather than ca. 925 BCE). In parallel, and not directly connected, Finkelstein dealt with the chronology of Philistine pottery of the Iron Age I. The traditional theory fixed the appearance of Philistine pottery – and hence the settlement of the Philistines in the southern coastal plain of the Levant – in accordance with the confrontation between Ramses III and the Sea Peoples in the early 12th century BCE. In other words, Philistine pottery appears during the last phase of Egyptian rule in Canaan. Finkelstein proposed that the locally-made Monochrome pottery known from several sites in Philistia, which is widely understood as representing the earliest phase of Philistine settlement, should be dated after the withdrawal of Egypt from Canaan in the 1130s. Finkelstein sees the biblical description of the time of David and Solomon as multilayered. He acknowledges the historicity of the founders of the Davidic Dynasty, places them in the 10th century BCE, and considers the possibility that the description of the rise of David to power conceals old memories of his activity as a leader of an Apiru-band that was active in the southern fringe of Judah. Yet, he sees the description of a great United Monarchy as an ideological construct that represents the ideology of late-monarchic author/s in the late 7th century BCE, first and foremost the pan-Israelite ideology of the days of King Josiah of Judah. According to him, the historical David and Solomon ruled over a small territory in the southern highlands – a territory not very different from that of Jerusalem of the Late Bronze Age. Finkelstein sees much of the description of King Solomon as representing realities from late monarchic times: First, from the later days of the Northern Kingdom (for instance, the reference to Megiddo, Hazor and Gezer in and to the stables, horses and chariots of Solomon). Second, from the time of King Manasseh of Judah in the early 7th century BCE, under Assyrian domination (for instance, the visit of the Queen of Sheba in Jerusalem). He understands the description of the Philistines in the Bible as portraying realities in Philistia in late-monarchic times. "New Canaan" Following the results of the excavations at Megiddo, Finkelstein argued that the material culture of the Iron I in the northern valleys continues that of the Late Bronze Age. In other words, the collapse of the Late Bronze city-states under Egyptian domination in the late 12th century BCE was followed by revival of some of the same centers and rise of others in the Iron I. He termed this phenomenon "New Canaan". Accordingly, the major break in the material culture of Canaan took place at the end of the Iron I in the 10th century BCE rather than the end of the Late Bronze Age. Finkelstein associated the violent destruction of the revived city-states with the expansion of the highlanders (early Israelites). He suggested that memories of the turmoil in the lowlands in the late Iron I can be found in northern traditions regarding skirmishes with Canaanite cities which appear in the heroic stories in the Book of Judges. The Northern Kingdom Finkelstein dealt with a variety of themes related to the archeology and history of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. He proposed that the first North Israelite territorial polity emerged in the Gibeon-Bethel plateau in the late Iron I and early Iron IIA. He found archaeological evidence for this in the system of fortified sites, such as Tell en-Nasbeh, Khirbet ed-Dawwara, et-Tell ("Ai") and Gibeon. Historical evidence for the existence of this polity can be found in the campaign of Pharaoh Sheshonq I in this region in the middle-to-second half of the 10th century BCE. According to Finkelstein, positive memories in the Bible of the House of Saul, which originated from the North, represent this early Israelite entity. He suggested that this north Israelite polity ruled over much of the territory of the highlands, that it presented a threat to the interests of Egypt of the 22nd Dynasty in Canaan, and that it was taken over during the campaign of Sheshonq I. Finkelstein proposed that in its early days, the Northern Kingdom (Jeroboam I and his successors) ruled over the Samaria Highlands, the western slopes of the Gilead and the area of the Jezreel Valley. The expansion of Israel further to the north came during the days of the Omride Dynasty in the first half of the 9th century BCE, and even more so in the time of Jeroboam II in the first half of the 8th century BCE. Finkelstein described the special features of Omride architecture and, with his Megiddo team, dealt with different subjects related to the material culture of the Northern Kingdom, such as metallurgy and cult practices. Finkelstein also reflected on biblical traditions related to the Northern Kingdom, such as the Jacob cycle in Genesis (a study carried out with Thomas Römer), the Exodus tradition, the heroic stories in the Book of Judges and remnants of royal traditions in the Books of Samuel and Kings. He suggested that these North Israelite traditions were first committed to writing in the days of Jeroboam II (first half of the 8th century BCE), that they were brought to Judah with Israelite refugees after the takeover of Israel by Assyria, and that they were later incorporated into the Judahite-dominated Bible. Finkelstein sees the biblical genre of deploying "history" in the service of royal ideology as emerging from Israel (the North) of the 8th century BCE. Archaeology and history of Jerusalem Finkelstein has recently dealt with the location of the ancient mound of Jerusalem (with Ido Koch and Oded Lipschits). The conventional wisdom sees that "City of David" ridge as the location of the original settlement of Jerusalem. Finkelstein and his colleagues argued that the "City of David" ridge does not have the silhouette of a mound; that it is located in topographical inferiority relative to the surrounding area; and that the archaeological record of the ridge does not include periods of habitation attested in reliable textual records. According to them, the most suitable location for the core of ancient Jerusalem is the Temple Mount. The large area of the Herodian platform (today's Harem esh-Sharif) may conceal a mound of five hectares and more, which – similar to other capital cities in the Levant – included both the royal compound and habitation quarters. Locating the mound of Ancient Jerusalem on the Temple Mount resolves many of the difficulties pertaining to the "City of David" ridge. According to Finkelstein, the history of Jerusalem in biblical times should be viewed in terms of three main phases: Firstly, until the 9th century BCE, Jerusalem was restricted to the mound on the Temple Mount and ruled over a modest area in the southern highlands. Accordingly, Jerusalem of the time of David and Solomon can be compared to Jerusalem of the Amarna period in the 14th century BCE: it had the size of a typical highlands mound (for instance, Shechem), ruled over a restricted area, but still had impact beyond the highlands. Secondly, the first expansion of Jerusalem came in the 9th century BCE, perhaps in its second half, when the town grew significantly in a southerly direction. Remains of the Iron IIA were unearthed south of al-Aqsa Mosque, above the Gihon Spring and to the south of the Dung Gate of the Old City. In parallel to this development, Judah expanded to the Shephelah in the west and Beer-sheba Valley in the south, and for the first time became a territorial kingdom rather than a city-state restricted to the highlands. Thirdly, the most impressive phase in the settlement history of Jerusalem commenced in the late 8th century BCE and lasted until its destruction by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. At that time Jerusalem expanded dramatically, to include the entire "City of David" ridge, as well as the "Western Hill" (the Armenian and Jewish Quarter of today's Old City). This expansion was the result of the arrival of Israelite refugees after the demise of the Northern Kingdom in 722-720 BCE. These groups brought with them traits of Northern material culture, and more important – their foundation myths, royal traditions and heroic stories. These Northern traditions were later incorporated into the Judahite Bible. Jerusalem and Yehud/Judea of the Persian and Hellenistic periods Finkelstein noted that in the Persian Period, Jerusalem was limited to the mound on the Temple Mount – and even there was sparsely settled – and that Yehud of that time was also thinly settled. As the description of the construction of the wall of Jerusalem in Nehemiah 3 must relate to the big city (extending beyond the old mound on the Temple Mount), it probably portrays the construction of the fortifications by the Hasmoneans. Finkelstein further noted that many of the sites mentioned in the lists of returnees in Ezra and Nehemiah were not inhabited in the Persian Period and hence sees these lists as reflecting the demographic situation in days of the Hasmoneans. The same holds true, in his opinion, for the genealogies in 1 Chronicles. Finkelstein then looked into the accounts of Judahite monarchs in 2 Chronicles, which do not appear in Kings. He called attention to similarities between these texts and 1 Maccabees, and proposed to understand Chronicles as representing legitimacy needs of the Hasmoneans. This means that at least 2 Chronicles dates to the late 2nd century BCE, probably to the days of John Hyrcanus. Published works Books In addition to the reports of excavations cited above: Sinai in Antiquity, Tel Aviv 1980 (ed., with Zeev Meshel, Hebrew) The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement, Jerusalem 1988, Archaeological Survey of the Hill Country of Benjamin, Jerusalem 1993, (ed., with Yitzhak Magen) From Nomadism to Monarchy: Archaeological and Historical Aspects of Early Israel, Jerusalem 1994, (ed., with Nadav Na'aman) Living on the Fringe: The Archaeology and History of the Negev, Sinai and Neighbouring Regions in the Bronze and Iron Ages, Sheffield 1995, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, New York 2001 (with Neil Asher Silberman). Translated to 12 languages. David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition, New York 2006, (with Neil Asher Silberman). Translated to six languages. The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archeology and the History of Early Israel, Atlanta 2007, (with Amihai Mazar) Un archéologue au pays de la Bible, Paris 2008, The Forgotten Kingdom. The Archaeology and History of Northern Israel, Atlanta 2013, . Translated to four languages. Hasmonean Realities behind Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles, Atlanta 2018. Co-editor of three festschrifts – for Nadav Na'aman, David Ussishkin and Benjamin Sass. Articles About 400 scholarly articles; for many of them see: https://telaviv.academia.edu/IsraelFinkelstein Festschrift Bene Israel: Studies in the Archaeology of Israel and the Levant during the Bronze and Iron Ages in Honour of Israel Finkelstein, Leiden and London 2008 (eds. Alexander Fantalkin and Assaf Yasur-Landau). Rethinking Israel: Studies in the History and Archaeology of Ancient Israel in Honor of Israel Finkelstein, Winona Lake 2017 (eds. Oded Lipschits, Yuval Gadot and Matthew J. Adams). The Shmunis Family Conversations in the Archaeology and History of Ancient Israel with Israel Finkelstein The Shmunis Family Conversations in the Archaeology and History of Ancient Israel with Israel Finkelstein series is a YouTube series hosted by the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research's Albright Live YouTube Channel. As of September 2021, 26 episodes have been released. The series is set as an interview-style conversation between Albright Institute Director Matthew J. Adams and archaeologist Israel Finkelstein. Episodes cover the rise of Ancient Israel as evidenced by archaeology, ancient Near Eastern textual sources, the Bible, and archaeology from the Late Bronze Age through the Hellenistic Period. The episodes are written and directed by Israel Finkelstein and Matthew J. Adams with cinematography and editing by Yuval Pan. The series is Produced by Djehuti Productions and the Albright Institute with a grant from the Shmunis Family Foundation. Awards and recognition Finkelstein is the Laureate of the Dan David Prize in 2005. The select committee noted that he is "widely regarded as a leading scholar in the archaeology of the Levant and as a foremost applicant of archaeological knowledge to reconstructing biblical Israelite history. He excels at creatively forging links between archaeology and the exact sciences and he has revolutionized many of these fields. … Finkelstein has had an impact on radically revising the history of Israel in the 10th and 9th centuries BCE. He has transformed the study of history and archaeology in Israeli universities, moving from a ‘monumental’ to a ‘systemic’ study of the archaeological evidence. He has taken what was becoming a rather staid and conservative discipline, with everyone in general agreement as to interpretation of excavation results, and has turned things upside down. … The study of these periods is never again going to be what it once was. … Israel Finkelstein has proven to be creative, generating scholarship no less than discussion, launching ideas and stimulating debates, fearlessly but with imagination and grace." In 2014, Finkelstein was awarded the Prix Delalande Guérineau: Institut de France, l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, for his book Le Royaume biblique oublié (The Forgotten Kingdom). He is the recipient of the MacAllister Field Archaeology Award 2017 (The American Schools of Oriental Research). His other awards include the French decoration of Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres, (2009) and the Doctorat honoris causa of the University of Lausanne (2010). Criticism Finkelstein's theories about Saul, David and Solomon have been criticized by fellow archaeologists. Amihai Mazar described Finkelstein's Low Chronology proposal as "premature and unacceptable". Amnon Ben-Tor accused him of employing a “double standard”, citing the biblical text where it suited him and deploring its use where it did not. Other criticisms came from William G. Dever (who dismissed the Low Chronology as "idiosyncratic"), Lawrence Stager, Doron Ben-Ami, Raz Kletter and Anabel Zarzeki-Peleg. David Ussishkin, despite agreeing with many of Finkelstein's theories about the United Monarchy, has also shown doubts and reservations about Finkelstein's Low Chronology. Writing in the Biblical Archaeology Review and subsequently in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, William G. Dever described The Bible Unearthed as a "convoluted story", writing that "This clever, trendy work may deceive lay readers". Evangelical Christian biblical scholar Kenneth Kitchen was also critical of the book, writing that "[A] careful critical perusal of this work—which certainly has much to say about both archaeology and the biblical writings—reveals that we are dealing very largely with a work of imaginative fiction, not a serious or reliable account of the subject", and "Their treatment of the exodus is among the most factually ignorant and misleading that this writer has ever read." Another evangelical, Richard Hess, also being critical, wrote that "The authors always present their interpretation of the archaeological data but do not mention or interact with contemporary alternative approaches. Thus the book is ideologically driven and controlled." A 2004 debate between Finkelstein and William G. Dever, mediated by Hershel Shanks (editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review), quickly degenerated into insults, with Dever calling Finkelstein "idiosyncratic and doctrinaire" and Finkelstein dismissing Dever as a "jealous academic parasite". Dever later accused Finkelstein of supporting post-Zionism, to which Finkelstein replied by accusing Dever of being "a biblical literalist disguised as a liberal". Shanks described the exchange between the two as "embarassing". Following the publication of The Forgotten Kingdom, Dever once again harshly criticized Finkelstein: writing in the Biblical Archaeology Review, he described Finkelstein as "a magician and a showman". He stated that the book was full of "numerous errors, misrepresentations, over-simplifications and contradictions". Another, more moderate, review was written on the same magazine by Aaron Burke: while Burke described Finkelstein's book as "ambitious" and praised its literary style, he did not accept Finkelstein's conclusions. He stated that the book engages in several speculations that cannot be proved by archeology, biblical and extra-biblical sources. He also criticized Finkelstein for persistently trying to downgrade the role of David in the development of ancient Israel. Other landmarks Selected as one of the 10 most influential researchers in the history of archaeology in the Levant (a Swiss publication, 1993). Invited to the Salon du Livre in Paris, 2008. Two public debates there: with the French philosopher Armand Abécassis on La Bible et la Terre Sainte, and with the Israeli author Meir Shalev on la Bible de l’ecrivain et la Bible de l’archeologue. Keynote address in the Annual Meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Nashville 2000. A ca. 50 pages profile chapter in J.-F. Mondot’s Une Bible pour deux mémoires (Paris 2006). Invited lecture in the special symposium celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Weizmann Institute (together with Nobel Prize laureates Ada Yonath and Daniel Kahneman, and Lord Wilson, 2009). Keynote address in the Symposium of Mediterranean Archaeology, Florence 2012. Two lectures in the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, Paris, May 2012 and February 2016. Public lectures in events at universities such as the University of Chicago, Heidelberg University (2014) and Princeton University. Joint session of the American Schools of Oriental Research and Society of Biblical Literature titled Rethinking Israel – celebrating the publication of Rethinking Israel, Studies in the History and Archaeology of Ancient Israel in Honr of Israel Finkelstein, Boston 2017. Conversation with Israel Finkelstein and Thomas Romer, central evening event in the International Meeting of the Society for Biblical Literature, Rome, July 2019. References External links Finkelstein's personal website: https://israelfinkelstein.wordpress.com/ The Megiddo Expedition: https://megiddoexpedition.wordpress.com/ The Kiriath-Jearim excavations: https://kiriathjearim.wordpress.com/ The digitized epigraphy website: http://www-nuclear.tau.ac.il/~eip/ostraca/Home/Home.html Finkelstein's scholarly articles on academia.edu: https://telaviv.academia.edu/IsraelFinkelstein The Dan David prize, 2005: http://www.dandavidprize.org/laureates/2005/77-past-archaeology/173-prof-israel-finkelstein The Shmunis Family Conversations in the Archaeology and History of Ancient Israel with Israel Finkelstein, 2020–2021: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvm7MPUI_WJclpUfZgCw1Tfd_cyT4Fh-f 1949 births Living people 20th-century archaeologists 20th-century Israeli male writers 21st-century archaeologists 21st-century Israeli male writers Biblical archaeologists Historical geographers Israeli archaeologists Israeli Ashkenazi Jews Israeli people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent Tel Aviv University faculty

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what did he teach?

what did Israel Finkelstein teach?

Israel Finkelstein

From 1976 to 1990 Finkelstein taught at the Department of Land of Israel Studies, Bar-Ilan University, beginning as a teaching assistant. He spent the academic year of 1983-84 in a research group led by Prof. Yigael Yadin in the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. In 1986-87 Finkelstein taught at the Department for Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago. In 1987 he was appointed an associate professor with tenure at Bar-Ilan University and in 1990 moved to the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations at Tel Aviv University. In 1992/93 Finkelstein spent a sabbatical year as a visiting scholar at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University. Since 1992, he has been a Full Professor at Tel Aviv University. He served as the chairperson of the Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Studies (1994-98) and as Director of The Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology (1996-2003). In 1998-99 Finkelstein was a visiting scholar in the Centre de Recherche d'Archeologie Orientale and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in the Sorbonne, Paris. Finkelstein delivered series of lectures on the history and archaeology of Ancient Israel at the Texas Christian University (2002), the University of Buenos Aires (2011), the College de France in Paris (2012) and the Methodist University of Sao Paulo (2015). He is scheduled to deliver similar lectures at the Tokyo Christian University (2017) and the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome (2017). Finkelstein has read over 100 papers in international conferences and given numerous talks in universities around the globe. Finkelstein has been the Editor of Tel Aviv, the journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, since 2008 and Executive Editor of the Monograph Series by the Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, since 2005. He is a member of editorial boards, including the Palestine Exploration Journal and the Archaeology and Biblical Studies series, the Society of Biblical Literature. CANNOTANSWER

He spent the academic year of 1983-84 in a research group led by Prof. Yigael Yadin in the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

Israel Finkelstein (, born March 29, 1949) is an Israeli archaeologist, professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University. Finkelstein is active in the archaeology of the Levant and is an applicant of archaeological data in reconstructing biblical history. He is also known for applying the exact and life sciences in archaeological and historical reconstruction. Finkelstein is the current excavator of Megiddo, a key site for the study of the Bronze and Iron Ages in the Levant. Finkelstein is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and an associé étranger of the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Finkelstein has received several noteworthy academic and writing awards. In 2005, he won the Dan David Prize for his revision of the history of Israel in the 10th and 9th centuries BCE. In 2009 he was named chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture, and in 2010, received a doctorate honoris causa from the University of Lausanne. He is a member of the selection committee of the Shanghai Archaeology Forum, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Among Finkelstein's books are The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts (2001) and David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition (2006), both written with Neil Asher Silberman. Also he wrote the textbooks on the emergence of Ancient Israel, titled The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement (1988); on the archaeology and history of the arid zones of the Levant, titled Living on the Fringe (1995); and on the Northern Kingdom of Israel, titled The Forgotten Kingdom (2013). Background Family Israel Finkelstein was born to an Ashkenazi Jewish family in Tel Aviv, Israel, on March 29, 1949. His parents were Zvi (Grisha) Finkelstein (born 1908) and Miriam Finkelstein (maiden name Ellenhorn, born 1910). His great grandfather on his mother's side, Shlomo Ellenhorn, came to Palestine from Grodno (today in Belarus) in the 1850s and settled in Hebron. He was one of the first physicians in the Bikur Cholim Hospital in Jerusalem, and is listed among the group of people who purchased the land in 1878 in order to establish Petah Tikva – the first modern Jewish settlement in Palestine outside the four holy cities. Finkelstein's grandfather, Israel Jacob Ellenhorn, was the first pharmacist in Petah Tikva. Finkelstein’s father was born in Melitopol (Ukraine). He came to Palestine with his family in 1920. He was in the orange-growing business and was active in the sports organisations of Israel. He served as vice chairman of the Israel Football Association, chairman of Maccabi Israel and was a member of the Israel Olympic Committee. Finkelstein is married to Joelle (maiden name Cohen). They are the parents of two daughters – Adar (born 1992) and Sarai (born 1996). Education Israel Finkelstein attended the PICA elementary school (1956–1963) and Ahad Ha'am High School (1963–1967), both in Petah Tikva. He then served in the Israel Defense Forces (1967–1970). He studied archaeology and Near Eastern civilizations, and geography at Tel Aviv University, receiving his BA in 1974. While there, Finkelstein was a student of Prof. Yohanan Aharoni. He continued as a research student under the supervision of Prof. Moshe Kochavi, receiving his MA in 1978 (thesis on Rural Settlement in the Yarkon Basin in the Iron Age and Persian-Hellenistic Periods). He graduated as a PhD in 1983 with a thesis titled "The Izbet Sartah Excavations and the Israelite Settlement in the Hill Country". Academic career From 1976 to 1990, Finkelstein taught at the Department of Land of Israel Studies, Bar-Ilan University, beginning as a teaching assistant. He spent the academic year of 1983–84 in a research group led by Prof. Yigael Yadin in the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. In 1986 and 1987, Finkelstein taught at the Department for Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago. In 1987 he was appointed an associate professor with tenure at Bar-Ilan University and in 1990 moved to the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations at Tel Aviv University. In 1992/93 Finkelstein spent a sabbatical year as a visiting scholar at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University. Since 1992, he has been a Full Professor at Tel Aviv University. He served as the chairperson of the Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Studies (1994–98) and as Director of The Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology (1996–2003). In 1998–99 Finkelstein was a visiting scholar in the Centre de Recherche d’Archéologie Orientale and the École Pratique des Hautes Études in the Sorbonne, Paris. Finkelstein delivered series of lectures on the history and archaeology of Ancient Israel at the Texas Christian University (2002), the University of Buenos Aires (2011), the College de France in Paris (2012) and the Methodist University of São Paulo (2015), the Tokyo Christian University (2017), the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome (2017) and the University of Zurich (2018). Finkelstein has read over 100 papers in international conferences and given numerous talks in universities around the globe. Finkelstein has been the Editor of Tel Aviv, the journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, since 2008 and Executive Editor of the Monograph Series by the Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, since 2005. He is a member of editorial boards, including the Palestine Exploration Quarterly and the Archaeology and Biblical Studies series of the Society of Biblical Literature. Fieldwork Finkelstein was trained as a field archaeologist in the excavations of Tel Beer Sheva (1971, Director: Yohanan Aharoni) and Tel Aphek (1973–1978, Directors: Moshe Kochavi and Pirhiya Beck). Starting in 1976, he carried out his own fieldwork in a variety of sites and regions: Past excavations and surveys ‘Izbet Sartah, 1976–1978: Field Director (under Prof. Moshe Kochavi) of excavations at ‘Izbet Sartah, an Iron I-Iron IIA village-site near Rosh Ha‘ayin, east of Tel Aviv. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, Izbet Sartah: An Early Iron Age Site near Rosh Ha‘ayin, Israel, Oxford 1986 (BAR International Series 299). Southern Sinai, 1976–1978: Surveys of Byzantine monastic remains in southern Sinai. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, Byzantine Monastic Remains in Southern Sinai, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 39 (1985), pp. 39–75. Bene Beraq, 1977: Director of salvage excavations at the mound of ancient Bene Beraq near Tel Aviv. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, Soundings at Ancient Bene-Beraq, ‘Atiqot 10 (1990), pp. 29–40 (Hebrew). Tel Ira, 1980: Co-Director of the excavations of the Iron II site of Tel Ira in the Beer-sheba Valley (together with I. Beit-Arieh and B. Cresson). For the results see: I. Finkelstein and I. Beit-Arieh, Area E, in I. Beit-Arieh (ed.), Tel Ira: A Stronghold in the Biblical Negev (monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 15), Tel Aviv 1999, pp. 67–96. Shiloh, 1981–1984: Director of the excavations at biblical Shiloh in the highlands north of Jerusalem. The site features Middle Bronze, Late Bronze and Iron I remains. For the results see: I. Finkelstein (ed.), Shiloh: The Archaeology of a Biblical Site (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 10), Tel Aviv 1993. Southern Samaria Survey, 1981–1987: Director of the survey, ca. 1000 km2. in the highlands north of Jerusalem. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, Z. Lederman and S. Bunimovitz, Highlands of Many Cultures, The Southern Samaria Survey, The Sites (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 14). Tel Aviv Khirbet ed-Dawwara, 1985–86: Director, excavations at Khirbet ed-Dawwara, an Iron I-early Iron IIA site in the desert fringe northeast of Jerusalem. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, Excavations at Kh. ed-Dawwara: An Iron Age Site Northeast of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv 17 (1990), pp. 163–208. Dhahr Mirzbaneh, 1987: Sounding at the Intermediate Bronze site of Dhahr Mirzbaneh in the desert fringe northeast of Jerusalem. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, The Central Hill Country in the Intermediate Bronze Age, Israel Exploration Journal 41 (1991), pp. 19–45. Present excavations Megiddo, 1994–present: co-Director, the Megiddo Excavations (1994–2012 with David Ussishkin, since 2014 with Matthew J. Adams and Mario A.S. Martin). Megiddo is considered as one of the most important Bronze and Iron Age sites in the Levant. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, D. Ussishkin and B. Halpern (eds.), Megiddo III: The 1992–1996 Seasons (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 18). Tel Aviv 2000. I. Finkelstein, D. Ussishkin and B. Halpern (eds.), Megiddo IV: The 1998–2002 Seasons (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 24), Tel Aviv 2006. I. Finkelstein, D. Ussishkin and E.H. Cline (editors), Megiddo V: The 2004–2008 Seasons (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 31), Winona Lake 2013. I. Finkelstein, M.A.S. Martin and M.J. Adams (eds.), Megiddo VI: The 2010–2014 Seasons (forthcoming). The Negev Highlands, 2006–present: co-Director of excavations in the Iron Age sites of Atar Haroa and Nahal Boqer, and the Intermediate Bronze Age sites of Mashabe Sade and En Ziq (with Ruth Shahack-Gross). For the results see: R. Shahack-Gross and I. Finkelstein, Settlement Oscillations in the Negev Highlands Revisited: The Impact of Microarchaeological Methods, Radiocarbon 57/2 (2015), pp. 253–264. Kiriath-Jearim, 2017–present: co-Director, the Shmunis Family excavations at Kiriath-Jearim – a biblical site in the highlands west of Jerusalem associated with the Ark Narrative in the Book of Samuel (with Christophe Nicolle and Thomas Römer, the College de France). Other projects In the past 1997–2002: Petrographic study of the Amarna tablets (with Yuval Goren and Nadav Na'aman). For the results see: Y. Goren, I. Finkelstein and N. Na'aman, Inscribed in Clay: Provenance Study of the Amarna Letters and other Ancient Near Eastern Texts (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 23), Tel Aviv 2004. 2009–2014: Principal Investigator of a European Research Council-funded project titled Reconstructing Ancient Israel: The Exact and Life Sciences Perspectives (with Steve Weiner, Weizmann Institute of Science, co-Principal Investigator). The project was organized into 10 tracks: Radiocarbon dating, ancient DNA, geoarchaeology, paleoclimate, petrography, metallurgy, daily mathematics, advanced imaging of ostraca, residue analysis and archaeozoology. Over 40 scholars, advanced students and post-docs were involved in the project. Samples were taken from a large number of sites in Israel and Greece. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, S. Weiner and E. Boaretto (eds.), Reconstructing Ancient Israel: The Exact and Life Sciences Perspectives, special issue of Radiocarbon (57/2), 2015, with a list of all publications until 2015. Paleoclimate of the Levant (2009-2019), with Dafna Langgut (Tel Aviv University) and Thomas Litt (University of Bonn). The Archaeological and Historical Realities behind the Pentateuch (2016-2019), with Konrad Schmid (University of Zurich), Thomas Römer and Christophe Nihan (University of Lausanne) and Oded Lipschits (Tel Aviv University). Ongoing research projects Geoarchaeological Investigations in the Negev Highlands (2006-) with Ruth Shahack-Gross (University of Haifa). Iron Age Hebrew Ostraca in the Silicon Age: Computerized Paleography (2008-), directed with Eli Piasetzky (Tel Aviv University). For results see list of publications in http://www-nuclear.tau.ac.il/~eip/ostraca/Publications/Publications.html Ancient DNA, animals and Humans (2009-), with Meirav Meiri (Tel Aviv University); current cooperation with Joseph Maran and Philipp Stockhammer (Universities of Heidelberg and Munich), Liran Carmel (Hebrew University) and David Reich (Harvard University). Scholarly contributions Finkelstein has written on a variety of topics, including the archaeology of the Bronze Age and the exact and life sciences contribution to archaeology. Much of his work has been devoted to the Iron Age and, more specifically, to questions related to the history of Ancient Israel. The Emergence of Ancient Israel The classical theories on the emergence of Israel viewed the process as a unique event in the history of the region. Finkelstein suggested that we are dealing with a long-term process of a cyclical nature. He demonstrated that the wave of settlement in the highlands in the Iron Age I (ca. 1150-950 BCE) was the last in a series of such demographic developments – the first had taken place in the Early Bronze and the second in the Middle Bronze. The periods between these peaks were characterized by low settlement activity. Finkelstein explained these oscillations as representing changes along the sedentary/ pastoral-nomadic continuum, which were caused by socioeconomic and political dynamics. Hence, a big portion of the people who settled in the highlands in the early Iron Age were locals of a pastoral-nomadic background. Others, who originated from local sedentary background, moved to the highlands as a result of the Bronze Age collapse – which in turn was related to a long period of dry climate in ca. 1250-1100 BCE. Since eventually these groups formed the Northern Kingdom of Israel, they can be labeled "Israelites" as early as their initial settlement process. The same holds true for the contemporary settlement process in Transjordan and western Syria, which brought about the rise of Moab, Ammon and the Aramean kingdoms of the later phases of the Iron Age. Finkelstein regards the biblical account on the Conquest of Canaan in the Book of Joshua as an ideological manifesto of the Deuteronomistic author/s of the late 7th century BCE, describing a "conquest to be" under King Josiah of Judah rather than a historical event at the end of the Bronze Age. He proposed that the original Conquest Account may have originated in the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the early 8th century BCE; it could have been influenced by memories of the turmoil that had taken place in the lowlands in the late Iron I (10th century BCE), rather than the end of the Late Bronze Age (late 12th century BCE). The Low Chronology Until the 1990s, the chronology of the Iron Age in the Levant had been anchored in the biblical account of the great United Monarchy of David and Solomon. Accordingly, the Iron I ended ca. 1000 BCE and the Iron IIA was dated from 1000 BCE until the campaign of Pharaoh Sheshonq I (biblical Shishak) ca. 925 BCE. The two Iron IIA palaces at Megiddo were conceived as the material manifestation for the Solomonic Empire. While preparing for the excavations at Megiddo in the early 1990s, Finkelstein noticed difficulties in this scheme. Noteworthy among them is the appearance of similar traits of material culture at Megiddo in a layer that was dated to the time of King Solomon in the middle of the 10th century, and at Samaria and Jezreel in contexts dated to the time of the Omride Dynasty (of the Northern Kingdom of Israel) in the early 9th century BCE. To resolve these difficulties, Finkelstein proposed to "lower" the dates of the Iron Age strata in the Levant by several decades. According to Finkelstein's Low Chronology, the Iron Age I lasted until the middle of the 10th century BCE, while the Iron IIA is dated between the middle of the 10th century and ca. 800 BCE, if not slightly later. This means that the Megiddo palaces and other features which had traditionally been attributed to the time of King Solomon – features which date to the late Iron IIA – should indeed be associated with the endeavors of the Omride Dynasty in the first half of the 9th century BCE. A big debate ensued. Starting in the late 1990s, the focus of the discussion shifted to the interpretation of radiocarbon determinations for organic samples from key sites, such as Tel Rehov and Megiddo. All in all, the radiocarbon results put the Iron I/IIA transition ca. the middle of the 10th century (rather than 1000 BCE as had traditionally been proposed), and the Iron IIA/B transition in the early days of the 8th century (rather than ca. 925 BCE). In parallel, and not directly connected, Finkelstein dealt with the chronology of Philistine pottery of the Iron Age I. The traditional theory fixed the appearance of Philistine pottery – and hence the settlement of the Philistines in the southern coastal plain of the Levant – in accordance with the confrontation between Ramses III and the Sea Peoples in the early 12th century BCE. In other words, Philistine pottery appears during the last phase of Egyptian rule in Canaan. Finkelstein proposed that the locally-made Monochrome pottery known from several sites in Philistia, which is widely understood as representing the earliest phase of Philistine settlement, should be dated after the withdrawal of Egypt from Canaan in the 1130s. Finkelstein sees the biblical description of the time of David and Solomon as multilayered. He acknowledges the historicity of the founders of the Davidic Dynasty, places them in the 10th century BCE, and considers the possibility that the description of the rise of David to power conceals old memories of his activity as a leader of an Apiru-band that was active in the southern fringe of Judah. Yet, he sees the description of a great United Monarchy as an ideological construct that represents the ideology of late-monarchic author/s in the late 7th century BCE, first and foremost the pan-Israelite ideology of the days of King Josiah of Judah. According to him, the historical David and Solomon ruled over a small territory in the southern highlands – a territory not very different from that of Jerusalem of the Late Bronze Age. Finkelstein sees much of the description of King Solomon as representing realities from late monarchic times: First, from the later days of the Northern Kingdom (for instance, the reference to Megiddo, Hazor and Gezer in and to the stables, horses and chariots of Solomon). Second, from the time of King Manasseh of Judah in the early 7th century BCE, under Assyrian domination (for instance, the visit of the Queen of Sheba in Jerusalem). He understands the description of the Philistines in the Bible as portraying realities in Philistia in late-monarchic times. "New Canaan" Following the results of the excavations at Megiddo, Finkelstein argued that the material culture of the Iron I in the northern valleys continues that of the Late Bronze Age. In other words, the collapse of the Late Bronze city-states under Egyptian domination in the late 12th century BCE was followed by revival of some of the same centers and rise of others in the Iron I. He termed this phenomenon "New Canaan". Accordingly, the major break in the material culture of Canaan took place at the end of the Iron I in the 10th century BCE rather than the end of the Late Bronze Age. Finkelstein associated the violent destruction of the revived city-states with the expansion of the highlanders (early Israelites). He suggested that memories of the turmoil in the lowlands in the late Iron I can be found in northern traditions regarding skirmishes with Canaanite cities which appear in the heroic stories in the Book of Judges. The Northern Kingdom Finkelstein dealt with a variety of themes related to the archeology and history of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. He proposed that the first North Israelite territorial polity emerged in the Gibeon-Bethel plateau in the late Iron I and early Iron IIA. He found archaeological evidence for this in the system of fortified sites, such as Tell en-Nasbeh, Khirbet ed-Dawwara, et-Tell ("Ai") and Gibeon. Historical evidence for the existence of this polity can be found in the campaign of Pharaoh Sheshonq I in this region in the middle-to-second half of the 10th century BCE. According to Finkelstein, positive memories in the Bible of the House of Saul, which originated from the North, represent this early Israelite entity. He suggested that this north Israelite polity ruled over much of the territory of the highlands, that it presented a threat to the interests of Egypt of the 22nd Dynasty in Canaan, and that it was taken over during the campaign of Sheshonq I. Finkelstein proposed that in its early days, the Northern Kingdom (Jeroboam I and his successors) ruled over the Samaria Highlands, the western slopes of the Gilead and the area of the Jezreel Valley. The expansion of Israel further to the north came during the days of the Omride Dynasty in the first half of the 9th century BCE, and even more so in the time of Jeroboam II in the first half of the 8th century BCE. Finkelstein described the special features of Omride architecture and, with his Megiddo team, dealt with different subjects related to the material culture of the Northern Kingdom, such as metallurgy and cult practices. Finkelstein also reflected on biblical traditions related to the Northern Kingdom, such as the Jacob cycle in Genesis (a study carried out with Thomas Römer), the Exodus tradition, the heroic stories in the Book of Judges and remnants of royal traditions in the Books of Samuel and Kings. He suggested that these North Israelite traditions were first committed to writing in the days of Jeroboam II (first half of the 8th century BCE), that they were brought to Judah with Israelite refugees after the takeover of Israel by Assyria, and that they were later incorporated into the Judahite-dominated Bible. Finkelstein sees the biblical genre of deploying "history" in the service of royal ideology as emerging from Israel (the North) of the 8th century BCE. Archaeology and history of Jerusalem Finkelstein has recently dealt with the location of the ancient mound of Jerusalem (with Ido Koch and Oded Lipschits). The conventional wisdom sees that "City of David" ridge as the location of the original settlement of Jerusalem. Finkelstein and his colleagues argued that the "City of David" ridge does not have the silhouette of a mound; that it is located in topographical inferiority relative to the surrounding area; and that the archaeological record of the ridge does not include periods of habitation attested in reliable textual records. According to them, the most suitable location for the core of ancient Jerusalem is the Temple Mount. The large area of the Herodian platform (today's Harem esh-Sharif) may conceal a mound of five hectares and more, which – similar to other capital cities in the Levant – included both the royal compound and habitation quarters. Locating the mound of Ancient Jerusalem on the Temple Mount resolves many of the difficulties pertaining to the "City of David" ridge. According to Finkelstein, the history of Jerusalem in biblical times should be viewed in terms of three main phases: Firstly, until the 9th century BCE, Jerusalem was restricted to the mound on the Temple Mount and ruled over a modest area in the southern highlands. Accordingly, Jerusalem of the time of David and Solomon can be compared to Jerusalem of the Amarna period in the 14th century BCE: it had the size of a typical highlands mound (for instance, Shechem), ruled over a restricted area, but still had impact beyond the highlands. Secondly, the first expansion of Jerusalem came in the 9th century BCE, perhaps in its second half, when the town grew significantly in a southerly direction. Remains of the Iron IIA were unearthed south of al-Aqsa Mosque, above the Gihon Spring and to the south of the Dung Gate of the Old City. In parallel to this development, Judah expanded to the Shephelah in the west and Beer-sheba Valley in the south, and for the first time became a territorial kingdom rather than a city-state restricted to the highlands. Thirdly, the most impressive phase in the settlement history of Jerusalem commenced in the late 8th century BCE and lasted until its destruction by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. At that time Jerusalem expanded dramatically, to include the entire "City of David" ridge, as well as the "Western Hill" (the Armenian and Jewish Quarter of today's Old City). This expansion was the result of the arrival of Israelite refugees after the demise of the Northern Kingdom in 722-720 BCE. These groups brought with them traits of Northern material culture, and more important – their foundation myths, royal traditions and heroic stories. These Northern traditions were later incorporated into the Judahite Bible. Jerusalem and Yehud/Judea of the Persian and Hellenistic periods Finkelstein noted that in the Persian Period, Jerusalem was limited to the mound on the Temple Mount – and even there was sparsely settled – and that Yehud of that time was also thinly settled. As the description of the construction of the wall of Jerusalem in Nehemiah 3 must relate to the big city (extending beyond the old mound on the Temple Mount), it probably portrays the construction of the fortifications by the Hasmoneans. Finkelstein further noted that many of the sites mentioned in the lists of returnees in Ezra and Nehemiah were not inhabited in the Persian Period and hence sees these lists as reflecting the demographic situation in days of the Hasmoneans. The same holds true, in his opinion, for the genealogies in 1 Chronicles. Finkelstein then looked into the accounts of Judahite monarchs in 2 Chronicles, which do not appear in Kings. He called attention to similarities between these texts and 1 Maccabees, and proposed to understand Chronicles as representing legitimacy needs of the Hasmoneans. This means that at least 2 Chronicles dates to the late 2nd century BCE, probably to the days of John Hyrcanus. Published works Books In addition to the reports of excavations cited above: Sinai in Antiquity, Tel Aviv 1980 (ed., with Zeev Meshel, Hebrew) The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement, Jerusalem 1988, Archaeological Survey of the Hill Country of Benjamin, Jerusalem 1993, (ed., with Yitzhak Magen) From Nomadism to Monarchy: Archaeological and Historical Aspects of Early Israel, Jerusalem 1994, (ed., with Nadav Na'aman) Living on the Fringe: The Archaeology and History of the Negev, Sinai and Neighbouring Regions in the Bronze and Iron Ages, Sheffield 1995, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, New York 2001 (with Neil Asher Silberman). Translated to 12 languages. David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition, New York 2006, (with Neil Asher Silberman). Translated to six languages. The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archeology and the History of Early Israel, Atlanta 2007, (with Amihai Mazar) Un archéologue au pays de la Bible, Paris 2008, The Forgotten Kingdom. The Archaeology and History of Northern Israel, Atlanta 2013, . Translated to four languages. Hasmonean Realities behind Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles, Atlanta 2018. Co-editor of three festschrifts – for Nadav Na'aman, David Ussishkin and Benjamin Sass. Articles About 400 scholarly articles; for many of them see: https://telaviv.academia.edu/IsraelFinkelstein Festschrift Bene Israel: Studies in the Archaeology of Israel and the Levant during the Bronze and Iron Ages in Honour of Israel Finkelstein, Leiden and London 2008 (eds. Alexander Fantalkin and Assaf Yasur-Landau). Rethinking Israel: Studies in the History and Archaeology of Ancient Israel in Honor of Israel Finkelstein, Winona Lake 2017 (eds. Oded Lipschits, Yuval Gadot and Matthew J. Adams). The Shmunis Family Conversations in the Archaeology and History of Ancient Israel with Israel Finkelstein The Shmunis Family Conversations in the Archaeology and History of Ancient Israel with Israel Finkelstein series is a YouTube series hosted by the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research's Albright Live YouTube Channel. As of September 2021, 26 episodes have been released. The series is set as an interview-style conversation between Albright Institute Director Matthew J. Adams and archaeologist Israel Finkelstein. Episodes cover the rise of Ancient Israel as evidenced by archaeology, ancient Near Eastern textual sources, the Bible, and archaeology from the Late Bronze Age through the Hellenistic Period. The episodes are written and directed by Israel Finkelstein and Matthew J. Adams with cinematography and editing by Yuval Pan. The series is Produced by Djehuti Productions and the Albright Institute with a grant from the Shmunis Family Foundation. Awards and recognition Finkelstein is the Laureate of the Dan David Prize in 2005. The select committee noted that he is "widely regarded as a leading scholar in the archaeology of the Levant and as a foremost applicant of archaeological knowledge to reconstructing biblical Israelite history. He excels at creatively forging links between archaeology and the exact sciences and he has revolutionized many of these fields. … Finkelstein has had an impact on radically revising the history of Israel in the 10th and 9th centuries BCE. He has transformed the study of history and archaeology in Israeli universities, moving from a ‘monumental’ to a ‘systemic’ study of the archaeological evidence. He has taken what was becoming a rather staid and conservative discipline, with everyone in general agreement as to interpretation of excavation results, and has turned things upside down. … The study of these periods is never again going to be what it once was. … Israel Finkelstein has proven to be creative, generating scholarship no less than discussion, launching ideas and stimulating debates, fearlessly but with imagination and grace." In 2014, Finkelstein was awarded the Prix Delalande Guérineau: Institut de France, l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, for his book Le Royaume biblique oublié (The Forgotten Kingdom). He is the recipient of the MacAllister Field Archaeology Award 2017 (The American Schools of Oriental Research). His other awards include the French decoration of Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres, (2009) and the Doctorat honoris causa of the University of Lausanne (2010). Criticism Finkelstein's theories about Saul, David and Solomon have been criticized by fellow archaeologists. Amihai Mazar described Finkelstein's Low Chronology proposal as "premature and unacceptable". Amnon Ben-Tor accused him of employing a “double standard”, citing the biblical text where it suited him and deploring its use where it did not. Other criticisms came from William G. Dever (who dismissed the Low Chronology as "idiosyncratic"), Lawrence Stager, Doron Ben-Ami, Raz Kletter and Anabel Zarzeki-Peleg. David Ussishkin, despite agreeing with many of Finkelstein's theories about the United Monarchy, has also shown doubts and reservations about Finkelstein's Low Chronology. Writing in the Biblical Archaeology Review and subsequently in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, William G. Dever described The Bible Unearthed as a "convoluted story", writing that "This clever, trendy work may deceive lay readers". Evangelical Christian biblical scholar Kenneth Kitchen was also critical of the book, writing that "[A] careful critical perusal of this work—which certainly has much to say about both archaeology and the biblical writings—reveals that we are dealing very largely with a work of imaginative fiction, not a serious or reliable account of the subject", and "Their treatment of the exodus is among the most factually ignorant and misleading that this writer has ever read." Another evangelical, Richard Hess, also being critical, wrote that "The authors always present their interpretation of the archaeological data but do not mention or interact with contemporary alternative approaches. Thus the book is ideologically driven and controlled." A 2004 debate between Finkelstein and William G. Dever, mediated by Hershel Shanks (editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review), quickly degenerated into insults, with Dever calling Finkelstein "idiosyncratic and doctrinaire" and Finkelstein dismissing Dever as a "jealous academic parasite". Dever later accused Finkelstein of supporting post-Zionism, to which Finkelstein replied by accusing Dever of being "a biblical literalist disguised as a liberal". Shanks described the exchange between the two as "embarassing". Following the publication of The Forgotten Kingdom, Dever once again harshly criticized Finkelstein: writing in the Biblical Archaeology Review, he described Finkelstein as "a magician and a showman". He stated that the book was full of "numerous errors, misrepresentations, over-simplifications and contradictions". Another, more moderate, review was written on the same magazine by Aaron Burke: while Burke described Finkelstein's book as "ambitious" and praised its literary style, he did not accept Finkelstein's conclusions. He stated that the book engages in several speculations that cannot be proved by archeology, biblical and extra-biblical sources. He also criticized Finkelstein for persistently trying to downgrade the role of David in the development of ancient Israel. Other landmarks Selected as one of the 10 most influential researchers in the history of archaeology in the Levant (a Swiss publication, 1993). Invited to the Salon du Livre in Paris, 2008. Two public debates there: with the French philosopher Armand Abécassis on La Bible et la Terre Sainte, and with the Israeli author Meir Shalev on la Bible de l’ecrivain et la Bible de l’archeologue. Keynote address in the Annual Meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Nashville 2000. A ca. 50 pages profile chapter in J.-F. Mondot’s Une Bible pour deux mémoires (Paris 2006). Invited lecture in the special symposium celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Weizmann Institute (together with Nobel Prize laureates Ada Yonath and Daniel Kahneman, and Lord Wilson, 2009). Keynote address in the Symposium of Mediterranean Archaeology, Florence 2012. Two lectures in the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, Paris, May 2012 and February 2016. Public lectures in events at universities such as the University of Chicago, Heidelberg University (2014) and Princeton University. Joint session of the American Schools of Oriental Research and Society of Biblical Literature titled Rethinking Israel – celebrating the publication of Rethinking Israel, Studies in the History and Archaeology of Ancient Israel in Honr of Israel Finkelstein, Boston 2017. Conversation with Israel Finkelstein and Thomas Romer, central evening event in the International Meeting of the Society for Biblical Literature, Rome, July 2019. References External links Finkelstein's personal website: https://israelfinkelstein.wordpress.com/ The Megiddo Expedition: https://megiddoexpedition.wordpress.com/ The Kiriath-Jearim excavations: https://kiriathjearim.wordpress.com/ The digitized epigraphy website: http://www-nuclear.tau.ac.il/~eip/ostraca/Home/Home.html Finkelstein's scholarly articles on academia.edu: https://telaviv.academia.edu/IsraelFinkelstein The Dan David prize, 2005: http://www.dandavidprize.org/laureates/2005/77-past-archaeology/173-prof-israel-finkelstein The Shmunis Family Conversations in the Archaeology and History of Ancient Israel with Israel Finkelstein, 2020–2021: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvm7MPUI_WJclpUfZgCw1Tfd_cyT4Fh-f 1949 births Living people 20th-century archaeologists 20th-century Israeli male writers 21st-century archaeologists 21st-century Israeli male writers Biblical archaeologists Historical geographers Israeli archaeologists Israeli Ashkenazi Jews Israeli people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent Tel Aviv University faculty

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what subject did he teach?

what subject did Israel Finkelstein teach?

Israel Finkelstein

From 1976 to 1990 Finkelstein taught at the Department of Land of Israel Studies, Bar-Ilan University, beginning as a teaching assistant. He spent the academic year of 1983-84 in a research group led by Prof. Yigael Yadin in the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. In 1986-87 Finkelstein taught at the Department for Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago. In 1987 he was appointed an associate professor with tenure at Bar-Ilan University and in 1990 moved to the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations at Tel Aviv University. In 1992/93 Finkelstein spent a sabbatical year as a visiting scholar at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University. Since 1992, he has been a Full Professor at Tel Aviv University. He served as the chairperson of the Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Studies (1994-98) and as Director of The Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology (1996-2003). In 1998-99 Finkelstein was a visiting scholar in the Centre de Recherche d'Archeologie Orientale and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in the Sorbonne, Paris. Finkelstein delivered series of lectures on the history and archaeology of Ancient Israel at the Texas Christian University (2002), the University of Buenos Aires (2011), the College de France in Paris (2012) and the Methodist University of Sao Paulo (2015). He is scheduled to deliver similar lectures at the Tokyo Christian University (2017) and the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome (2017). Finkelstein has read over 100 papers in international conferences and given numerous talks in universities around the globe. Finkelstein has been the Editor of Tel Aviv, the journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, since 2008 and Executive Editor of the Monograph Series by the Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, since 2005. He is a member of editorial boards, including the Palestine Exploration Journal and the Archaeology and Biblical Studies series, the Society of Biblical Literature. CANNOTANSWER

Jerusalem. In 1986-87 Finkelstein taught at the Department for Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago.

Israel Finkelstein (, born March 29, 1949) is an Israeli archaeologist, professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University. Finkelstein is active in the archaeology of the Levant and is an applicant of archaeological data in reconstructing biblical history. He is also known for applying the exact and life sciences in archaeological and historical reconstruction. Finkelstein is the current excavator of Megiddo, a key site for the study of the Bronze and Iron Ages in the Levant. Finkelstein is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and an associé étranger of the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Finkelstein has received several noteworthy academic and writing awards. In 2005, he won the Dan David Prize for his revision of the history of Israel in the 10th and 9th centuries BCE. In 2009 he was named chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture, and in 2010, received a doctorate honoris causa from the University of Lausanne. He is a member of the selection committee of the Shanghai Archaeology Forum, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Among Finkelstein's books are The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts (2001) and David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition (2006), both written with Neil Asher Silberman. Also he wrote the textbooks on the emergence of Ancient Israel, titled The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement (1988); on the archaeology and history of the arid zones of the Levant, titled Living on the Fringe (1995); and on the Northern Kingdom of Israel, titled The Forgotten Kingdom (2013). Background Family Israel Finkelstein was born to an Ashkenazi Jewish family in Tel Aviv, Israel, on March 29, 1949. His parents were Zvi (Grisha) Finkelstein (born 1908) and Miriam Finkelstein (maiden name Ellenhorn, born 1910). His great grandfather on his mother's side, Shlomo Ellenhorn, came to Palestine from Grodno (today in Belarus) in the 1850s and settled in Hebron. He was one of the first physicians in the Bikur Cholim Hospital in Jerusalem, and is listed among the group of people who purchased the land in 1878 in order to establish Petah Tikva – the first modern Jewish settlement in Palestine outside the four holy cities. Finkelstein's grandfather, Israel Jacob Ellenhorn, was the first pharmacist in Petah Tikva. Finkelstein’s father was born in Melitopol (Ukraine). He came to Palestine with his family in 1920. He was in the orange-growing business and was active in the sports organisations of Israel. He served as vice chairman of the Israel Football Association, chairman of Maccabi Israel and was a member of the Israel Olympic Committee. Finkelstein is married to Joelle (maiden name Cohen). They are the parents of two daughters – Adar (born 1992) and Sarai (born 1996). Education Israel Finkelstein attended the PICA elementary school (1956–1963) and Ahad Ha'am High School (1963–1967), both in Petah Tikva. He then served in the Israel Defense Forces (1967–1970). He studied archaeology and Near Eastern civilizations, and geography at Tel Aviv University, receiving his BA in 1974. While there, Finkelstein was a student of Prof. Yohanan Aharoni. He continued as a research student under the supervision of Prof. Moshe Kochavi, receiving his MA in 1978 (thesis on Rural Settlement in the Yarkon Basin in the Iron Age and Persian-Hellenistic Periods). He graduated as a PhD in 1983 with a thesis titled "The Izbet Sartah Excavations and the Israelite Settlement in the Hill Country". Academic career From 1976 to 1990, Finkelstein taught at the Department of Land of Israel Studies, Bar-Ilan University, beginning as a teaching assistant. He spent the academic year of 1983–84 in a research group led by Prof. Yigael Yadin in the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. In 1986 and 1987, Finkelstein taught at the Department for Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago. In 1987 he was appointed an associate professor with tenure at Bar-Ilan University and in 1990 moved to the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations at Tel Aviv University. In 1992/93 Finkelstein spent a sabbatical year as a visiting scholar at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University. Since 1992, he has been a Full Professor at Tel Aviv University. He served as the chairperson of the Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Studies (1994–98) and as Director of The Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology (1996–2003). In 1998–99 Finkelstein was a visiting scholar in the Centre de Recherche d’Archéologie Orientale and the École Pratique des Hautes Études in the Sorbonne, Paris. Finkelstein delivered series of lectures on the history and archaeology of Ancient Israel at the Texas Christian University (2002), the University of Buenos Aires (2011), the College de France in Paris (2012) and the Methodist University of São Paulo (2015), the Tokyo Christian University (2017), the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome (2017) and the University of Zurich (2018). Finkelstein has read over 100 papers in international conferences and given numerous talks in universities around the globe. Finkelstein has been the Editor of Tel Aviv, the journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, since 2008 and Executive Editor of the Monograph Series by the Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, since 2005. He is a member of editorial boards, including the Palestine Exploration Quarterly and the Archaeology and Biblical Studies series of the Society of Biblical Literature. Fieldwork Finkelstein was trained as a field archaeologist in the excavations of Tel Beer Sheva (1971, Director: Yohanan Aharoni) and Tel Aphek (1973–1978, Directors: Moshe Kochavi and Pirhiya Beck). Starting in 1976, he carried out his own fieldwork in a variety of sites and regions: Past excavations and surveys ‘Izbet Sartah, 1976–1978: Field Director (under Prof. Moshe Kochavi) of excavations at ‘Izbet Sartah, an Iron I-Iron IIA village-site near Rosh Ha‘ayin, east of Tel Aviv. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, Izbet Sartah: An Early Iron Age Site near Rosh Ha‘ayin, Israel, Oxford 1986 (BAR International Series 299). Southern Sinai, 1976–1978: Surveys of Byzantine monastic remains in southern Sinai. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, Byzantine Monastic Remains in Southern Sinai, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 39 (1985), pp. 39–75. Bene Beraq, 1977: Director of salvage excavations at the mound of ancient Bene Beraq near Tel Aviv. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, Soundings at Ancient Bene-Beraq, ‘Atiqot 10 (1990), pp. 29–40 (Hebrew). Tel Ira, 1980: Co-Director of the excavations of the Iron II site of Tel Ira in the Beer-sheba Valley (together with I. Beit-Arieh and B. Cresson). For the results see: I. Finkelstein and I. Beit-Arieh, Area E, in I. Beit-Arieh (ed.), Tel Ira: A Stronghold in the Biblical Negev (monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 15), Tel Aviv 1999, pp. 67–96. Shiloh, 1981–1984: Director of the excavations at biblical Shiloh in the highlands north of Jerusalem. The site features Middle Bronze, Late Bronze and Iron I remains. For the results see: I. Finkelstein (ed.), Shiloh: The Archaeology of a Biblical Site (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 10), Tel Aviv 1993. Southern Samaria Survey, 1981–1987: Director of the survey, ca. 1000 km2. in the highlands north of Jerusalem. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, Z. Lederman and S. Bunimovitz, Highlands of Many Cultures, The Southern Samaria Survey, The Sites (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 14). Tel Aviv Khirbet ed-Dawwara, 1985–86: Director, excavations at Khirbet ed-Dawwara, an Iron I-early Iron IIA site in the desert fringe northeast of Jerusalem. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, Excavations at Kh. ed-Dawwara: An Iron Age Site Northeast of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv 17 (1990), pp. 163–208. Dhahr Mirzbaneh, 1987: Sounding at the Intermediate Bronze site of Dhahr Mirzbaneh in the desert fringe northeast of Jerusalem. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, The Central Hill Country in the Intermediate Bronze Age, Israel Exploration Journal 41 (1991), pp. 19–45. Present excavations Megiddo, 1994–present: co-Director, the Megiddo Excavations (1994–2012 with David Ussishkin, since 2014 with Matthew J. Adams and Mario A.S. Martin). Megiddo is considered as one of the most important Bronze and Iron Age sites in the Levant. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, D. Ussishkin and B. Halpern (eds.), Megiddo III: The 1992–1996 Seasons (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 18). Tel Aviv 2000. I. Finkelstein, D. Ussishkin and B. Halpern (eds.), Megiddo IV: The 1998–2002 Seasons (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 24), Tel Aviv 2006. I. Finkelstein, D. Ussishkin and E.H. Cline (editors), Megiddo V: The 2004–2008 Seasons (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 31), Winona Lake 2013. I. Finkelstein, M.A.S. Martin and M.J. Adams (eds.), Megiddo VI: The 2010–2014 Seasons (forthcoming). The Negev Highlands, 2006–present: co-Director of excavations in the Iron Age sites of Atar Haroa and Nahal Boqer, and the Intermediate Bronze Age sites of Mashabe Sade and En Ziq (with Ruth Shahack-Gross). For the results see: R. Shahack-Gross and I. Finkelstein, Settlement Oscillations in the Negev Highlands Revisited: The Impact of Microarchaeological Methods, Radiocarbon 57/2 (2015), pp. 253–264. Kiriath-Jearim, 2017–present: co-Director, the Shmunis Family excavations at Kiriath-Jearim – a biblical site in the highlands west of Jerusalem associated with the Ark Narrative in the Book of Samuel (with Christophe Nicolle and Thomas Römer, the College de France). Other projects In the past 1997–2002: Petrographic study of the Amarna tablets (with Yuval Goren and Nadav Na'aman). For the results see: Y. Goren, I. Finkelstein and N. Na'aman, Inscribed in Clay: Provenance Study of the Amarna Letters and other Ancient Near Eastern Texts (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 23), Tel Aviv 2004. 2009–2014: Principal Investigator of a European Research Council-funded project titled Reconstructing Ancient Israel: The Exact and Life Sciences Perspectives (with Steve Weiner, Weizmann Institute of Science, co-Principal Investigator). The project was organized into 10 tracks: Radiocarbon dating, ancient DNA, geoarchaeology, paleoclimate, petrography, metallurgy, daily mathematics, advanced imaging of ostraca, residue analysis and archaeozoology. Over 40 scholars, advanced students and post-docs were involved in the project. Samples were taken from a large number of sites in Israel and Greece. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, S. Weiner and E. Boaretto (eds.), Reconstructing Ancient Israel: The Exact and Life Sciences Perspectives, special issue of Radiocarbon (57/2), 2015, with a list of all publications until 2015. Paleoclimate of the Levant (2009-2019), with Dafna Langgut (Tel Aviv University) and Thomas Litt (University of Bonn). The Archaeological and Historical Realities behind the Pentateuch (2016-2019), with Konrad Schmid (University of Zurich), Thomas Römer and Christophe Nihan (University of Lausanne) and Oded Lipschits (Tel Aviv University). Ongoing research projects Geoarchaeological Investigations in the Negev Highlands (2006-) with Ruth Shahack-Gross (University of Haifa). Iron Age Hebrew Ostraca in the Silicon Age: Computerized Paleography (2008-), directed with Eli Piasetzky (Tel Aviv University). For results see list of publications in http://www-nuclear.tau.ac.il/~eip/ostraca/Publications/Publications.html Ancient DNA, animals and Humans (2009-), with Meirav Meiri (Tel Aviv University); current cooperation with Joseph Maran and Philipp Stockhammer (Universities of Heidelberg and Munich), Liran Carmel (Hebrew University) and David Reich (Harvard University). Scholarly contributions Finkelstein has written on a variety of topics, including the archaeology of the Bronze Age and the exact and life sciences contribution to archaeology. Much of his work has been devoted to the Iron Age and, more specifically, to questions related to the history of Ancient Israel. The Emergence of Ancient Israel The classical theories on the emergence of Israel viewed the process as a unique event in the history of the region. Finkelstein suggested that we are dealing with a long-term process of a cyclical nature. He demonstrated that the wave of settlement in the highlands in the Iron Age I (ca. 1150-950 BCE) was the last in a series of such demographic developments – the first had taken place in the Early Bronze and the second in the Middle Bronze. The periods between these peaks were characterized by low settlement activity. Finkelstein explained these oscillations as representing changes along the sedentary/ pastoral-nomadic continuum, which were caused by socioeconomic and political dynamics. Hence, a big portion of the people who settled in the highlands in the early Iron Age were locals of a pastoral-nomadic background. Others, who originated from local sedentary background, moved to the highlands as a result of the Bronze Age collapse – which in turn was related to a long period of dry climate in ca. 1250-1100 BCE. Since eventually these groups formed the Northern Kingdom of Israel, they can be labeled "Israelites" as early as their initial settlement process. The same holds true for the contemporary settlement process in Transjordan and western Syria, which brought about the rise of Moab, Ammon and the Aramean kingdoms of the later phases of the Iron Age. Finkelstein regards the biblical account on the Conquest of Canaan in the Book of Joshua as an ideological manifesto of the Deuteronomistic author/s of the late 7th century BCE, describing a "conquest to be" under King Josiah of Judah rather than a historical event at the end of the Bronze Age. He proposed that the original Conquest Account may have originated in the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the early 8th century BCE; it could have been influenced by memories of the turmoil that had taken place in the lowlands in the late Iron I (10th century BCE), rather than the end of the Late Bronze Age (late 12th century BCE). The Low Chronology Until the 1990s, the chronology of the Iron Age in the Levant had been anchored in the biblical account of the great United Monarchy of David and Solomon. Accordingly, the Iron I ended ca. 1000 BCE and the Iron IIA was dated from 1000 BCE until the campaign of Pharaoh Sheshonq I (biblical Shishak) ca. 925 BCE. The two Iron IIA palaces at Megiddo were conceived as the material manifestation for the Solomonic Empire. While preparing for the excavations at Megiddo in the early 1990s, Finkelstein noticed difficulties in this scheme. Noteworthy among them is the appearance of similar traits of material culture at Megiddo in a layer that was dated to the time of King Solomon in the middle of the 10th century, and at Samaria and Jezreel in contexts dated to the time of the Omride Dynasty (of the Northern Kingdom of Israel) in the early 9th century BCE. To resolve these difficulties, Finkelstein proposed to "lower" the dates of the Iron Age strata in the Levant by several decades. According to Finkelstein's Low Chronology, the Iron Age I lasted until the middle of the 10th century BCE, while the Iron IIA is dated between the middle of the 10th century and ca. 800 BCE, if not slightly later. This means that the Megiddo palaces and other features which had traditionally been attributed to the time of King Solomon – features which date to the late Iron IIA – should indeed be associated with the endeavors of the Omride Dynasty in the first half of the 9th century BCE. A big debate ensued. Starting in the late 1990s, the focus of the discussion shifted to the interpretation of radiocarbon determinations for organic samples from key sites, such as Tel Rehov and Megiddo. All in all, the radiocarbon results put the Iron I/IIA transition ca. the middle of the 10th century (rather than 1000 BCE as had traditionally been proposed), and the Iron IIA/B transition in the early days of the 8th century (rather than ca. 925 BCE). In parallel, and not directly connected, Finkelstein dealt with the chronology of Philistine pottery of the Iron Age I. The traditional theory fixed the appearance of Philistine pottery – and hence the settlement of the Philistines in the southern coastal plain of the Levant – in accordance with the confrontation between Ramses III and the Sea Peoples in the early 12th century BCE. In other words, Philistine pottery appears during the last phase of Egyptian rule in Canaan. Finkelstein proposed that the locally-made Monochrome pottery known from several sites in Philistia, which is widely understood as representing the earliest phase of Philistine settlement, should be dated after the withdrawal of Egypt from Canaan in the 1130s. Finkelstein sees the biblical description of the time of David and Solomon as multilayered. He acknowledges the historicity of the founders of the Davidic Dynasty, places them in the 10th century BCE, and considers the possibility that the description of the rise of David to power conceals old memories of his activity as a leader of an Apiru-band that was active in the southern fringe of Judah. Yet, he sees the description of a great United Monarchy as an ideological construct that represents the ideology of late-monarchic author/s in the late 7th century BCE, first and foremost the pan-Israelite ideology of the days of King Josiah of Judah. According to him, the historical David and Solomon ruled over a small territory in the southern highlands – a territory not very different from that of Jerusalem of the Late Bronze Age. Finkelstein sees much of the description of King Solomon as representing realities from late monarchic times: First, from the later days of the Northern Kingdom (for instance, the reference to Megiddo, Hazor and Gezer in and to the stables, horses and chariots of Solomon). Second, from the time of King Manasseh of Judah in the early 7th century BCE, under Assyrian domination (for instance, the visit of the Queen of Sheba in Jerusalem). He understands the description of the Philistines in the Bible as portraying realities in Philistia in late-monarchic times. "New Canaan" Following the results of the excavations at Megiddo, Finkelstein argued that the material culture of the Iron I in the northern valleys continues that of the Late Bronze Age. In other words, the collapse of the Late Bronze city-states under Egyptian domination in the late 12th century BCE was followed by revival of some of the same centers and rise of others in the Iron I. He termed this phenomenon "New Canaan". Accordingly, the major break in the material culture of Canaan took place at the end of the Iron I in the 10th century BCE rather than the end of the Late Bronze Age. Finkelstein associated the violent destruction of the revived city-states with the expansion of the highlanders (early Israelites). He suggested that memories of the turmoil in the lowlands in the late Iron I can be found in northern traditions regarding skirmishes with Canaanite cities which appear in the heroic stories in the Book of Judges. The Northern Kingdom Finkelstein dealt with a variety of themes related to the archeology and history of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. He proposed that the first North Israelite territorial polity emerged in the Gibeon-Bethel plateau in the late Iron I and early Iron IIA. He found archaeological evidence for this in the system of fortified sites, such as Tell en-Nasbeh, Khirbet ed-Dawwara, et-Tell ("Ai") and Gibeon. Historical evidence for the existence of this polity can be found in the campaign of Pharaoh Sheshonq I in this region in the middle-to-second half of the 10th century BCE. According to Finkelstein, positive memories in the Bible of the House of Saul, which originated from the North, represent this early Israelite entity. He suggested that this north Israelite polity ruled over much of the territory of the highlands, that it presented a threat to the interests of Egypt of the 22nd Dynasty in Canaan, and that it was taken over during the campaign of Sheshonq I. Finkelstein proposed that in its early days, the Northern Kingdom (Jeroboam I and his successors) ruled over the Samaria Highlands, the western slopes of the Gilead and the area of the Jezreel Valley. The expansion of Israel further to the north came during the days of the Omride Dynasty in the first half of the 9th century BCE, and even more so in the time of Jeroboam II in the first half of the 8th century BCE. Finkelstein described the special features of Omride architecture and, with his Megiddo team, dealt with different subjects related to the material culture of the Northern Kingdom, such as metallurgy and cult practices. Finkelstein also reflected on biblical traditions related to the Northern Kingdom, such as the Jacob cycle in Genesis (a study carried out with Thomas Römer), the Exodus tradition, the heroic stories in the Book of Judges and remnants of royal traditions in the Books of Samuel and Kings. He suggested that these North Israelite traditions were first committed to writing in the days of Jeroboam II (first half of the 8th century BCE), that they were brought to Judah with Israelite refugees after the takeover of Israel by Assyria, and that they were later incorporated into the Judahite-dominated Bible. Finkelstein sees the biblical genre of deploying "history" in the service of royal ideology as emerging from Israel (the North) of the 8th century BCE. Archaeology and history of Jerusalem Finkelstein has recently dealt with the location of the ancient mound of Jerusalem (with Ido Koch and Oded Lipschits). The conventional wisdom sees that "City of David" ridge as the location of the original settlement of Jerusalem. Finkelstein and his colleagues argued that the "City of David" ridge does not have the silhouette of a mound; that it is located in topographical inferiority relative to the surrounding area; and that the archaeological record of the ridge does not include periods of habitation attested in reliable textual records. According to them, the most suitable location for the core of ancient Jerusalem is the Temple Mount. The large area of the Herodian platform (today's Harem esh-Sharif) may conceal a mound of five hectares and more, which – similar to other capital cities in the Levant – included both the royal compound and habitation quarters. Locating the mound of Ancient Jerusalem on the Temple Mount resolves many of the difficulties pertaining to the "City of David" ridge. According to Finkelstein, the history of Jerusalem in biblical times should be viewed in terms of three main phases: Firstly, until the 9th century BCE, Jerusalem was restricted to the mound on the Temple Mount and ruled over a modest area in the southern highlands. Accordingly, Jerusalem of the time of David and Solomon can be compared to Jerusalem of the Amarna period in the 14th century BCE: it had the size of a typical highlands mound (for instance, Shechem), ruled over a restricted area, but still had impact beyond the highlands. Secondly, the first expansion of Jerusalem came in the 9th century BCE, perhaps in its second half, when the town grew significantly in a southerly direction. Remains of the Iron IIA were unearthed south of al-Aqsa Mosque, above the Gihon Spring and to the south of the Dung Gate of the Old City. In parallel to this development, Judah expanded to the Shephelah in the west and Beer-sheba Valley in the south, and for the first time became a territorial kingdom rather than a city-state restricted to the highlands. Thirdly, the most impressive phase in the settlement history of Jerusalem commenced in the late 8th century BCE and lasted until its destruction by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. At that time Jerusalem expanded dramatically, to include the entire "City of David" ridge, as well as the "Western Hill" (the Armenian and Jewish Quarter of today's Old City). This expansion was the result of the arrival of Israelite refugees after the demise of the Northern Kingdom in 722-720 BCE. These groups brought with them traits of Northern material culture, and more important – their foundation myths, royal traditions and heroic stories. These Northern traditions were later incorporated into the Judahite Bible. Jerusalem and Yehud/Judea of the Persian and Hellenistic periods Finkelstein noted that in the Persian Period, Jerusalem was limited to the mound on the Temple Mount – and even there was sparsely settled – and that Yehud of that time was also thinly settled. As the description of the construction of the wall of Jerusalem in Nehemiah 3 must relate to the big city (extending beyond the old mound on the Temple Mount), it probably portrays the construction of the fortifications by the Hasmoneans. Finkelstein further noted that many of the sites mentioned in the lists of returnees in Ezra and Nehemiah were not inhabited in the Persian Period and hence sees these lists as reflecting the demographic situation in days of the Hasmoneans. The same holds true, in his opinion, for the genealogies in 1 Chronicles. Finkelstein then looked into the accounts of Judahite monarchs in 2 Chronicles, which do not appear in Kings. He called attention to similarities between these texts and 1 Maccabees, and proposed to understand Chronicles as representing legitimacy needs of the Hasmoneans. This means that at least 2 Chronicles dates to the late 2nd century BCE, probably to the days of John Hyrcanus. Published works Books In addition to the reports of excavations cited above: Sinai in Antiquity, Tel Aviv 1980 (ed., with Zeev Meshel, Hebrew) The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement, Jerusalem 1988, Archaeological Survey of the Hill Country of Benjamin, Jerusalem 1993, (ed., with Yitzhak Magen) From Nomadism to Monarchy: Archaeological and Historical Aspects of Early Israel, Jerusalem 1994, (ed., with Nadav Na'aman) Living on the Fringe: The Archaeology and History of the Negev, Sinai and Neighbouring Regions in the Bronze and Iron Ages, Sheffield 1995, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, New York 2001 (with Neil Asher Silberman). Translated to 12 languages. David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition, New York 2006, (with Neil Asher Silberman). Translated to six languages. The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archeology and the History of Early Israel, Atlanta 2007, (with Amihai Mazar) Un archéologue au pays de la Bible, Paris 2008, The Forgotten Kingdom. The Archaeology and History of Northern Israel, Atlanta 2013, . Translated to four languages. Hasmonean Realities behind Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles, Atlanta 2018. Co-editor of three festschrifts – for Nadav Na'aman, David Ussishkin and Benjamin Sass. Articles About 400 scholarly articles; for many of them see: https://telaviv.academia.edu/IsraelFinkelstein Festschrift Bene Israel: Studies in the Archaeology of Israel and the Levant during the Bronze and Iron Ages in Honour of Israel Finkelstein, Leiden and London 2008 (eds. Alexander Fantalkin and Assaf Yasur-Landau). Rethinking Israel: Studies in the History and Archaeology of Ancient Israel in Honor of Israel Finkelstein, Winona Lake 2017 (eds. Oded Lipschits, Yuval Gadot and Matthew J. Adams). The Shmunis Family Conversations in the Archaeology and History of Ancient Israel with Israel Finkelstein The Shmunis Family Conversations in the Archaeology and History of Ancient Israel with Israel Finkelstein series is a YouTube series hosted by the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research's Albright Live YouTube Channel. As of September 2021, 26 episodes have been released. The series is set as an interview-style conversation between Albright Institute Director Matthew J. Adams and archaeologist Israel Finkelstein. Episodes cover the rise of Ancient Israel as evidenced by archaeology, ancient Near Eastern textual sources, the Bible, and archaeology from the Late Bronze Age through the Hellenistic Period. The episodes are written and directed by Israel Finkelstein and Matthew J. Adams with cinematography and editing by Yuval Pan. The series is Produced by Djehuti Productions and the Albright Institute with a grant from the Shmunis Family Foundation. Awards and recognition Finkelstein is the Laureate of the Dan David Prize in 2005. The select committee noted that he is "widely regarded as a leading scholar in the archaeology of the Levant and as a foremost applicant of archaeological knowledge to reconstructing biblical Israelite history. He excels at creatively forging links between archaeology and the exact sciences and he has revolutionized many of these fields. … Finkelstein has had an impact on radically revising the history of Israel in the 10th and 9th centuries BCE. He has transformed the study of history and archaeology in Israeli universities, moving from a ‘monumental’ to a ‘systemic’ study of the archaeological evidence. He has taken what was becoming a rather staid and conservative discipline, with everyone in general agreement as to interpretation of excavation results, and has turned things upside down. … The study of these periods is never again going to be what it once was. … Israel Finkelstein has proven to be creative, generating scholarship no less than discussion, launching ideas and stimulating debates, fearlessly but with imagination and grace." In 2014, Finkelstein was awarded the Prix Delalande Guérineau: Institut de France, l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, for his book Le Royaume biblique oublié (The Forgotten Kingdom). He is the recipient of the MacAllister Field Archaeology Award 2017 (The American Schools of Oriental Research). His other awards include the French decoration of Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres, (2009) and the Doctorat honoris causa of the University of Lausanne (2010). Criticism Finkelstein's theories about Saul, David and Solomon have been criticized by fellow archaeologists. Amihai Mazar described Finkelstein's Low Chronology proposal as "premature and unacceptable". Amnon Ben-Tor accused him of employing a “double standard”, citing the biblical text where it suited him and deploring its use where it did not. Other criticisms came from William G. Dever (who dismissed the Low Chronology as "idiosyncratic"), Lawrence Stager, Doron Ben-Ami, Raz Kletter and Anabel Zarzeki-Peleg. David Ussishkin, despite agreeing with many of Finkelstein's theories about the United Monarchy, has also shown doubts and reservations about Finkelstein's Low Chronology. Writing in the Biblical Archaeology Review and subsequently in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, William G. Dever described The Bible Unearthed as a "convoluted story", writing that "This clever, trendy work may deceive lay readers". Evangelical Christian biblical scholar Kenneth Kitchen was also critical of the book, writing that "[A] careful critical perusal of this work—which certainly has much to say about both archaeology and the biblical writings—reveals that we are dealing very largely with a work of imaginative fiction, not a serious or reliable account of the subject", and "Their treatment of the exodus is among the most factually ignorant and misleading that this writer has ever read." Another evangelical, Richard Hess, also being critical, wrote that "The authors always present their interpretation of the archaeological data but do not mention or interact with contemporary alternative approaches. Thus the book is ideologically driven and controlled." A 2004 debate between Finkelstein and William G. Dever, mediated by Hershel Shanks (editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review), quickly degenerated into insults, with Dever calling Finkelstein "idiosyncratic and doctrinaire" and Finkelstein dismissing Dever as a "jealous academic parasite". Dever later accused Finkelstein of supporting post-Zionism, to which Finkelstein replied by accusing Dever of being "a biblical literalist disguised as a liberal". Shanks described the exchange between the two as "embarassing". Following the publication of The Forgotten Kingdom, Dever once again harshly criticized Finkelstein: writing in the Biblical Archaeology Review, he described Finkelstein as "a magician and a showman". He stated that the book was full of "numerous errors, misrepresentations, over-simplifications and contradictions". Another, more moderate, review was written on the same magazine by Aaron Burke: while Burke described Finkelstein's book as "ambitious" and praised its literary style, he did not accept Finkelstein's conclusions. He stated that the book engages in several speculations that cannot be proved by archeology, biblical and extra-biblical sources. He also criticized Finkelstein for persistently trying to downgrade the role of David in the development of ancient Israel. Other landmarks Selected as one of the 10 most influential researchers in the history of archaeology in the Levant (a Swiss publication, 1993). Invited to the Salon du Livre in Paris, 2008. Two public debates there: with the French philosopher Armand Abécassis on La Bible et la Terre Sainte, and with the Israeli author Meir Shalev on la Bible de l’ecrivain et la Bible de l’archeologue. Keynote address in the Annual Meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Nashville 2000. A ca. 50 pages profile chapter in J.-F. Mondot’s Une Bible pour deux mémoires (Paris 2006). Invited lecture in the special symposium celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Weizmann Institute (together with Nobel Prize laureates Ada Yonath and Daniel Kahneman, and Lord Wilson, 2009). Keynote address in the Symposium of Mediterranean Archaeology, Florence 2012. Two lectures in the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, Paris, May 2012 and February 2016. Public lectures in events at universities such as the University of Chicago, Heidelberg University (2014) and Princeton University. Joint session of the American Schools of Oriental Research and Society of Biblical Literature titled Rethinking Israel – celebrating the publication of Rethinking Israel, Studies in the History and Archaeology of Ancient Israel in Honr of Israel Finkelstein, Boston 2017. Conversation with Israel Finkelstein and Thomas Romer, central evening event in the International Meeting of the Society for Biblical Literature, Rome, July 2019. References External links Finkelstein's personal website: https://israelfinkelstein.wordpress.com/ The Megiddo Expedition: https://megiddoexpedition.wordpress.com/ The Kiriath-Jearim excavations: https://kiriathjearim.wordpress.com/ The digitized epigraphy website: http://www-nuclear.tau.ac.il/~eip/ostraca/Home/Home.html Finkelstein's scholarly articles on academia.edu: https://telaviv.academia.edu/IsraelFinkelstein The Dan David prize, 2005: http://www.dandavidprize.org/laureates/2005/77-past-archaeology/173-prof-israel-finkelstein The Shmunis Family Conversations in the Archaeology and History of Ancient Israel with Israel Finkelstein, 2020–2021: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvm7MPUI_WJclpUfZgCw1Tfd_cyT4Fh-f 1949 births Living people 20th-century archaeologists 20th-century Israeli male writers 21st-century archaeologists 21st-century Israeli male writers Biblical archaeologists Historical geographers Israeli archaeologists Israeli Ashkenazi Jews Israeli people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent Tel Aviv University faculty

C_4d673f03f1d64a48b4323c3fe9d3cda7_1

did he teach anywhere else?

did Israel Finkelstein teach anywhere besides University of Chicago?

Israel Finkelstein

From 1976 to 1990 Finkelstein taught at the Department of Land of Israel Studies, Bar-Ilan University, beginning as a teaching assistant. He spent the academic year of 1983-84 in a research group led by Prof. Yigael Yadin in the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. In 1986-87 Finkelstein taught at the Department for Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago. In 1987 he was appointed an associate professor with tenure at Bar-Ilan University and in 1990 moved to the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations at Tel Aviv University. In 1992/93 Finkelstein spent a sabbatical year as a visiting scholar at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University. Since 1992, he has been a Full Professor at Tel Aviv University. He served as the chairperson of the Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Studies (1994-98) and as Director of The Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology (1996-2003). In 1998-99 Finkelstein was a visiting scholar in the Centre de Recherche d'Archeologie Orientale and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in the Sorbonne, Paris. Finkelstein delivered series of lectures on the history and archaeology of Ancient Israel at the Texas Christian University (2002), the University of Buenos Aires (2011), the College de France in Paris (2012) and the Methodist University of Sao Paulo (2015). He is scheduled to deliver similar lectures at the Tokyo Christian University (2017) and the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome (2017). Finkelstein has read over 100 papers in international conferences and given numerous talks in universities around the globe. Finkelstein has been the Editor of Tel Aviv, the journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, since 2008 and Executive Editor of the Monograph Series by the Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, since 2005. He is a member of editorial boards, including the Palestine Exploration Journal and the Archaeology and Biblical Studies series, the Society of Biblical Literature. CANNOTANSWER

In 1987 he was appointed an associate professor with tenure at Bar-Ilan University

Israel Finkelstein (, born March 29, 1949) is an Israeli archaeologist, professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University. Finkelstein is active in the archaeology of the Levant and is an applicant of archaeological data in reconstructing biblical history. He is also known for applying the exact and life sciences in archaeological and historical reconstruction. Finkelstein is the current excavator of Megiddo, a key site for the study of the Bronze and Iron Ages in the Levant. Finkelstein is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and an associé étranger of the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Finkelstein has received several noteworthy academic and writing awards. In 2005, he won the Dan David Prize for his revision of the history of Israel in the 10th and 9th centuries BCE. In 2009 he was named chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture, and in 2010, received a doctorate honoris causa from the University of Lausanne. He is a member of the selection committee of the Shanghai Archaeology Forum, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Among Finkelstein's books are The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts (2001) and David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition (2006), both written with Neil Asher Silberman. Also he wrote the textbooks on the emergence of Ancient Israel, titled The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement (1988); on the archaeology and history of the arid zones of the Levant, titled Living on the Fringe (1995); and on the Northern Kingdom of Israel, titled The Forgotten Kingdom (2013). Background Family Israel Finkelstein was born to an Ashkenazi Jewish family in Tel Aviv, Israel, on March 29, 1949. His parents were Zvi (Grisha) Finkelstein (born 1908) and Miriam Finkelstein (maiden name Ellenhorn, born 1910). His great grandfather on his mother's side, Shlomo Ellenhorn, came to Palestine from Grodno (today in Belarus) in the 1850s and settled in Hebron. He was one of the first physicians in the Bikur Cholim Hospital in Jerusalem, and is listed among the group of people who purchased the land in 1878 in order to establish Petah Tikva – the first modern Jewish settlement in Palestine outside the four holy cities. Finkelstein's grandfather, Israel Jacob Ellenhorn, was the first pharmacist in Petah Tikva. Finkelstein’s father was born in Melitopol (Ukraine). He came to Palestine with his family in 1920. He was in the orange-growing business and was active in the sports organisations of Israel. He served as vice chairman of the Israel Football Association, chairman of Maccabi Israel and was a member of the Israel Olympic Committee. Finkelstein is married to Joelle (maiden name Cohen). They are the parents of two daughters – Adar (born 1992) and Sarai (born 1996). Education Israel Finkelstein attended the PICA elementary school (1956–1963) and Ahad Ha'am High School (1963–1967), both in Petah Tikva. He then served in the Israel Defense Forces (1967–1970). He studied archaeology and Near Eastern civilizations, and geography at Tel Aviv University, receiving his BA in 1974. While there, Finkelstein was a student of Prof. Yohanan Aharoni. He continued as a research student under the supervision of Prof. Moshe Kochavi, receiving his MA in 1978 (thesis on Rural Settlement in the Yarkon Basin in the Iron Age and Persian-Hellenistic Periods). He graduated as a PhD in 1983 with a thesis titled "The Izbet Sartah Excavations and the Israelite Settlement in the Hill Country". Academic career From 1976 to 1990, Finkelstein taught at the Department of Land of Israel Studies, Bar-Ilan University, beginning as a teaching assistant. He spent the academic year of 1983–84 in a research group led by Prof. Yigael Yadin in the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. In 1986 and 1987, Finkelstein taught at the Department for Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago. In 1987 he was appointed an associate professor with tenure at Bar-Ilan University and in 1990 moved to the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations at Tel Aviv University. In 1992/93 Finkelstein spent a sabbatical year as a visiting scholar at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University. Since 1992, he has been a Full Professor at Tel Aviv University. He served as the chairperson of the Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Studies (1994–98) and as Director of The Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology (1996–2003). In 1998–99 Finkelstein was a visiting scholar in the Centre de Recherche d’Archéologie Orientale and the École Pratique des Hautes Études in the Sorbonne, Paris. Finkelstein delivered series of lectures on the history and archaeology of Ancient Israel at the Texas Christian University (2002), the University of Buenos Aires (2011), the College de France in Paris (2012) and the Methodist University of São Paulo (2015), the Tokyo Christian University (2017), the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome (2017) and the University of Zurich (2018). Finkelstein has read over 100 papers in international conferences and given numerous talks in universities around the globe. Finkelstein has been the Editor of Tel Aviv, the journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, since 2008 and Executive Editor of the Monograph Series by the Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, since 2005. He is a member of editorial boards, including the Palestine Exploration Quarterly and the Archaeology and Biblical Studies series of the Society of Biblical Literature. Fieldwork Finkelstein was trained as a field archaeologist in the excavations of Tel Beer Sheva (1971, Director: Yohanan Aharoni) and Tel Aphek (1973–1978, Directors: Moshe Kochavi and Pirhiya Beck). Starting in 1976, he carried out his own fieldwork in a variety of sites and regions: Past excavations and surveys ‘Izbet Sartah, 1976–1978: Field Director (under Prof. Moshe Kochavi) of excavations at ‘Izbet Sartah, an Iron I-Iron IIA village-site near Rosh Ha‘ayin, east of Tel Aviv. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, Izbet Sartah: An Early Iron Age Site near Rosh Ha‘ayin, Israel, Oxford 1986 (BAR International Series 299). Southern Sinai, 1976–1978: Surveys of Byzantine monastic remains in southern Sinai. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, Byzantine Monastic Remains in Southern Sinai, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 39 (1985), pp. 39–75. Bene Beraq, 1977: Director of salvage excavations at the mound of ancient Bene Beraq near Tel Aviv. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, Soundings at Ancient Bene-Beraq, ‘Atiqot 10 (1990), pp. 29–40 (Hebrew). Tel Ira, 1980: Co-Director of the excavations of the Iron II site of Tel Ira in the Beer-sheba Valley (together with I. Beit-Arieh and B. Cresson). For the results see: I. Finkelstein and I. Beit-Arieh, Area E, in I. Beit-Arieh (ed.), Tel Ira: A Stronghold in the Biblical Negev (monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 15), Tel Aviv 1999, pp. 67–96. Shiloh, 1981–1984: Director of the excavations at biblical Shiloh in the highlands north of Jerusalem. The site features Middle Bronze, Late Bronze and Iron I remains. For the results see: I. Finkelstein (ed.), Shiloh: The Archaeology of a Biblical Site (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 10), Tel Aviv 1993. Southern Samaria Survey, 1981–1987: Director of the survey, ca. 1000 km2. in the highlands north of Jerusalem. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, Z. Lederman and S. Bunimovitz, Highlands of Many Cultures, The Southern Samaria Survey, The Sites (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 14). Tel Aviv Khirbet ed-Dawwara, 1985–86: Director, excavations at Khirbet ed-Dawwara, an Iron I-early Iron IIA site in the desert fringe northeast of Jerusalem. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, Excavations at Kh. ed-Dawwara: An Iron Age Site Northeast of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv 17 (1990), pp. 163–208. Dhahr Mirzbaneh, 1987: Sounding at the Intermediate Bronze site of Dhahr Mirzbaneh in the desert fringe northeast of Jerusalem. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, The Central Hill Country in the Intermediate Bronze Age, Israel Exploration Journal 41 (1991), pp. 19–45. Present excavations Megiddo, 1994–present: co-Director, the Megiddo Excavations (1994–2012 with David Ussishkin, since 2014 with Matthew J. Adams and Mario A.S. Martin). Megiddo is considered as one of the most important Bronze and Iron Age sites in the Levant. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, D. Ussishkin and B. Halpern (eds.), Megiddo III: The 1992–1996 Seasons (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 18). Tel Aviv 2000. I. Finkelstein, D. Ussishkin and B. Halpern (eds.), Megiddo IV: The 1998–2002 Seasons (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 24), Tel Aviv 2006. I. Finkelstein, D. Ussishkin and E.H. Cline (editors), Megiddo V: The 2004–2008 Seasons (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 31), Winona Lake 2013. I. Finkelstein, M.A.S. Martin and M.J. Adams (eds.), Megiddo VI: The 2010–2014 Seasons (forthcoming). The Negev Highlands, 2006–present: co-Director of excavations in the Iron Age sites of Atar Haroa and Nahal Boqer, and the Intermediate Bronze Age sites of Mashabe Sade and En Ziq (with Ruth Shahack-Gross). For the results see: R. Shahack-Gross and I. Finkelstein, Settlement Oscillations in the Negev Highlands Revisited: The Impact of Microarchaeological Methods, Radiocarbon 57/2 (2015), pp. 253–264. Kiriath-Jearim, 2017–present: co-Director, the Shmunis Family excavations at Kiriath-Jearim – a biblical site in the highlands west of Jerusalem associated with the Ark Narrative in the Book of Samuel (with Christophe Nicolle and Thomas Römer, the College de France). Other projects In the past 1997–2002: Petrographic study of the Amarna tablets (with Yuval Goren and Nadav Na'aman). For the results see: Y. Goren, I. Finkelstein and N. Na'aman, Inscribed in Clay: Provenance Study of the Amarna Letters and other Ancient Near Eastern Texts (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 23), Tel Aviv 2004. 2009–2014: Principal Investigator of a European Research Council-funded project titled Reconstructing Ancient Israel: The Exact and Life Sciences Perspectives (with Steve Weiner, Weizmann Institute of Science, co-Principal Investigator). The project was organized into 10 tracks: Radiocarbon dating, ancient DNA, geoarchaeology, paleoclimate, petrography, metallurgy, daily mathematics, advanced imaging of ostraca, residue analysis and archaeozoology. Over 40 scholars, advanced students and post-docs were involved in the project. Samples were taken from a large number of sites in Israel and Greece. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, S. Weiner and E. Boaretto (eds.), Reconstructing Ancient Israel: The Exact and Life Sciences Perspectives, special issue of Radiocarbon (57/2), 2015, with a list of all publications until 2015. Paleoclimate of the Levant (2009-2019), with Dafna Langgut (Tel Aviv University) and Thomas Litt (University of Bonn). The Archaeological and Historical Realities behind the Pentateuch (2016-2019), with Konrad Schmid (University of Zurich), Thomas Römer and Christophe Nihan (University of Lausanne) and Oded Lipschits (Tel Aviv University). Ongoing research projects Geoarchaeological Investigations in the Negev Highlands (2006-) with Ruth Shahack-Gross (University of Haifa). Iron Age Hebrew Ostraca in the Silicon Age: Computerized Paleography (2008-), directed with Eli Piasetzky (Tel Aviv University). For results see list of publications in http://www-nuclear.tau.ac.il/~eip/ostraca/Publications/Publications.html Ancient DNA, animals and Humans (2009-), with Meirav Meiri (Tel Aviv University); current cooperation with Joseph Maran and Philipp Stockhammer (Universities of Heidelberg and Munich), Liran Carmel (Hebrew University) and David Reich (Harvard University). Scholarly contributions Finkelstein has written on a variety of topics, including the archaeology of the Bronze Age and the exact and life sciences contribution to archaeology. Much of his work has been devoted to the Iron Age and, more specifically, to questions related to the history of Ancient Israel. The Emergence of Ancient Israel The classical theories on the emergence of Israel viewed the process as a unique event in the history of the region. Finkelstein suggested that we are dealing with a long-term process of a cyclical nature. He demonstrated that the wave of settlement in the highlands in the Iron Age I (ca. 1150-950 BCE) was the last in a series of such demographic developments – the first had taken place in the Early Bronze and the second in the Middle Bronze. The periods between these peaks were characterized by low settlement activity. Finkelstein explained these oscillations as representing changes along the sedentary/ pastoral-nomadic continuum, which were caused by socioeconomic and political dynamics. Hence, a big portion of the people who settled in the highlands in the early Iron Age were locals of a pastoral-nomadic background. Others, who originated from local sedentary background, moved to the highlands as a result of the Bronze Age collapse – which in turn was related to a long period of dry climate in ca. 1250-1100 BCE. Since eventually these groups formed the Northern Kingdom of Israel, they can be labeled "Israelites" as early as their initial settlement process. The same holds true for the contemporary settlement process in Transjordan and western Syria, which brought about the rise of Moab, Ammon and the Aramean kingdoms of the later phases of the Iron Age. Finkelstein regards the biblical account on the Conquest of Canaan in the Book of Joshua as an ideological manifesto of the Deuteronomistic author/s of the late 7th century BCE, describing a "conquest to be" under King Josiah of Judah rather than a historical event at the end of the Bronze Age. He proposed that the original Conquest Account may have originated in the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the early 8th century BCE; it could have been influenced by memories of the turmoil that had taken place in the lowlands in the late Iron I (10th century BCE), rather than the end of the Late Bronze Age (late 12th century BCE). The Low Chronology Until the 1990s, the chronology of the Iron Age in the Levant had been anchored in the biblical account of the great United Monarchy of David and Solomon. Accordingly, the Iron I ended ca. 1000 BCE and the Iron IIA was dated from 1000 BCE until the campaign of Pharaoh Sheshonq I (biblical Shishak) ca. 925 BCE. The two Iron IIA palaces at Megiddo were conceived as the material manifestation for the Solomonic Empire. While preparing for the excavations at Megiddo in the early 1990s, Finkelstein noticed difficulties in this scheme. Noteworthy among them is the appearance of similar traits of material culture at Megiddo in a layer that was dated to the time of King Solomon in the middle of the 10th century, and at Samaria and Jezreel in contexts dated to the time of the Omride Dynasty (of the Northern Kingdom of Israel) in the early 9th century BCE. To resolve these difficulties, Finkelstein proposed to "lower" the dates of the Iron Age strata in the Levant by several decades. According to Finkelstein's Low Chronology, the Iron Age I lasted until the middle of the 10th century BCE, while the Iron IIA is dated between the middle of the 10th century and ca. 800 BCE, if not slightly later. This means that the Megiddo palaces and other features which had traditionally been attributed to the time of King Solomon – features which date to the late Iron IIA – should indeed be associated with the endeavors of the Omride Dynasty in the first half of the 9th century BCE. A big debate ensued. Starting in the late 1990s, the focus of the discussion shifted to the interpretation of radiocarbon determinations for organic samples from key sites, such as Tel Rehov and Megiddo. All in all, the radiocarbon results put the Iron I/IIA transition ca. the middle of the 10th century (rather than 1000 BCE as had traditionally been proposed), and the Iron IIA/B transition in the early days of the 8th century (rather than ca. 925 BCE). In parallel, and not directly connected, Finkelstein dealt with the chronology of Philistine pottery of the Iron Age I. The traditional theory fixed the appearance of Philistine pottery – and hence the settlement of the Philistines in the southern coastal plain of the Levant – in accordance with the confrontation between Ramses III and the Sea Peoples in the early 12th century BCE. In other words, Philistine pottery appears during the last phase of Egyptian rule in Canaan. Finkelstein proposed that the locally-made Monochrome pottery known from several sites in Philistia, which is widely understood as representing the earliest phase of Philistine settlement, should be dated after the withdrawal of Egypt from Canaan in the 1130s. Finkelstein sees the biblical description of the time of David and Solomon as multilayered. He acknowledges the historicity of the founders of the Davidic Dynasty, places them in the 10th century BCE, and considers the possibility that the description of the rise of David to power conceals old memories of his activity as a leader of an Apiru-band that was active in the southern fringe of Judah. Yet, he sees the description of a great United Monarchy as an ideological construct that represents the ideology of late-monarchic author/s in the late 7th century BCE, first and foremost the pan-Israelite ideology of the days of King Josiah of Judah. According to him, the historical David and Solomon ruled over a small territory in the southern highlands – a territory not very different from that of Jerusalem of the Late Bronze Age. Finkelstein sees much of the description of King Solomon as representing realities from late monarchic times: First, from the later days of the Northern Kingdom (for instance, the reference to Megiddo, Hazor and Gezer in and to the stables, horses and chariots of Solomon). Second, from the time of King Manasseh of Judah in the early 7th century BCE, under Assyrian domination (for instance, the visit of the Queen of Sheba in Jerusalem). He understands the description of the Philistines in the Bible as portraying realities in Philistia in late-monarchic times. "New Canaan" Following the results of the excavations at Megiddo, Finkelstein argued that the material culture of the Iron I in the northern valleys continues that of the Late Bronze Age. In other words, the collapse of the Late Bronze city-states under Egyptian domination in the late 12th century BCE was followed by revival of some of the same centers and rise of others in the Iron I. He termed this phenomenon "New Canaan". Accordingly, the major break in the material culture of Canaan took place at the end of the Iron I in the 10th century BCE rather than the end of the Late Bronze Age. Finkelstein associated the violent destruction of the revived city-states with the expansion of the highlanders (early Israelites). He suggested that memories of the turmoil in the lowlands in the late Iron I can be found in northern traditions regarding skirmishes with Canaanite cities which appear in the heroic stories in the Book of Judges. The Northern Kingdom Finkelstein dealt with a variety of themes related to the archeology and history of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. He proposed that the first North Israelite territorial polity emerged in the Gibeon-Bethel plateau in the late Iron I and early Iron IIA. He found archaeological evidence for this in the system of fortified sites, such as Tell en-Nasbeh, Khirbet ed-Dawwara, et-Tell ("Ai") and Gibeon. Historical evidence for the existence of this polity can be found in the campaign of Pharaoh Sheshonq I in this region in the middle-to-second half of the 10th century BCE. According to Finkelstein, positive memories in the Bible of the House of Saul, which originated from the North, represent this early Israelite entity. He suggested that this north Israelite polity ruled over much of the territory of the highlands, that it presented a threat to the interests of Egypt of the 22nd Dynasty in Canaan, and that it was taken over during the campaign of Sheshonq I. Finkelstein proposed that in its early days, the Northern Kingdom (Jeroboam I and his successors) ruled over the Samaria Highlands, the western slopes of the Gilead and the area of the Jezreel Valley. The expansion of Israel further to the north came during the days of the Omride Dynasty in the first half of the 9th century BCE, and even more so in the time of Jeroboam II in the first half of the 8th century BCE. Finkelstein described the special features of Omride architecture and, with his Megiddo team, dealt with different subjects related to the material culture of the Northern Kingdom, such as metallurgy and cult practices. Finkelstein also reflected on biblical traditions related to the Northern Kingdom, such as the Jacob cycle in Genesis (a study carried out with Thomas Römer), the Exodus tradition, the heroic stories in the Book of Judges and remnants of royal traditions in the Books of Samuel and Kings. He suggested that these North Israelite traditions were first committed to writing in the days of Jeroboam II (first half of the 8th century BCE), that they were brought to Judah with Israelite refugees after the takeover of Israel by Assyria, and that they were later incorporated into the Judahite-dominated Bible. Finkelstein sees the biblical genre of deploying "history" in the service of royal ideology as emerging from Israel (the North) of the 8th century BCE. Archaeology and history of Jerusalem Finkelstein has recently dealt with the location of the ancient mound of Jerusalem (with Ido Koch and Oded Lipschits). The conventional wisdom sees that "City of David" ridge as the location of the original settlement of Jerusalem. Finkelstein and his colleagues argued that the "City of David" ridge does not have the silhouette of a mound; that it is located in topographical inferiority relative to the surrounding area; and that the archaeological record of the ridge does not include periods of habitation attested in reliable textual records. According to them, the most suitable location for the core of ancient Jerusalem is the Temple Mount. The large area of the Herodian platform (today's Harem esh-Sharif) may conceal a mound of five hectares and more, which – similar to other capital cities in the Levant – included both the royal compound and habitation quarters. Locating the mound of Ancient Jerusalem on the Temple Mount resolves many of the difficulties pertaining to the "City of David" ridge. According to Finkelstein, the history of Jerusalem in biblical times should be viewed in terms of three main phases: Firstly, until the 9th century BCE, Jerusalem was restricted to the mound on the Temple Mount and ruled over a modest area in the southern highlands. Accordingly, Jerusalem of the time of David and Solomon can be compared to Jerusalem of the Amarna period in the 14th century BCE: it had the size of a typical highlands mound (for instance, Shechem), ruled over a restricted area, but still had impact beyond the highlands. Secondly, the first expansion of Jerusalem came in the 9th century BCE, perhaps in its second half, when the town grew significantly in a southerly direction. Remains of the Iron IIA were unearthed south of al-Aqsa Mosque, above the Gihon Spring and to the south of the Dung Gate of the Old City. In parallel to this development, Judah expanded to the Shephelah in the west and Beer-sheba Valley in the south, and for the first time became a territorial kingdom rather than a city-state restricted to the highlands. Thirdly, the most impressive phase in the settlement history of Jerusalem commenced in the late 8th century BCE and lasted until its destruction by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. At that time Jerusalem expanded dramatically, to include the entire "City of David" ridge, as well as the "Western Hill" (the Armenian and Jewish Quarter of today's Old City). This expansion was the result of the arrival of Israelite refugees after the demise of the Northern Kingdom in 722-720 BCE. These groups brought with them traits of Northern material culture, and more important – their foundation myths, royal traditions and heroic stories. These Northern traditions were later incorporated into the Judahite Bible. Jerusalem and Yehud/Judea of the Persian and Hellenistic periods Finkelstein noted that in the Persian Period, Jerusalem was limited to the mound on the Temple Mount – and even there was sparsely settled – and that Yehud of that time was also thinly settled. As the description of the construction of the wall of Jerusalem in Nehemiah 3 must relate to the big city (extending beyond the old mound on the Temple Mount), it probably portrays the construction of the fortifications by the Hasmoneans. Finkelstein further noted that many of the sites mentioned in the lists of returnees in Ezra and Nehemiah were not inhabited in the Persian Period and hence sees these lists as reflecting the demographic situation in days of the Hasmoneans. The same holds true, in his opinion, for the genealogies in 1 Chronicles. Finkelstein then looked into the accounts of Judahite monarchs in 2 Chronicles, which do not appear in Kings. He called attention to similarities between these texts and 1 Maccabees, and proposed to understand Chronicles as representing legitimacy needs of the Hasmoneans. This means that at least 2 Chronicles dates to the late 2nd century BCE, probably to the days of John Hyrcanus. Published works Books In addition to the reports of excavations cited above: Sinai in Antiquity, Tel Aviv 1980 (ed., with Zeev Meshel, Hebrew) The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement, Jerusalem 1988, Archaeological Survey of the Hill Country of Benjamin, Jerusalem 1993, (ed., with Yitzhak Magen) From Nomadism to Monarchy: Archaeological and Historical Aspects of Early Israel, Jerusalem 1994, (ed., with Nadav Na'aman) Living on the Fringe: The Archaeology and History of the Negev, Sinai and Neighbouring Regions in the Bronze and Iron Ages, Sheffield 1995, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, New York 2001 (with Neil Asher Silberman). Translated to 12 languages. David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition, New York 2006, (with Neil Asher Silberman). Translated to six languages. The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archeology and the History of Early Israel, Atlanta 2007, (with Amihai Mazar) Un archéologue au pays de la Bible, Paris 2008, The Forgotten Kingdom. The Archaeology and History of Northern Israel, Atlanta 2013, . Translated to four languages. Hasmonean Realities behind Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles, Atlanta 2018. Co-editor of three festschrifts – for Nadav Na'aman, David Ussishkin and Benjamin Sass. Articles About 400 scholarly articles; for many of them see: https://telaviv.academia.edu/IsraelFinkelstein Festschrift Bene Israel: Studies in the Archaeology of Israel and the Levant during the Bronze and Iron Ages in Honour of Israel Finkelstein, Leiden and London 2008 (eds. Alexander Fantalkin and Assaf Yasur-Landau). Rethinking Israel: Studies in the History and Archaeology of Ancient Israel in Honor of Israel Finkelstein, Winona Lake 2017 (eds. Oded Lipschits, Yuval Gadot and Matthew J. Adams). The Shmunis Family Conversations in the Archaeology and History of Ancient Israel with Israel Finkelstein The Shmunis Family Conversations in the Archaeology and History of Ancient Israel with Israel Finkelstein series is a YouTube series hosted by the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research's Albright Live YouTube Channel. As of September 2021, 26 episodes have been released. The series is set as an interview-style conversation between Albright Institute Director Matthew J. Adams and archaeologist Israel Finkelstein. Episodes cover the rise of Ancient Israel as evidenced by archaeology, ancient Near Eastern textual sources, the Bible, and archaeology from the Late Bronze Age through the Hellenistic Period. The episodes are written and directed by Israel Finkelstein and Matthew J. Adams with cinematography and editing by Yuval Pan. The series is Produced by Djehuti Productions and the Albright Institute with a grant from the Shmunis Family Foundation. Awards and recognition Finkelstein is the Laureate of the Dan David Prize in 2005. The select committee noted that he is "widely regarded as a leading scholar in the archaeology of the Levant and as a foremost applicant of archaeological knowledge to reconstructing biblical Israelite history. He excels at creatively forging links between archaeology and the exact sciences and he has revolutionized many of these fields. … Finkelstein has had an impact on radically revising the history of Israel in the 10th and 9th centuries BCE. He has transformed the study of history and archaeology in Israeli universities, moving from a ‘monumental’ to a ‘systemic’ study of the archaeological evidence. He has taken what was becoming a rather staid and conservative discipline, with everyone in general agreement as to interpretation of excavation results, and has turned things upside down. … The study of these periods is never again going to be what it once was. … Israel Finkelstein has proven to be creative, generating scholarship no less than discussion, launching ideas and stimulating debates, fearlessly but with imagination and grace." In 2014, Finkelstein was awarded the Prix Delalande Guérineau: Institut de France, l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, for his book Le Royaume biblique oublié (The Forgotten Kingdom). He is the recipient of the MacAllister Field Archaeology Award 2017 (The American Schools of Oriental Research). His other awards include the French decoration of Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres, (2009) and the Doctorat honoris causa of the University of Lausanne (2010). Criticism Finkelstein's theories about Saul, David and Solomon have been criticized by fellow archaeologists. Amihai Mazar described Finkelstein's Low Chronology proposal as "premature and unacceptable". Amnon Ben-Tor accused him of employing a “double standard”, citing the biblical text where it suited him and deploring its use where it did not. Other criticisms came from William G. Dever (who dismissed the Low Chronology as "idiosyncratic"), Lawrence Stager, Doron Ben-Ami, Raz Kletter and Anabel Zarzeki-Peleg. David Ussishkin, despite agreeing with many of Finkelstein's theories about the United Monarchy, has also shown doubts and reservations about Finkelstein's Low Chronology. Writing in the Biblical Archaeology Review and subsequently in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, William G. Dever described The Bible Unearthed as a "convoluted story", writing that "This clever, trendy work may deceive lay readers". Evangelical Christian biblical scholar Kenneth Kitchen was also critical of the book, writing that "[A] careful critical perusal of this work—which certainly has much to say about both archaeology and the biblical writings—reveals that we are dealing very largely with a work of imaginative fiction, not a serious or reliable account of the subject", and "Their treatment of the exodus is among the most factually ignorant and misleading that this writer has ever read." Another evangelical, Richard Hess, also being critical, wrote that "The authors always present their interpretation of the archaeological data but do not mention or interact with contemporary alternative approaches. Thus the book is ideologically driven and controlled." A 2004 debate between Finkelstein and William G. Dever, mediated by Hershel Shanks (editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review), quickly degenerated into insults, with Dever calling Finkelstein "idiosyncratic and doctrinaire" and Finkelstein dismissing Dever as a "jealous academic parasite". Dever later accused Finkelstein of supporting post-Zionism, to which Finkelstein replied by accusing Dever of being "a biblical literalist disguised as a liberal". Shanks described the exchange between the two as "embarassing". Following the publication of The Forgotten Kingdom, Dever once again harshly criticized Finkelstein: writing in the Biblical Archaeology Review, he described Finkelstein as "a magician and a showman". He stated that the book was full of "numerous errors, misrepresentations, over-simplifications and contradictions". Another, more moderate, review was written on the same magazine by Aaron Burke: while Burke described Finkelstein's book as "ambitious" and praised its literary style, he did not accept Finkelstein's conclusions. He stated that the book engages in several speculations that cannot be proved by archeology, biblical and extra-biblical sources. He also criticized Finkelstein for persistently trying to downgrade the role of David in the development of ancient Israel. Other landmarks Selected as one of the 10 most influential researchers in the history of archaeology in the Levant (a Swiss publication, 1993). Invited to the Salon du Livre in Paris, 2008. Two public debates there: with the French philosopher Armand Abécassis on La Bible et la Terre Sainte, and with the Israeli author Meir Shalev on la Bible de l’ecrivain et la Bible de l’archeologue. Keynote address in the Annual Meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Nashville 2000. A ca. 50 pages profile chapter in J.-F. Mondot’s Une Bible pour deux mémoires (Paris 2006). Invited lecture in the special symposium celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Weizmann Institute (together with Nobel Prize laureates Ada Yonath and Daniel Kahneman, and Lord Wilson, 2009). Keynote address in the Symposium of Mediterranean Archaeology, Florence 2012. Two lectures in the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, Paris, May 2012 and February 2016. Public lectures in events at universities such as the University of Chicago, Heidelberg University (2014) and Princeton University. Joint session of the American Schools of Oriental Research and Society of Biblical Literature titled Rethinking Israel – celebrating the publication of Rethinking Israel, Studies in the History and Archaeology of Ancient Israel in Honr of Israel Finkelstein, Boston 2017. Conversation with Israel Finkelstein and Thomas Romer, central evening event in the International Meeting of the Society for Biblical Literature, Rome, July 2019. References External links Finkelstein's personal website: https://israelfinkelstein.wordpress.com/ The Megiddo Expedition: https://megiddoexpedition.wordpress.com/ The Kiriath-Jearim excavations: https://kiriathjearim.wordpress.com/ The digitized epigraphy website: http://www-nuclear.tau.ac.il/~eip/ostraca/Home/Home.html Finkelstein's scholarly articles on academia.edu: https://telaviv.academia.edu/IsraelFinkelstein The Dan David prize, 2005: http://www.dandavidprize.org/laureates/2005/77-past-archaeology/173-prof-israel-finkelstein The Shmunis Family Conversations in the Archaeology and History of Ancient Israel with Israel Finkelstein, 2020–2021: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvm7MPUI_WJclpUfZgCw1Tfd_cyT4Fh-f 1949 births Living people 20th-century archaeologists 20th-century Israeli male writers 21st-century archaeologists 21st-century Israeli male writers Biblical archaeologists Historical geographers Israeli archaeologists Israeli Ashkenazi Jews Israeli people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent Tel Aviv University faculty

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did he do any research?

did Israel Finkelstein do any research?

Israel Finkelstein

From 1976 to 1990 Finkelstein taught at the Department of Land of Israel Studies, Bar-Ilan University, beginning as a teaching assistant. He spent the academic year of 1983-84 in a research group led by Prof. Yigael Yadin in the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. In 1986-87 Finkelstein taught at the Department for Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago. In 1987 he was appointed an associate professor with tenure at Bar-Ilan University and in 1990 moved to the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations at Tel Aviv University. In 1992/93 Finkelstein spent a sabbatical year as a visiting scholar at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University. Since 1992, he has been a Full Professor at Tel Aviv University. He served as the chairperson of the Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Studies (1994-98) and as Director of The Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology (1996-2003). In 1998-99 Finkelstein was a visiting scholar in the Centre de Recherche d'Archeologie Orientale and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in the Sorbonne, Paris. Finkelstein delivered series of lectures on the history and archaeology of Ancient Israel at the Texas Christian University (2002), the University of Buenos Aires (2011), the College de France in Paris (2012) and the Methodist University of Sao Paulo (2015). He is scheduled to deliver similar lectures at the Tokyo Christian University (2017) and the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome (2017). Finkelstein has read over 100 papers in international conferences and given numerous talks in universities around the globe. Finkelstein has been the Editor of Tel Aviv, the journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, since 2008 and Executive Editor of the Monograph Series by the Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, since 2005. He is a member of editorial boards, including the Palestine Exploration Journal and the Archaeology and Biblical Studies series, the Society of Biblical Literature. CANNOTANSWER

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Israel Finkelstein (, born March 29, 1949) is an Israeli archaeologist, professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University. Finkelstein is active in the archaeology of the Levant and is an applicant of archaeological data in reconstructing biblical history. He is also known for applying the exact and life sciences in archaeological and historical reconstruction. Finkelstein is the current excavator of Megiddo, a key site for the study of the Bronze and Iron Ages in the Levant. Finkelstein is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and an associé étranger of the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Finkelstein has received several noteworthy academic and writing awards. In 2005, he won the Dan David Prize for his revision of the history of Israel in the 10th and 9th centuries BCE. In 2009 he was named chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture, and in 2010, received a doctorate honoris causa from the University of Lausanne. He is a member of the selection committee of the Shanghai Archaeology Forum, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Among Finkelstein's books are The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts (2001) and David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition (2006), both written with Neil Asher Silberman. Also he wrote the textbooks on the emergence of Ancient Israel, titled The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement (1988); on the archaeology and history of the arid zones of the Levant, titled Living on the Fringe (1995); and on the Northern Kingdom of Israel, titled The Forgotten Kingdom (2013). Background Family Israel Finkelstein was born to an Ashkenazi Jewish family in Tel Aviv, Israel, on March 29, 1949. His parents were Zvi (Grisha) Finkelstein (born 1908) and Miriam Finkelstein (maiden name Ellenhorn, born 1910). His great grandfather on his mother's side, Shlomo Ellenhorn, came to Palestine from Grodno (today in Belarus) in the 1850s and settled in Hebron. He was one of the first physicians in the Bikur Cholim Hospital in Jerusalem, and is listed among the group of people who purchased the land in 1878 in order to establish Petah Tikva – the first modern Jewish settlement in Palestine outside the four holy cities. Finkelstein's grandfather, Israel Jacob Ellenhorn, was the first pharmacist in Petah Tikva. Finkelstein’s father was born in Melitopol (Ukraine). He came to Palestine with his family in 1920. He was in the orange-growing business and was active in the sports organisations of Israel. He served as vice chairman of the Israel Football Association, chairman of Maccabi Israel and was a member of the Israel Olympic Committee. Finkelstein is married to Joelle (maiden name Cohen). They are the parents of two daughters – Adar (born 1992) and Sarai (born 1996). Education Israel Finkelstein attended the PICA elementary school (1956–1963) and Ahad Ha'am High School (1963–1967), both in Petah Tikva. He then served in the Israel Defense Forces (1967–1970). He studied archaeology and Near Eastern civilizations, and geography at Tel Aviv University, receiving his BA in 1974. While there, Finkelstein was a student of Prof. Yohanan Aharoni. He continued as a research student under the supervision of Prof. Moshe Kochavi, receiving his MA in 1978 (thesis on Rural Settlement in the Yarkon Basin in the Iron Age and Persian-Hellenistic Periods). He graduated as a PhD in 1983 with a thesis titled "The Izbet Sartah Excavations and the Israelite Settlement in the Hill Country". Academic career From 1976 to 1990, Finkelstein taught at the Department of Land of Israel Studies, Bar-Ilan University, beginning as a teaching assistant. He spent the academic year of 1983–84 in a research group led by Prof. Yigael Yadin in the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. In 1986 and 1987, Finkelstein taught at the Department for Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago. In 1987 he was appointed an associate professor with tenure at Bar-Ilan University and in 1990 moved to the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations at Tel Aviv University. In 1992/93 Finkelstein spent a sabbatical year as a visiting scholar at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University. Since 1992, he has been a Full Professor at Tel Aviv University. He served as the chairperson of the Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Studies (1994–98) and as Director of The Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology (1996–2003). In 1998–99 Finkelstein was a visiting scholar in the Centre de Recherche d’Archéologie Orientale and the École Pratique des Hautes Études in the Sorbonne, Paris. Finkelstein delivered series of lectures on the history and archaeology of Ancient Israel at the Texas Christian University (2002), the University of Buenos Aires (2011), the College de France in Paris (2012) and the Methodist University of São Paulo (2015), the Tokyo Christian University (2017), the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome (2017) and the University of Zurich (2018). Finkelstein has read over 100 papers in international conferences and given numerous talks in universities around the globe. Finkelstein has been the Editor of Tel Aviv, the journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, since 2008 and Executive Editor of the Monograph Series by the Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, since 2005. He is a member of editorial boards, including the Palestine Exploration Quarterly and the Archaeology and Biblical Studies series of the Society of Biblical Literature. Fieldwork Finkelstein was trained as a field archaeologist in the excavations of Tel Beer Sheva (1971, Director: Yohanan Aharoni) and Tel Aphek (1973–1978, Directors: Moshe Kochavi and Pirhiya Beck). Starting in 1976, he carried out his own fieldwork in a variety of sites and regions: Past excavations and surveys ‘Izbet Sartah, 1976–1978: Field Director (under Prof. Moshe Kochavi) of excavations at ‘Izbet Sartah, an Iron I-Iron IIA village-site near Rosh Ha‘ayin, east of Tel Aviv. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, Izbet Sartah: An Early Iron Age Site near Rosh Ha‘ayin, Israel, Oxford 1986 (BAR International Series 299). Southern Sinai, 1976–1978: Surveys of Byzantine monastic remains in southern Sinai. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, Byzantine Monastic Remains in Southern Sinai, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 39 (1985), pp. 39–75. Bene Beraq, 1977: Director of salvage excavations at the mound of ancient Bene Beraq near Tel Aviv. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, Soundings at Ancient Bene-Beraq, ‘Atiqot 10 (1990), pp. 29–40 (Hebrew). Tel Ira, 1980: Co-Director of the excavations of the Iron II site of Tel Ira in the Beer-sheba Valley (together with I. Beit-Arieh and B. Cresson). For the results see: I. Finkelstein and I. Beit-Arieh, Area E, in I. Beit-Arieh (ed.), Tel Ira: A Stronghold in the Biblical Negev (monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 15), Tel Aviv 1999, pp. 67–96. Shiloh, 1981–1984: Director of the excavations at biblical Shiloh in the highlands north of Jerusalem. The site features Middle Bronze, Late Bronze and Iron I remains. For the results see: I. Finkelstein (ed.), Shiloh: The Archaeology of a Biblical Site (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 10), Tel Aviv 1993. Southern Samaria Survey, 1981–1987: Director of the survey, ca. 1000 km2. in the highlands north of Jerusalem. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, Z. Lederman and S. Bunimovitz, Highlands of Many Cultures, The Southern Samaria Survey, The Sites (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 14). Tel Aviv Khirbet ed-Dawwara, 1985–86: Director, excavations at Khirbet ed-Dawwara, an Iron I-early Iron IIA site in the desert fringe northeast of Jerusalem. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, Excavations at Kh. ed-Dawwara: An Iron Age Site Northeast of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv 17 (1990), pp. 163–208. Dhahr Mirzbaneh, 1987: Sounding at the Intermediate Bronze site of Dhahr Mirzbaneh in the desert fringe northeast of Jerusalem. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, The Central Hill Country in the Intermediate Bronze Age, Israel Exploration Journal 41 (1991), pp. 19–45. Present excavations Megiddo, 1994–present: co-Director, the Megiddo Excavations (1994–2012 with David Ussishkin, since 2014 with Matthew J. Adams and Mario A.S. Martin). Megiddo is considered as one of the most important Bronze and Iron Age sites in the Levant. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, D. Ussishkin and B. Halpern (eds.), Megiddo III: The 1992–1996 Seasons (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 18). Tel Aviv 2000. I. Finkelstein, D. Ussishkin and B. Halpern (eds.), Megiddo IV: The 1998–2002 Seasons (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 24), Tel Aviv 2006. I. Finkelstein, D. Ussishkin and E.H. Cline (editors), Megiddo V: The 2004–2008 Seasons (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 31), Winona Lake 2013. I. Finkelstein, M.A.S. Martin and M.J. Adams (eds.), Megiddo VI: The 2010–2014 Seasons (forthcoming). The Negev Highlands, 2006–present: co-Director of excavations in the Iron Age sites of Atar Haroa and Nahal Boqer, and the Intermediate Bronze Age sites of Mashabe Sade and En Ziq (with Ruth Shahack-Gross). For the results see: R. Shahack-Gross and I. Finkelstein, Settlement Oscillations in the Negev Highlands Revisited: The Impact of Microarchaeological Methods, Radiocarbon 57/2 (2015), pp. 253–264. Kiriath-Jearim, 2017–present: co-Director, the Shmunis Family excavations at Kiriath-Jearim – a biblical site in the highlands west of Jerusalem associated with the Ark Narrative in the Book of Samuel (with Christophe Nicolle and Thomas Römer, the College de France). Other projects In the past 1997–2002: Petrographic study of the Amarna tablets (with Yuval Goren and Nadav Na'aman). For the results see: Y. Goren, I. Finkelstein and N. Na'aman, Inscribed in Clay: Provenance Study of the Amarna Letters and other Ancient Near Eastern Texts (Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University 23), Tel Aviv 2004. 2009–2014: Principal Investigator of a European Research Council-funded project titled Reconstructing Ancient Israel: The Exact and Life Sciences Perspectives (with Steve Weiner, Weizmann Institute of Science, co-Principal Investigator). The project was organized into 10 tracks: Radiocarbon dating, ancient DNA, geoarchaeology, paleoclimate, petrography, metallurgy, daily mathematics, advanced imaging of ostraca, residue analysis and archaeozoology. Over 40 scholars, advanced students and post-docs were involved in the project. Samples were taken from a large number of sites in Israel and Greece. For the results see: I. Finkelstein, S. Weiner and E. Boaretto (eds.), Reconstructing Ancient Israel: The Exact and Life Sciences Perspectives, special issue of Radiocarbon (57/2), 2015, with a list of all publications until 2015. Paleoclimate of the Levant (2009-2019), with Dafna Langgut (Tel Aviv University) and Thomas Litt (University of Bonn). The Archaeological and Historical Realities behind the Pentateuch (2016-2019), with Konrad Schmid (University of Zurich), Thomas Römer and Christophe Nihan (University of Lausanne) and Oded Lipschits (Tel Aviv University). Ongoing research projects Geoarchaeological Investigations in the Negev Highlands (2006-) with Ruth Shahack-Gross (University of Haifa). Iron Age Hebrew Ostraca in the Silicon Age: Computerized Paleography (2008-), directed with Eli Piasetzky (Tel Aviv University). For results see list of publications in http://www-nuclear.tau.ac.il/~eip/ostraca/Publications/Publications.html Ancient DNA, animals and Humans (2009-), with Meirav Meiri (Tel Aviv University); current cooperation with Joseph Maran and Philipp Stockhammer (Universities of Heidelberg and Munich), Liran Carmel (Hebrew University) and David Reich (Harvard University). Scholarly contributions Finkelstein has written on a variety of topics, including the archaeology of the Bronze Age and the exact and life sciences contribution to archaeology. Much of his work has been devoted to the Iron Age and, more specifically, to questions related to the history of Ancient Israel. The Emergence of Ancient Israel The classical theories on the emergence of Israel viewed the process as a unique event in the history of the region. Finkelstein suggested that we are dealing with a long-term process of a cyclical nature. He demonstrated that the wave of settlement in the highlands in the Iron Age I (ca. 1150-950 BCE) was the last in a series of such demographic developments – the first had taken place in the Early Bronze and the second in the Middle Bronze. The periods between these peaks were characterized by low settlement activity. Finkelstein explained these oscillations as representing changes along the sedentary/ pastoral-nomadic continuum, which were caused by socioeconomic and political dynamics. Hence, a big portion of the people who settled in the highlands in the early Iron Age were locals of a pastoral-nomadic background. Others, who originated from local sedentary background, moved to the highlands as a result of the Bronze Age collapse – which in turn was related to a long period of dry climate in ca. 1250-1100 BCE. Since eventually these groups formed the Northern Kingdom of Israel, they can be labeled "Israelites" as early as their initial settlement process. The same holds true for the contemporary settlement process in Transjordan and western Syria, which brought about the rise of Moab, Ammon and the Aramean kingdoms of the later phases of the Iron Age. Finkelstein regards the biblical account on the Conquest of Canaan in the Book of Joshua as an ideological manifesto of the Deuteronomistic author/s of the late 7th century BCE, describing a "conquest to be" under King Josiah of Judah rather than a historical event at the end of the Bronze Age. He proposed that the original Conquest Account may have originated in the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the early 8th century BCE; it could have been influenced by memories of the turmoil that had taken place in the lowlands in the late Iron I (10th century BCE), rather than the end of the Late Bronze Age (late 12th century BCE). The Low Chronology Until the 1990s, the chronology of the Iron Age in the Levant had been anchored in the biblical account of the great United Monarchy of David and Solomon. Accordingly, the Iron I ended ca. 1000 BCE and the Iron IIA was dated from 1000 BCE until the campaign of Pharaoh Sheshonq I (biblical Shishak) ca. 925 BCE. The two Iron IIA palaces at Megiddo were conceived as the material manifestation for the Solomonic Empire. While preparing for the excavations at Megiddo in the early 1990s, Finkelstein noticed difficulties in this scheme. Noteworthy among them is the appearance of similar traits of material culture at Megiddo in a layer that was dated to the time of King Solomon in the middle of the 10th century, and at Samaria and Jezreel in contexts dated to the time of the Omride Dynasty (of the Northern Kingdom of Israel) in the early 9th century BCE. To resolve these difficulties, Finkelstein proposed to "lower" the dates of the Iron Age strata in the Levant by several decades. According to Finkelstein's Low Chronology, the Iron Age I lasted until the middle of the 10th century BCE, while the Iron IIA is dated between the middle of the 10th century and ca. 800 BCE, if not slightly later. This means that the Megiddo palaces and other features which had traditionally been attributed to the time of King Solomon – features which date to the late Iron IIA – should indeed be associated with the endeavors of the Omride Dynasty in the first half of the 9th century BCE. A big debate ensued. Starting in the late 1990s, the focus of the discussion shifted to the interpretation of radiocarbon determinations for organic samples from key sites, such as Tel Rehov and Megiddo. All in all, the radiocarbon results put the Iron I/IIA transition ca. the middle of the 10th century (rather than 1000 BCE as had traditionally been proposed), and the Iron IIA/B transition in the early days of the 8th century (rather than ca. 925 BCE). In parallel, and not directly connected, Finkelstein dealt with the chronology of Philistine pottery of the Iron Age I. The traditional theory fixed the appearance of Philistine pottery – and hence the settlement of the Philistines in the southern coastal plain of the Levant – in accordance with the confrontation between Ramses III and the Sea Peoples in the early 12th century BCE. In other words, Philistine pottery appears during the last phase of Egyptian rule in Canaan. Finkelstein proposed that the locally-made Monochrome pottery known from several sites in Philistia, which is widely understood as representing the earliest phase of Philistine settlement, should be dated after the withdrawal of Egypt from Canaan in the 1130s. Finkelstein sees the biblical description of the time of David and Solomon as multilayered. He acknowledges the historicity of the founders of the Davidic Dynasty, places them in the 10th century BCE, and considers the possibility that the description of the rise of David to power conceals old memories of his activity as a leader of an Apiru-band that was active in the southern fringe of Judah. Yet, he sees the description of a great United Monarchy as an ideological construct that represents the ideology of late-monarchic author/s in the late 7th century BCE, first and foremost the pan-Israelite ideology of the days of King Josiah of Judah. According to him, the historical David and Solomon ruled over a small territory in the southern highlands – a territory not very different from that of Jerusalem of the Late Bronze Age. Finkelstein sees much of the description of King Solomon as representing realities from late monarchic times: First, from the later days of the Northern Kingdom (for instance, the reference to Megiddo, Hazor and Gezer in and to the stables, horses and chariots of Solomon). Second, from the time of King Manasseh of Judah in the early 7th century BCE, under Assyrian domination (for instance, the visit of the Queen of Sheba in Jerusalem). He understands the description of the Philistines in the Bible as portraying realities in Philistia in late-monarchic times. "New Canaan" Following the results of the excavations at Megiddo, Finkelstein argued that the material culture of the Iron I in the northern valleys continues that of the Late Bronze Age. In other words, the collapse of the Late Bronze city-states under Egyptian domination in the late 12th century BCE was followed by revival of some of the same centers and rise of others in the Iron I. He termed this phenomenon "New Canaan". Accordingly, the major break in the material culture of Canaan took place at the end of the Iron I in the 10th century BCE rather than the end of the Late Bronze Age. Finkelstein associated the violent destruction of the revived city-states with the expansion of the highlanders (early Israelites). He suggested that memories of the turmoil in the lowlands in the late Iron I can be found in northern traditions regarding skirmishes with Canaanite cities which appear in the heroic stories in the Book of Judges. The Northern Kingdom Finkelstein dealt with a variety of themes related to the archeology and history of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. He proposed that the first North Israelite territorial polity emerged in the Gibeon-Bethel plateau in the late Iron I and early Iron IIA. He found archaeological evidence for this in the system of fortified sites, such as Tell en-Nasbeh, Khirbet ed-Dawwara, et-Tell ("Ai") and Gibeon. Historical evidence for the existence of this polity can be found in the campaign of Pharaoh Sheshonq I in this region in the middle-to-second half of the 10th century BCE. According to Finkelstein, positive memories in the Bible of the House of Saul, which originated from the North, represent this early Israelite entity. He suggested that this north Israelite polity ruled over much of the territory of the highlands, that it presented a threat to the interests of Egypt of the 22nd Dynasty in Canaan, and that it was taken over during the campaign of Sheshonq I. Finkelstein proposed that in its early days, the Northern Kingdom (Jeroboam I and his successors) ruled over the Samaria Highlands, the western slopes of the Gilead and the area of the Jezreel Valley. The expansion of Israel further to the north came during the days of the Omride Dynasty in the first half of the 9th century BCE, and even more so in the time of Jeroboam II in the first half of the 8th century BCE. Finkelstein described the special features of Omride architecture and, with his Megiddo team, dealt with different subjects related to the material culture of the Northern Kingdom, such as metallurgy and cult practices. Finkelstein also reflected on biblical traditions related to the Northern Kingdom, such as the Jacob cycle in Genesis (a study carried out with Thomas Römer), the Exodus tradition, the heroic stories in the Book of Judges and remnants of royal traditions in the Books of Samuel and Kings. He suggested that these North Israelite traditions were first committed to writing in the days of Jeroboam II (first half of the 8th century BCE), that they were brought to Judah with Israelite refugees after the takeover of Israel by Assyria, and that they were later incorporated into the Judahite-dominated Bible. Finkelstein sees the biblical genre of deploying "history" in the service of royal ideology as emerging from Israel (the North) of the 8th century BCE. Archaeology and history of Jerusalem Finkelstein has recently dealt with the location of the ancient mound of Jerusalem (with Ido Koch and Oded Lipschits). The conventional wisdom sees that "City of David" ridge as the location of the original settlement of Jerusalem. Finkelstein and his colleagues argued that the "City of David" ridge does not have the silhouette of a mound; that it is located in topographical inferiority relative to the surrounding area; and that the archaeological record of the ridge does not include periods of habitation attested in reliable textual records. According to them, the most suitable location for the core of ancient Jerusalem is the Temple Mount. The large area of the Herodian platform (today's Harem esh-Sharif) may conceal a mound of five hectares and more, which – similar to other capital cities in the Levant – included both the royal compound and habitation quarters. Locating the mound of Ancient Jerusalem on the Temple Mount resolves many of the difficulties pertaining to the "City of David" ridge. According to Finkelstein, the history of Jerusalem in biblical times should be viewed in terms of three main phases: Firstly, until the 9th century BCE, Jerusalem was restricted to the mound on the Temple Mount and ruled over a modest area in the southern highlands. Accordingly, Jerusalem of the time of David and Solomon can be compared to Jerusalem of the Amarna period in the 14th century BCE: it had the size of a typical highlands mound (for instance, Shechem), ruled over a restricted area, but still had impact beyond the highlands. Secondly, the first expansion of Jerusalem came in the 9th century BCE, perhaps in its second half, when the town grew significantly in a southerly direction. Remains of the Iron IIA were unearthed south of al-Aqsa Mosque, above the Gihon Spring and to the south of the Dung Gate of the Old City. In parallel to this development, Judah expanded to the Shephelah in the west and Beer-sheba Valley in the south, and for the first time became a territorial kingdom rather than a city-state restricted to the highlands. Thirdly, the most impressive phase in the settlement history of Jerusalem commenced in the late 8th century BCE and lasted until its destruction by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. At that time Jerusalem expanded dramatically, to include the entire "City of David" ridge, as well as the "Western Hill" (the Armenian and Jewish Quarter of today's Old City). This expansion was the result of the arrival of Israelite refugees after the demise of the Northern Kingdom in 722-720 BCE. These groups brought with them traits of Northern material culture, and more important – their foundation myths, royal traditions and heroic stories. These Northern traditions were later incorporated into the Judahite Bible. Jerusalem and Yehud/Judea of the Persian and Hellenistic periods Finkelstein noted that in the Persian Period, Jerusalem was limited to the mound on the Temple Mount – and even there was sparsely settled – and that Yehud of that time was also thinly settled. As the description of the construction of the wall of Jerusalem in Nehemiah 3 must relate to the big city (extending beyond the old mound on the Temple Mount), it probably portrays the construction of the fortifications by the Hasmoneans. Finkelstein further noted that many of the sites mentioned in the lists of returnees in Ezra and Nehemiah were not inhabited in the Persian Period and hence sees these lists as reflecting the demographic situation in days of the Hasmoneans. The same holds true, in his opinion, for the genealogies in 1 Chronicles. Finkelstein then looked into the accounts of Judahite monarchs in 2 Chronicles, which do not appear in Kings. He called attention to similarities between these texts and 1 Maccabees, and proposed to understand Chronicles as representing legitimacy needs of the Hasmoneans. This means that at least 2 Chronicles dates to the late 2nd century BCE, probably to the days of John Hyrcanus. Published works Books In addition to the reports of excavations cited above: Sinai in Antiquity, Tel Aviv 1980 (ed., with Zeev Meshel, Hebrew) The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement, Jerusalem 1988, Archaeological Survey of the Hill Country of Benjamin, Jerusalem 1993, (ed., with Yitzhak Magen) From Nomadism to Monarchy: Archaeological and Historical Aspects of Early Israel, Jerusalem 1994, (ed., with Nadav Na'aman) Living on the Fringe: The Archaeology and History of the Negev, Sinai and Neighbouring Regions in the Bronze and Iron Ages, Sheffield 1995, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, New York 2001 (with Neil Asher Silberman). Translated to 12 languages. David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition, New York 2006, (with Neil Asher Silberman). Translated to six languages. The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archeology and the History of Early Israel, Atlanta 2007, (with Amihai Mazar) Un archéologue au pays de la Bible, Paris 2008, The Forgotten Kingdom. The Archaeology and History of Northern Israel, Atlanta 2013, . Translated to four languages. Hasmonean Realities behind Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles, Atlanta 2018. Co-editor of three festschrifts – for Nadav Na'aman, David Ussishkin and Benjamin Sass. Articles About 400 scholarly articles; for many of them see: https://telaviv.academia.edu/IsraelFinkelstein Festschrift Bene Israel: Studies in the Archaeology of Israel and the Levant during the Bronze and Iron Ages in Honour of Israel Finkelstein, Leiden and London 2008 (eds. Alexander Fantalkin and Assaf Yasur-Landau). Rethinking Israel: Studies in the History and Archaeology of Ancient Israel in Honor of Israel Finkelstein, Winona Lake 2017 (eds. Oded Lipschits, Yuval Gadot and Matthew J. Adams). The Shmunis Family Conversations in the Archaeology and History of Ancient Israel with Israel Finkelstein The Shmunis Family Conversations in the Archaeology and History of Ancient Israel with Israel Finkelstein series is a YouTube series hosted by the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research's Albright Live YouTube Channel. As of September 2021, 26 episodes have been released. The series is set as an interview-style conversation between Albright Institute Director Matthew J. Adams and archaeologist Israel Finkelstein. Episodes cover the rise of Ancient Israel as evidenced by archaeology, ancient Near Eastern textual sources, the Bible, and archaeology from the Late Bronze Age through the Hellenistic Period. The episodes are written and directed by Israel Finkelstein and Matthew J. Adams with cinematography and editing by Yuval Pan. The series is Produced by Djehuti Productions and the Albright Institute with a grant from the Shmunis Family Foundation. Awards and recognition Finkelstein is the Laureate of the Dan David Prize in 2005. The select committee noted that he is "widely regarded as a leading scholar in the archaeology of the Levant and as a foremost applicant of archaeological knowledge to reconstructing biblical Israelite history. He excels at creatively forging links between archaeology and the exact sciences and he has revolutionized many of these fields. … Finkelstein has had an impact on radically revising the history of Israel in the 10th and 9th centuries BCE. He has transformed the study of history and archaeology in Israeli universities, moving from a ‘monumental’ to a ‘systemic’ study of the archaeological evidence. He has taken what was becoming a rather staid and conservative discipline, with everyone in general agreement as to interpretation of excavation results, and has turned things upside down. … The study of these periods is never again going to be what it once was. … Israel Finkelstein has proven to be creative, generating scholarship no less than discussion, launching ideas and stimulating debates, fearlessly but with imagination and grace." In 2014, Finkelstein was awarded the Prix Delalande Guérineau: Institut de France, l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, for his book Le Royaume biblique oublié (The Forgotten Kingdom). He is the recipient of the MacAllister Field Archaeology Award 2017 (The American Schools of Oriental Research). His other awards include the French decoration of Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres, (2009) and the Doctorat honoris causa of the University of Lausanne (2010). Criticism Finkelstein's theories about Saul, David and Solomon have been criticized by fellow archaeologists. Amihai Mazar described Finkelstein's Low Chronology proposal as "premature and unacceptable". Amnon Ben-Tor accused him of employing a “double standard”, citing the biblical text where it suited him and deploring its use where it did not. Other criticisms came from William G. Dever (who dismissed the Low Chronology as "idiosyncratic"), Lawrence Stager, Doron Ben-Ami, Raz Kletter and Anabel Zarzeki-Peleg. David Ussishkin, despite agreeing with many of Finkelstein's theories about the United Monarchy, has also shown doubts and reservations about Finkelstein's Low Chronology. Writing in the Biblical Archaeology Review and subsequently in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, William G. Dever described The Bible Unearthed as a "convoluted story", writing that "This clever, trendy work may deceive lay readers". Evangelical Christian biblical scholar Kenneth Kitchen was also critical of the book, writing that "[A] careful critical perusal of this work—which certainly has much to say about both archaeology and the biblical writings—reveals that we are dealing very largely with a work of imaginative fiction, not a serious or reliable account of the subject", and "Their treatment of the exodus is among the most factually ignorant and misleading that this writer has ever read." Another evangelical, Richard Hess, also being critical, wrote that "The authors always present their interpretation of the archaeological data but do not mention or interact with contemporary alternative approaches. Thus the book is ideologically driven and controlled." A 2004 debate between Finkelstein and William G. Dever, mediated by Hershel Shanks (editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review), quickly degenerated into insults, with Dever calling Finkelstein "idiosyncratic and doctrinaire" and Finkelstein dismissing Dever as a "jealous academic parasite". Dever later accused Finkelstein of supporting post-Zionism, to which Finkelstein replied by accusing Dever of being "a biblical literalist disguised as a liberal". Shanks described the exchange between the two as "embarassing". Following the publication of The Forgotten Kingdom, Dever once again harshly criticized Finkelstein: writing in the Biblical Archaeology Review, he described Finkelstein as "a magician and a showman". He stated that the book was full of "numerous errors, misrepresentations, over-simplifications and contradictions". Another, more moderate, review was written on the same magazine by Aaron Burke: while Burke described Finkelstein's book as "ambitious" and praised its literary style, he did not accept Finkelstein's conclusions. He stated that the book engages in several speculations that cannot be proved by archeology, biblical and extra-biblical sources. He also criticized Finkelstein for persistently trying to downgrade the role of David in the development of ancient Israel. Other landmarks Selected as one of the 10 most influential researchers in the history of archaeology in the Levant (a Swiss publication, 1993). Invited to the Salon du Livre in Paris, 2008. Two public debates there: with the French philosopher Armand Abécassis on La Bible et la Terre Sainte, and with the Israeli author Meir Shalev on la Bible de l’ecrivain et la Bible de l’archeologue. Keynote address in the Annual Meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Nashville 2000. A ca. 50 pages profile chapter in J.-F. Mondot’s Une Bible pour deux mémoires (Paris 2006). Invited lecture in the special symposium celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Weizmann Institute (together with Nobel Prize laureates Ada Yonath and Daniel Kahneman, and Lord Wilson, 2009). Keynote address in the Symposium of Mediterranean Archaeology, Florence 2012. Two lectures in the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, Paris, May 2012 and February 2016. Public lectures in events at universities such as the University of Chicago, Heidelberg University (2014) and Princeton University. Joint session of the American Schools of Oriental Research and Society of Biblical Literature titled Rethinking Israel – celebrating the publication of Rethinking Israel, Studies in the History and Archaeology of Ancient Israel in Honr of Israel Finkelstein, Boston 2017. Conversation with Israel Finkelstein and Thomas Romer, central evening event in the International Meeting of the Society for Biblical Literature, Rome, July 2019. References External links Finkelstein's personal website: https://israelfinkelstein.wordpress.com/ The Megiddo Expedition: https://megiddoexpedition.wordpress.com/ The Kiriath-Jearim excavations: https://kiriathjearim.wordpress.com/ The digitized epigraphy website: http://www-nuclear.tau.ac.il/~eip/ostraca/Home/Home.html Finkelstein's scholarly articles on academia.edu: https://telaviv.academia.edu/IsraelFinkelstein The Dan David prize, 2005: http://www.dandavidprize.org/laureates/2005/77-past-archaeology/173-prof-israel-finkelstein The Shmunis Family Conversations in the Archaeology and History of Ancient Israel with Israel Finkelstein, 2020–2021: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvm7MPUI_WJclpUfZgCw1Tfd_cyT4Fh-f 1949 births Living people 20th-century archaeologists 20th-century Israeli male writers 21st-century archaeologists 21st-century Israeli male writers Biblical archaeologists Historical geographers Israeli archaeologists Israeli Ashkenazi Jews Israeli people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent Tel Aviv University faculty

C_20ee3062684049e5b429117483c182d3_0

What was the eternity of the world about?

What was the eternity of the world about in regards to Averroes?

Averroes

Ibn Rushd looked to Aristotle as to whether the world was eternal. In his Physics, the Greek philosopher argues that everything that comes into existence does so from a substratum. Therefore, if the underlying matter of the universe came into existence, it would come into existence from a substratum. But the nature of matter is precisely to be the substratum from which other things arise. Consequently, the underlying matter of the universe could have come into evidence only from an already existing matter exactly like itself; to assume that the underlying matter of the universe came into existence would require assuming that an underlying matter already existed. As this assumption is self-contradictory, Aristotle argued, matter must be eternal. Because in his eyes, "Aristotle demonstrated the eternity of matter", Ibn Rushd "abandon[ed] belief in the creation out of nothing." This is not to say that Ibn Rushd denied the Creation; rather, he proposed an eternal creation. Oliver Leaman explains Ibn Rushd's argument as such: We [as humans] can decide to do something, we can wait for a certain time before acting, we can wonder about our future actions; but such possibilities cannot arise for [an eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent] God. In his case there is no gap between desire and action, nothing stands in the way of his activity; and yet we are told by al-Ghazali that God suddenly created the world. What differentiates one time from another for God? What could motivate him to create the world at one particular time as opposed to another? For us, different times are different because they have different qualitative aspects, yet before the creation of the world, when there was nothing around to characterize one time as distinct from another, there is nothing to characterize one time over another as the time for creation to take place. CANNOTANSWER

Aristotle demonstrated the eternity of matter", Ibn Rushd "abandon[ed] belief in the creation out of nothing."

Ibn Rushd (; full name in ; 14 April 112611 December 1198), often Latinized as Averroes ( ), was a Muslim Andalusian polymath and jurist who wrote about many subjects, including philosophy, theology, medicine, astronomy, physics, psychology, mathematics, Islamic jurisprudence and law, and linguistics. The author of more than 100 books and treatises, his philosophical works include numerous commentaries on Aristotle, for which he was known in the western world as The Commentator and Father of Rationalism. Ibn Rushd also served as a chief judge and a court physician for the Almohad Caliphate. Averroes was a strong proponent of Aristotelianism; he attempted to restore what he considered the original teachings of Aristotle and opposed the Neoplatonist tendencies of earlier Muslim thinkers, such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna. He also defended the pursuit of philosophy against criticism by Ashari theologians such as Al-Ghazali. Averroes argued that philosophy was permissible in Islam and even compulsory among certain elites. He also argued scriptural text should be interpreted allegorically if it appeared to contradict conclusions reached by reason and philosophy. In Islamic jurisprudence, he wrote the Bidāyat al-Mujtahid on the differences between Islamic schools of law and the principles that caused their differences. In medicine, he proposed a new theory of stroke, described the signs and symptoms of Parkinson's disease for the first time, and might have been the first to identify the retina as the part of the eye responsible for sensing light. His medical book Al-Kulliyat fi al-Tibb, translated into Latin and known as the Colliget, became a textbook in Europe for centuries. His legacy in the Islamic world was modest for geographical and intellectual reasons. In the west, Averroes was known for his extensive commentaries on Aristotle, many of which were translated into Latin and Hebrew. The translations of his work reawakened western European interest in Aristotle and Greek thinkers, an area of study that had been widely abandoned after the fall of the Roman Empire. His thoughts generated controversies in Latin Christendom and triggered a philosophical movement called Averroism based on his writings. His unity of the intellect thesis, proposing that all humans share the same intellect, became one of the best-known and most controversial Averroist doctrines in the west. His works were condemned by the Catholic Church in 1270 and 1277. Although weakened by condemnations and sustained critique from Thomas Aquinas, Latin Averroism continued to attract followers up to the sixteenth century. Name Ibn Rushd's full, transliterated Arabic name is "Abū l-Walīd Muḥammad ibn ʾAḥmad Ibn Rushd". Sometimes, the nickname al-Hafid ("The Grandson") is appended to his name, to distinguish him from his grandfather, a famous judge and jurist. "Averroes" is the Medieval Latin form of "Ibn Rushd"; it was derived from the Spanish pronunciation of the original Arabic name, wherein "Ibn" becomes "Aben" or "Aven". Other forms of the name in European languages include "Ibin-Ros-din", "Filius Rosadis", "Ibn-Rusid", "Ben-Raxid", "Ibn-Ruschod", "Den-Resched", "Aben-Rassad", "Aben-Rasd", "Aben-Rust", "Avenrosdy", "Avenryz", "Adveroys", "Benroist", "Avenroyth" and "Averroysta". Biography Early life and education Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Rushd was born on 14 April 1126 (520 AH) in Córdoba. His family was well known in the city for their public service, especially in the legal and religious fields. His grandfather Abu al-Walid Muhammad (d. 1126) was the chief judge (qadi) of Córdoba and the imam of the Great Mosque of Córdoba under the Almoravids. His father Abu al-Qasim Ahmad was not as celebrated as his grandfather, but was also chief judge until the Almoravids were replaced by the Almohads in 1146. According to his traditional biographers, Averroes's education was "excellent", beginning with studies in hadith (traditions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad), fiqh (jurisprudence), medicine and theology. He learned Maliki jurisprudence under al-Hafiz Abu Muhammad ibn Rizq and hadith with Ibn Bashkuwal, a student of his grandfather. His father also taught him about jurisprudence, including on Imam Malik's magnum opus the Muwatta, which Averroes went on to memorize. He studied medicine under Abu Jafar Jarim al-Tajail, who probably taught him philosophy too. He also knew the works of the philosopher Ibn Bajjah (also known as Avempace), and might have known him personally or been tutored by him. He joined a regular meeting of philosophers, physicians and poets in Seville which was attended by philosophers Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Zuhr as well as the future caliph Abu Yusuf Yaqub. He also studied the kalam theology of the Ashari school, which he criticized later in life. His 13th century biographer Ibn al-Abbar said he was more interested in the study of law and its principles (usul) than that of hadith and he was especially competent in the field of khilaf (disputes and controversies in the Islamic jurisprudence). Ibn al-Abbar also mentioned his interests in "the sciences of the ancients", probably in reference to Greek philosophy and sciences. Career By 1153 Averroes was in Marrakesh (Morocco), the capital of the Almohad Caliphate, to perform astronomical observations and to support the Almohad project of building new colleges. He was hoping to find physical laws of astronomical movements instead of only the mathematical laws known at the time but this research was unsuccessful. During his stay in Marrakesh he likely met Ibn Tufayl, a renowned philosopher and the author of Hayy ibn Yaqdhan who was also the court physician in Marrakesh. Averroes and ibn Tufayl became friends despite the differences in their philosophies. In 1169 Ibn Tufayl introduced Averroes to the Almohad caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf. In a famous account reported by historian Abdelwahid al-Marrakushi the caliph asked Averroes whether the heavens had existed since eternity or had a beginning. Knowing this question was controversial and worried a wrong answer could put him in danger, Averroes did not answer. The caliph then elaborated the views of Plato, Aristotle and Muslim philosophers on the topic and discussed them with Ibn Tufayl. This display of knowledge put Averroes at ease; Averroes then explained his own views on the subject, which impressed the caliph. Averroes was similarly impressed by Abu Yaqub and later said the caliph had "a profuseness of learning I did not suspect". After their introduction, Averroes remained in Abu Yaqub's favor until the caliph's death in 1184. When the caliph complained to Ibn Tufayl about the difficulty of understanding Aristotle's work, Ibn Tufayl recommended to the caliph that Averroes work on explaining it. This was the beginning of Averroes's massive commentaries on Aristotle; his first works on the subject were written in 1169. In the same year, Averroes was appointed qadi (judge) in Seville. In 1171 he became qadi in his hometown of Córdoba. As qadi he would decide cases and give fatwas (legal opinions) based on the Islamic law (sharia). The rate of his writing increased during this time despite other obligations and his travels within the Almohad empire. He also took the opportunity from his travels to conduct astronomical researches. Many of his works produced between 1169 and 1179 were dated in Seville rather than Córdoba. In 1179 he was again appointed qadi in Seville. In 1182 he succeeded his friend Ibn Tufayl as court physician and later the same year he was appointed the chief qadi of Córdoba, a prestigious office that had once been held by his grandfather. In 1184 Caliph Abu Yaqub died and was succeeded by Abu Yusuf Yaqub. Initially, Averroes remained in royal favor but in 1195 his fortune reversed. Various charges were made against him and he was tried by a tribunal in Córdoba. The tribunal condemned his teachings, ordered the burning of his works and banished Averroes to nearby Lucena. Early biographers's reasons for this fall from grace include a possible insult to the caliph in his writings but modern scholars attribute it to political reasons. The Encyclopaedia of Islam said the caliph distanced himself from Averroes to gain support from more orthodox ulema, who opposed Averroes and whose support al-Mansur needed for his war against Christian kingdoms. Historian of Islamic philosophy Majid Fakhry also wrote that public pressure from traditional Maliki jurists who were opposed to Averroes played a role. After a few years, Averroes returned to court in Marrakesh and was again in the caliph's favor. He died shortly afterwards, on 11 December 1198 (9 Safar 595 in the Islamic calendar). He was initially buried in North Africa but his body was later moved to Córdoba for another funeral, at which future Sufi mystic and philosopher Ibn Arabi (1165–1240) was present. Works Averroes was a prolific writer and his works, according to Fakhry, "covered a greater variety of subjects" than those of any of his predecessors in the East, including philosophy, medicine, jurisprudence or legal theory, and linguistics. Most of his writings were commentaries on or paraphrasings of the works of Aristotle that—especially the long ones—often contain his original thoughts. According to French author Ernest Renan, Averroes wrote at least 67 original works, including 28 works on philosophy, 20 on medicine, 8 on law, 5 on theology, and 4 on grammar, in addition to his commentaries on most of Aristotle's works and his commentary on Plato's The Republic. Many of Averroes's works in Arabic did not survive, but their translations into Hebrew or Latin did. For example, of his long commentaries on Aristotle, only "a tiny handful of Arabic manuscript remains". Commentaries on Aristotle Averroes wrote commentaries on nearly all of Aristotle's surviving works. The only exception is Politics, which he did not have access to, so he wrote commentaries on Plato's Republic. He classified his commentaries into three categories that modern scholars have named short, middle and long commentaries. Most of the short commentaries (jami) were written early in his career and contain summaries of Aristotlean doctrines. The middle commentaries (talkhis) contain paraphrases that clarify and simplify Aristotle's original text. The middle commentaries were probably written in response to his patron caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf's complaints about the difficulty of understanding Aristotle's original texts and to help others in a similar position. The long commentaries (tafsir or sharh), or line-by-line commentaries, include the complete text of the original works with a detailed analysis of each line. The long commentaries are very detailed and contain a high degree of original thought, and were unlikely to be intended for a general audience. Only five of Aristotle's works had all three types of commentaries: Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul, On the Heavens, and Posterior Analytics. Stand alone philosophical works Averroes also wrote stand alone philosophical treatises, including On the Intellect, On the Syllogism, On Conjunction with the Active Intellect, On Time, On the Heavenly Sphere and On the Motion of the Sphere. He also wrote several polemics: Essay on al-Farabi's Approach to Logic, as Compared to that of Aristotle, Metaphysical Questions Dealt with in the Book of Healing by Ibn Sina, and Rebuttal of Ibn Sina's Classification of Existing Entities. Islamic theology Scholarly sources, including Fakhry and the Encyclopedia of Islam, have named three works as Averroes's key writings in this area. Fasl al-Maqal ("The Decisive Treatise") is an 1178 treatise that argues for the compatibility of Islam and philosophy. Al-Kashf 'an Manahij al-Adillah ("Exposition of the Methods of Proof"), written in 1179, criticizes the theologies of the Asharites, and lays out Averroes's argument for proving the existence of God, as well as his thoughts on God's attributes and actions. The 1180 Tahafut al-Tahafut ("Incoherence of the Incoherence") is a rebuttal of al-Ghazali's (d. 1111) landmark criticism of philosophy The Incoherence of the Philosophers. It combines ideas in his commentaries and stand alone works, and uses them to respond to al-Ghazali. The work also criticizes Avicenna and his neo-Platonist tendencies, sometimes agreeing with al-Ghazali's critique against him. Medicine Averroes, who served as the royal physician at the Almohad court, wrote a number of medical treatises. The most famous was al-Kulliyat fi al-Tibb ("The General Principles of Medicine", Latinized in the west as the Colliget), written around 1162, before his appointment at court. The title of this book is the opposite of al-Juz'iyyat fi al-Tibb ("The Specificities of Medicine"), written by his friend Ibn Zuhr, and the two collaborated intending that their works complement each other. The Latin translation of the Colliget became a medical textbook in Europe for centuries. His other surviving titles include On Treacle, The Differences in Temperament, and Medicinal Herbs. He also wrote summaries of the works of Greek physician Galen (died ) and a commentary on Avicenna's Urjuzah fi al-Tibb ("Poem on Medicine"). Jurisprudence and law Averroes served multiple tenures as judge and produced multiple works in the fields of Islamic jurisprudence or legal theory. The only book that survives today is Bidāyat al-Mujtahid wa Nihāyat al-Muqtaṣid ("Primer of the Discretionary Scholar"). In this work he explains the differences of opinion (ikhtilaf) between the Sunni madhhabs (schools of Islamic jurisprudence) both in practice and in their underlying juristic principles, as well as the reason why they are inevitable. Despite his status as a Maliki judge, the book also discusses the opinion of other schools, including liberal and conservative ones. Other than this surviving text, bibliographical information shows he wrote a summary of Al-Ghazali's On Legal Theory of Muslim Jurisprudence (Al-Mustasfa) and tracts on sacrifices and land tax. Philosophical ideas Aristotelianism in the Islamic philosophical tradition In his philosophical writings, Averroes attempted to return to Aristotelianism, which according to him had been distorted by the Neoplatonist tendencies of Muslim philosophers such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna. He rejected al-Farabi's attempt to merge the ideas of Plato and Aristotle, pointing out the differences between the two, such as Aristotle's rejection of Plato's theory of ideas. He also criticized Al-Farabi's works on logic for misinterpreting its Aristotelian source. He wrote an extensive critique of Avicenna, who was the standard-bearer of Islamic Neoplatonism in the Middle Ages. He argued that Avicenna's theory of emanation had many fallacies and was not found in the works of Aristotle. Averroes disagreed with Avicenna's view that existence is merely an accident added to essence, arguing the reverse; something exists per se and essence can only be found by subsequent abstraction. He also rejected Avicenna's modality and Avicenna's argument to prove the existence of God as the Necessary Existent. Averroes felt strongly about the incorporation of Greek thought into the Muslim world, and wrote that "if before us someone has inquired into [wisdom], it behooves us to seek help from what he has said. It is irrelevant whether he belongs to our community or to another". Relation between religion and philosophy During Averroes's lifetime, philosophy came under attack from the Sunni Islam tradition, especially from theological schools like the traditionalist (Hanbalite) and the Ashari schools. In particular, the Ashari scholar al-Ghazali (1058 – 1111) wrote The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-falasifa), a scathing and influential critique of the Neoplatonic philosophical tradition in the Islamic world and against the works of Avicenna in particular. Among others, Al-Ghazali charged philosophers with non-belief in Islam and sought to disprove the teaching of the philosophers using logical arguments. In Decisive Treatise, Averroes argues that philosophy—which for him represented conclusions reached using reason and careful method—cannot contradict revelations in Islam because they are just two different methods of reaching the truth, and "truth cannot contradict truth". When conclusions reached by philosophy appear to contradict the text of the revelation, then according to Averroes, revelation must be subjected to interpretation or allegorical understanding to remove the contradiction. This interpretation must be done by those "rooted in knowledge"a phrase taken from the Quran, 3:7, which for Averroes refers to philosophers who during his lifetime had access to the "highest methods of knowledge". He also argues that the Quran calls for Muslims to study philosophy because the study and reflection of nature would increase a person's knowledge of "the Artisan" (God). He quotes Quranic passages calling on Muslims to reflect on nature and uses them to render a fatwa (legal opinion) that philosophy is allowed for Muslims and is probably an obligation, at least among those who have the talent for it. Averroes also distinguishes between three modes of discourse: the rhetorical (based on persuasion) accessible to the common masses; the dialectical (based on debate) and often employed by theologians and the ulama (scholars); and the demonstrative (based on logical deduction). According to Averroes, the Quran uses the rhetorical method of inviting people to the truth, which allows it to reach the common masses with its persuasiveness, whereas philosophy uses the demonstrative methods that were only available to the learned but provided the best possible understanding and knowledge. Averroes also tries to deflect Al-Ghazali's criticisms of philosophy by saying that many of them apply only to the philosophy of Avicenna and not to that of Aristotle, which Averroes argues to be the true philosophy from which Avicenna has deviated. Nature of God Existence Averroes lays out his views on the existence and nature of God in the treatise The Exposition of the Methods of Proof. He examines and critiques the doctrines of four sects of Islam: the Asharites, the Mutazilites, the Sufis and those he calls the "literalists" (al-hashwiyah). Among other things, he examines their proofs of God's existence and critiques each one. Averroes argues that there are two arguments for God's existence that he deems logically sound and in accordance to the Quran; the arguments from "providence" and "from invention". The providence argument considers that the world and the universe seem finely tuned to support human life. Averroes cited the sun, the moon, the rivers, the seas and the location of humans on the earth. According to him, this suggests a creator who created them for the welfare of mankind. The argument from invention contends that worldly entities such as animals and plants appear to have been invented. Therefore, Averroes argues that a designer was behind the creation and that is God. Averroes's two arguments are teleological in nature and not cosmological like the arguments of Aristotle and most contemporaneous Muslim kalam theologians. God's attributes Averroes upholds the doctrine of divine unity (tawhid) and argues that God has seven divine attributes: knowledge, life, power, will, hearing, vision and speech. He devotes the most attention to the attribute of knowledge and argues that divine knowledge differs from human knowledge because God knows the universe because God is its cause while humans only know the universe through its effects. Averroes argues that the attribute of life can be inferred because it is the precondition of knowledge and also because God willed objects into being. Power can be inferred by God's ability to bring creations into existence. Averroes also argues that knowledge and power inevitably give rise to speech. Regarding vision and speech, he says that because God created the world, he necessarily knows every part of it in the same way an artist understands his or her work intimately. Because two elements of the world are the visual and the auditory, God must necessarily possess vision and speech. The omnipotence paradox was first addressed by Averroës and only later by Thomas Aquinas. Pre-eternity of the world In the centuries preceding Averroes, there had been a debate between Muslim thinkers questioning whether the world was created at a specific moment in time or whether it has always existed. Neo-Platonic philosophers such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna argued the world has always existed. This view was criticized by theologians and philosophers of the Ashari kalam tradition; in particular, al-Ghazali wrote an extensive refutation of the pre-eternity doctrine in his Incoherence of the Philosophers and accused the Neo-Platonic philosophers of unbelief (kufr). Averroes responded to Al-Ghazali in his Incoherence of the Incoherence. First, he argued that the differences between the two positions were not vast enough to warrant the charge of unbelief. He also said the pre-eternity doctrine did not necessarily contradict the Quran and cited verses that mention pre-existing "throne" and "water" in passages related to creation. Averroes argued that a careful reading of the Quran implied only the "form" of the universe was created in time but that its existence has been eternal. Averroes further criticized the kalam theologians for using their own interpretations of scripture to answer questions that should have been left to philosophers. Politics Averroes states his political philosophy in his commentary of Plato's Republic. He combines his ideas with Plato's and with Islamic tradition; he considers the ideal state to be one based on the Islamic law (shariah). His interpretation of Plato's philosopher-king followed that of Al-Farabi, which equates the philosopher-king with the imam, caliph and lawgiver of the state. Averroes's description of the characteristics of a philosopher-king are similar to those given by Al-Farabi; they include love of knowledge, good memory, love of learning, love of truth, dislike for sensual pleasures, dislike for amassing wealth, magnanimity, courage, steadfastness, eloquence and the ability to "light quickly on the middle term". Averroes writes that if philosophers cannot rule—as was the case in the Almoravid and Almohad empires around his lifetime—philosophers must still try to influence the rulers towards implementing the ideal state. According to Averroes, there are two methods of teaching virtue to citizens; persuasion and coercion. Persuasion is the more natural method consisting of rhetorical, dialectical and demonstrative methods; sometimes, however, coercion is necessary for those not amenable to persuasion, e.g. enemies of the state. Therefore, he justifies war as a last resort, which he also supports using Quranic arguments. Consequently, he argues that a ruler should have both wisdom and courage, which are needed for governance and defense of the state. Like Plato, Averroes calls for women to share with men in the administration of the state, including participating as soldiers, philosophers and rulers. He regrets that contemporaneous Muslim societies limited the public role of women; he says this limitation is harmful to the state's well-being. Averroes also accepted Plato's ideas of the deterioration of the ideal state. He cites examples from Islamic history when the Rashidun caliphate—which in Sunni tradition represented the ideal state led by "rightly guided caliphs"—became a dynastic state under Muawiyah, founder of the Umayyad dynasty. He also says the Almoravid and the Almohad empires started as ideal, shariah-based states but then deteriorated into timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny. Diversity of Islamic law In his tenure as judge and jurist, Averroes for the most part ruled and gave fatwas according to the Maliki school of Islamic law which was dominant in Al-Andalus and the western Islamic world during his time. However, he frequently acted as "his own man", including sometimes rejecting the "consensus of the people of Medina" argument that is one of the traditional Maliki position. In Bidāyat al-Mujtahid, one of his major contributions to the field of Islamic law, he not only describes the differences between various school of Islamic laws but also tries to theoretically explain the reasons for the difference and why they are inevitable. Even though all the schools of Islamic law are ultimately rooted in the Quran and hadith, there are "causes that necessitate differences" (al-asbab al-lati awjabat al-ikhtilaf). They include differences in interpreting scripture in a general or specific sense, in interpreting scriptural commands as obligatory or merely recommended, or prohibitions as discouragement or total prohibition, as well as ambiguities in the meaning of words or expressions. Averroes also writes that the application of qiyas (reasoning by analogy) could give rise to different legal opinion because jurists might disagree on the applicability of certain analogies and different analogies might contradict each other. Natural philosophy Astronomy As did Avempace and Ibn Tufail, Averroes criticizes the Ptolemaic system using philosophical arguments and rejects the use of eccentrics and epicycles to explain the apparent motions of the moon, the sun and the planets. He argued that those objects move uniformly in a strictly circular motion around the earth, following Aristotelian principles. He postulates that there are three type of planetary motions; those that can be seen with the naked eye, those that requires instruments to observe and those that can only be known by philosophical reasoning. Averroes argues that the occasional opaque colors of the moon are caused by variations in its thickness; the thicker parts receive more light from the Sun—and therefore emit more light—than the thinner parts. This explanation was used up to the seventeenth century by the European Scholastics to account for Galileo's observations of spots on the moon's surface, until the Scholastics such as Antoine Goudin in 1668 conceded that the observation was more likely caused by mountains on the moon. He and Ibn Bajja observed sunspots, which they thought were transits of Venus and Mercury between the Sun and the Earth. In 1153 he conducted astronomical observations in Marrakesh, where he observed the star Canopus (Arabic: Suhayl) which was invisible in the latitude of his native Spain. He used this observation to support Aristotle's argument for the spherical Earth. Averroes was aware that Arabic and Andalusian astronomers of his time focused on "mathematical" astronomy, which enabled accurate predictions through calculations but did not provide a detailed physical explanation of how the universe worked. According to him, "the astronomy of our time offers no truth, but only agrees with the calculations and not with what exists." He attempted to reform astronomy to be reconciled with physics, especially the physics of Aristotle. His long commentary of Aristotle's Metaphysics describes the principles of his attempted reform, but later in his life he declared that his attempts had failed. He confessed that he had not enough time or knowledge to reconcile the observed planetary motions with Aristotelian principles. In addition, he did not know the works of Eudoxus and Callippus, and so he missed the context of some of Aristotle's astronomical works. However, his works influenced astronomer Nur ad-Din al-Bitruji (d. 1204) who adopted most of his reform principles and did succeed in proposing an early astronomical system based on Aristotelian physics. Physics In physics, Averroes did not adopt the inductive method that was being developed by Al-Biruni in the Islamic world and is closer to today's physics. Rather, he was—in the words of historian of science Ruth Glasner—a "exegetical" scientist who produced new theses about nature through discussions of previous texts, especially the writings of Aristotle. because of this approach, he was often depicted as an unimaginative follower of Aristotle, but Glasner argues that Averroes's work introduced highly original theories of physics, especially his elaboration of Aristotle's minima naturalia and on motion as forma fluens, which were taken up in the west and are important to the overall development of physics. Averroes also proposed a definition of force as "the rate at which work is done in changing the kinetic condition of a material body"—a definition close to that of power in today's physics. Psychology Averroes expounds his thoughts on psychology in his three commentaries on Aristotle's On the Soul. Averroes is interested in explaining the human intellect using philosophical methods and by interpreting Aristotle's ideas. His position on the topic changed throughout his career as his thoughts developed. In his short commentary, the first of the three works, Averroes follows Ibn Bajja's theory that something called the "material intellect" stores specific images that a person encounters. These images serve as basis for the "unification" by the universal "agent intellect", which, once it happens, allow a person to gain universal knowledge about that concept. In his middle commentary, Averroes moves towards the ideas of Al-Farabi and Avicenna, saying the agent intellect gives humans the power of universal understanding, which is the material intellect. Once the person has sufficient empirical encounters with a certain concept, the power activates and gives the person universal knowledge (see also logical induction). In his last commentary—called the Long Commentary—he proposes another theory, which becomes known as the theory of "the unity of the intellect". In it, Averroes argues that there is only one material intellect, which is the same for all humans and is unmixed with human body. To explain how different individuals can have different thoughts, he uses a concept he calls fikr—known as cogitatio in Latin—a process that happens in human brains and contains not universal knowledge but "active consideration of particular things" the person has encountered. This theory attracted controversy when Averroes's works entered Christian Europe; in 1229 Thomas Aquinas wrote a detailed critique titled On the Unity of the Intellect against the Averroists. Medicine While his works in medicine indicate an in-depth theoretical knowledge in medicine of his time, he likely had limited expertise as a practitioner, and declared in one of his works that he had not "practiced much apart from myself, my relatives or my friends." He did serve as a royal physician, but his qualification and education was mostly theoretical. For the most part, Averroes's medical work Al-Kulliyat fi al-Tibb follows the medical doctrine of Galen, an influential Greek physician and author from the 2nd century, which was based on the four humors—blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm, whose balance is necessary for the health of the human body. Averroes's original contributions include his observations on the retina: he might have been the first to recognize that retina was the part of the eye responsible for sensing light, rather than the lens as was commonly thought. Modern scholars dispute whether this is what he meant it his Kulliyat, but Averroes also stated a similar observation in his commentary to Aristotle's Sense and Sensibilia: "the innermost of the coats of the eye [the retina] must necessarily receive the light from the humors of the eye [the lens], just like the humors receive the light from air." Another of his departure from Galen and the medical theories of the time is his description of stroke as produced by the brain and caused by an obstruction of the arteries from the heart to the brain. This explanation is closer to the modern understanding of the disease compared to that of Galen, which attributes it to the obstruction between heart and the periphery. He was also the first to describe the signs and symptoms of Parkinson's disease in his Kulliyat, although he did not give the disease a name. Legacy In Jewish tradition Maimonides (d. 1204) was among early Jewish scholars who received Averroes's works enthusiastically, saying he "received lately everything Averroes had written on the works of Aristotle" and that Averroes "was extremely right". Thirteenth-century Jewish writers, including Samuel ibn Tibbon in his work Opinion of the Philosophers, Judah ibn Solomon Cohen in his Search for Wisdom and Shem-Tov ibn Falaquera, relied heavily on Averroes's texts. In 1232, Joseph Ben Abba Mari translated Averroes's commentaries on the Organon; this was the first Jewish translation of a complete work. In 1260 Moses ibn Tibbon published the translation of almost all of Averroes's commentaries and some of his works on medicine. Jewish Averroism peaked in the fourteenth century; Jewish writers of this time who translated or were influenced by Averroes include Kalonymus ben Kalonymus of Arles, France, Todros Todrosi of Arles, Elia del Medigo of Candia and Gersonides of Languedoc. In Latin tradition Averroes's main influence on the Christian west was through his extensive commentaries on Aristotle. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, western Europe fell into a cultural decline that resulted in the loss of nearly all of the intellectual legacy of the Classical Greek scholars, including Aristotle. Averroes's commentaries, which were translated into Latin and entered western Europe in the thirteenth century, provided an expert account of Aristotle's legacy and made them available again. The influence of his commentaries led to Averroes being referred to simply as "The Commentator" rather than by name in Latin Christian writings. He has been sometimes described as the "father of free thought and unbelief" and "father of rationalism". Michael Scot (1175 – c. 1232) was the first Latin translator of Averroes who translated the long commentaries of Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul and On the Heavens, as well as multiple middle and short commentaries, starting in 1217 in Paris and Toledo. Following this, European authors such as Hermannus Alemannus, William de Luna and Armengaud of Montpellier translated Averroes's other works, sometimes with help from Jewish authors. Soon after, Averroes's works propagated among Christian scholars in the scholastic tradition. His writing attracted a strong circle of followers known as the Latin Averroists. Paris and Padua were major centers of Latin Averroism, and its prominent thirteenth-century leaders included Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia. Authorities of the Roman Catholic Church reacted against the spread of Averroism. In 1270, the Bishop of Paris Étienne Tempier issued a condemnation against 15 doctrines—many of which were Aristotelian or Averroist—that he said were in conflict with the doctrines of the church. In 1277, at the request of Pope John XXI, Tempier issued another condemnation, this time targeting 219 theses drawn from many sources, mainly the teachings of Aristotle and Averroes. Averroes received a mixed reception from other Catholic thinkers; Thomas Aquinas, a leading Catholic thinker of the thirteenth century, relied extensively on Averroes's interpretation of Aristotle but disagreed with him on many points. For example, he wrote a detailed attack on Averroes's theory that all humans share the same intellect. He also opposed Averroes on the eternity of the universe and divine providence. The Catholic Church's condemnations of 1270 and 1277, and the detailed critique by Aquinas weakened the spread of Averroism in Latin Christendom, though it maintained a following until the sixteenth century, when European thought began to diverge from Aristotelianism. Leading Averroists in the following centuries included John of Jandun and Marsilius of Padua (fourteenth century), Gaetano da Thiene and Pietro Pomponazzi (fifteenth century), and Agostino Nifo and Marcantonio Zimara (sixteenth century). In Islamic tradition Averroes had no major influence on Islamic philosophic thought until modern times. Part of the reason was geography; Averroes lived in Spain, the extreme west of the Islamic civilization far from the centers of Islamic intellectual traditions. Also, his philosophy may not have appealed to Islamic scholars of his time. His focus on Aristotle's works was outdated in the twelfth-century Muslim world, which had already scrutinized Aristotle since the ninth century and by now was engaging deeply with newer schools of thought, especially that of Avicenna. In the nineteenth century, Muslim thinkers begin to engage with the works of Averroes again. By this time, there was a cultural renaissance called Al-Nahda ("reawakening") in the Arabic-speaking world and the works of Averroes were seen as inspiration to modernize the Muslim intellectual tradition. Cultural references References to Averroes appear in the popular culture of both the western and Muslim world. The poem The Divine Comedy by the Italian writer Dante Alighieri, completed in 1320, depicts Averroes, "who made the Great Commentary", along with other non-Christian Greek and Muslim thinkers, in the first circle of hell around Saladin. The prolog of The Canterbury Tales (1387) by Geoffrey Chaucer lists Averroes among other medical authorities known in Europe at the time. Averroes is depicted in Raphael's 1501 fresco The School of Athens that decorates the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, which features seminal figures of philosophy. In the painting, Averroes wears a green robe and a turban, and peers out from behind Pythagoras, who is shown writing a book. Averroes is referenced briefly in Victor Hugo's 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' (written 1831, but set in the Paris of 1482). The novel's villain, the Priest Claude Frollo, extols Averroes' talents as an alchemist in his obsessive quest to find the Philosophers Stone. A 1947 short story by Jorge Luis Borges, "Averroes's Search" (), features his attempts to understand Aristotle's Poetics within a culture that lacks a tradition of live theatrical performance. In the afterwords of the story, Borges comments, "I felt that [the story] mocked me, foiled me, thwarted me. I felt that Averroës, trying to imagine what a play is without ever having suspected what a theater is, was no more absurd than I, trying to imagine Averroës yet with no more material than a few snatches from Renan, Lane, and Asín Palacios." Averroes is also the hero of the 1997 Egyptian movie Destiny by Youssef Chahine, made partly in commemoration of the 800th anniversary of his death. The plant genus Averrhoa (whose members include the starfruit and the bilimbi), the lunar crater ibn Rushd, and the asteroid 8318 Averroes are named after him. References Works cited External links Works of Averroes DARE, the Digital Averroes Research Environment, an ongoing effort to collect digital images of all Averroes manuscripts and full texts of all three language-traditions. Averroes, Islamic Philosophy Online (links to works by and about Averroes in several languages) The Philosophy and Theology of Averroes: Tractata translated from the Arabic, trans. Mohammad Jamil-ur-Rehman, 1921 The Incoherence of the Incoherence translation by Simon van den Bergh. [N. B. : Because these refutations consist mainly of commentary on statements by al-Ghazali which are quoted verbatim, this work contains a translation of most of the Tahafut.] There is also an Italian translation by Massimo Campanini, Averroè, L'incoerenza dell'incoerenza dei filosofi, Turin, Utet, 1997. SIEPM Virtual Library, including scanned copies (PDF) of the Editio Juntina of Averroes's works in Latin (Venice 1550–1562) Information about Averroes on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Bibliography, a comprehensive overview of the extant bibliography Averroes Database, including a full bibliography of his works Podcast on Averroes, at NPR's Throughline 1126 births 1198 deaths 12th-century Al-Andalus people 12th-century astronomers 12th-century philosophers 12th-century physicians Almoravid dynasty Arabic commentators on Aristotle Aristotelian philosophers Astronomers of medieval Islam Commentators on Plato Cultural critics Deaths in Morocco Epistemologists Ethicists Founders of philosophical traditions Islamic philosophers Logicians Medieval Arab astronomers Medieval Arab philosophers Medieval Arab physicians Medieval Moorish astronomers Medieval Moorish physicians Medieval physicists Metaphysicians Moorish Maliki scholars Moral philosophers 12th-century Muslim theologians Ontologists People from Córdoba, Spain Philosophers of culture Philosophers of ethics and morality Philosophers of history Philosophers of language Philosophers of literature Philosophers of logic Philosophers of mind Philosophers of psychology Philosophers of religion Philosophers of science Physicians of medieval Islam Political philosophers Psychologists Social critics Social philosophers Sunni Muslim scholars World Digital Library exhibits Philosophers of Al-Andalus

C_20ee3062684049e5b429117483c182d3_0

Was there more to it?

Was there more to The Eternity of World, besides Aristotle demonstrating the eternity of matter??

Averroes

Ibn Rushd looked to Aristotle as to whether the world was eternal. In his Physics, the Greek philosopher argues that everything that comes into existence does so from a substratum. Therefore, if the underlying matter of the universe came into existence, it would come into existence from a substratum. But the nature of matter is precisely to be the substratum from which other things arise. Consequently, the underlying matter of the universe could have come into evidence only from an already existing matter exactly like itself; to assume that the underlying matter of the universe came into existence would require assuming that an underlying matter already existed. As this assumption is self-contradictory, Aristotle argued, matter must be eternal. Because in his eyes, "Aristotle demonstrated the eternity of matter", Ibn Rushd "abandon[ed] belief in the creation out of nothing." This is not to say that Ibn Rushd denied the Creation; rather, he proposed an eternal creation. Oliver Leaman explains Ibn Rushd's argument as such: We [as humans] can decide to do something, we can wait for a certain time before acting, we can wonder about our future actions; but such possibilities cannot arise for [an eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent] God. In his case there is no gap between desire and action, nothing stands in the way of his activity; and yet we are told by al-Ghazali that God suddenly created the world. What differentiates one time from another for God? What could motivate him to create the world at one particular time as opposed to another? For us, different times are different because they have different qualitative aspects, yet before the creation of the world, when there was nothing around to characterize one time as distinct from another, there is nothing to characterize one time over another as the time for creation to take place. CANNOTANSWER

We [as humans] can decide to do something, we can wait for a certain time before acting, we can wonder about our future actions;

Ibn Rushd (; full name in ; 14 April 112611 December 1198), often Latinized as Averroes ( ), was a Muslim Andalusian polymath and jurist who wrote about many subjects, including philosophy, theology, medicine, astronomy, physics, psychology, mathematics, Islamic jurisprudence and law, and linguistics. The author of more than 100 books and treatises, his philosophical works include numerous commentaries on Aristotle, for which he was known in the western world as The Commentator and Father of Rationalism. Ibn Rushd also served as a chief judge and a court physician for the Almohad Caliphate. Averroes was a strong proponent of Aristotelianism; he attempted to restore what he considered the original teachings of Aristotle and opposed the Neoplatonist tendencies of earlier Muslim thinkers, such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna. He also defended the pursuit of philosophy against criticism by Ashari theologians such as Al-Ghazali. Averroes argued that philosophy was permissible in Islam and even compulsory among certain elites. He also argued scriptural text should be interpreted allegorically if it appeared to contradict conclusions reached by reason and philosophy. In Islamic jurisprudence, he wrote the Bidāyat al-Mujtahid on the differences between Islamic schools of law and the principles that caused their differences. In medicine, he proposed a new theory of stroke, described the signs and symptoms of Parkinson's disease for the first time, and might have been the first to identify the retina as the part of the eye responsible for sensing light. His medical book Al-Kulliyat fi al-Tibb, translated into Latin and known as the Colliget, became a textbook in Europe for centuries. His legacy in the Islamic world was modest for geographical and intellectual reasons. In the west, Averroes was known for his extensive commentaries on Aristotle, many of which were translated into Latin and Hebrew. The translations of his work reawakened western European interest in Aristotle and Greek thinkers, an area of study that had been widely abandoned after the fall of the Roman Empire. His thoughts generated controversies in Latin Christendom and triggered a philosophical movement called Averroism based on his writings. His unity of the intellect thesis, proposing that all humans share the same intellect, became one of the best-known and most controversial Averroist doctrines in the west. His works were condemned by the Catholic Church in 1270 and 1277. Although weakened by condemnations and sustained critique from Thomas Aquinas, Latin Averroism continued to attract followers up to the sixteenth century. Name Ibn Rushd's full, transliterated Arabic name is "Abū l-Walīd Muḥammad ibn ʾAḥmad Ibn Rushd". Sometimes, the nickname al-Hafid ("The Grandson") is appended to his name, to distinguish him from his grandfather, a famous judge and jurist. "Averroes" is the Medieval Latin form of "Ibn Rushd"; it was derived from the Spanish pronunciation of the original Arabic name, wherein "Ibn" becomes "Aben" or "Aven". Other forms of the name in European languages include "Ibin-Ros-din", "Filius Rosadis", "Ibn-Rusid", "Ben-Raxid", "Ibn-Ruschod", "Den-Resched", "Aben-Rassad", "Aben-Rasd", "Aben-Rust", "Avenrosdy", "Avenryz", "Adveroys", "Benroist", "Avenroyth" and "Averroysta". Biography Early life and education Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Rushd was born on 14 April 1126 (520 AH) in Córdoba. His family was well known in the city for their public service, especially in the legal and religious fields. His grandfather Abu al-Walid Muhammad (d. 1126) was the chief judge (qadi) of Córdoba and the imam of the Great Mosque of Córdoba under the Almoravids. His father Abu al-Qasim Ahmad was not as celebrated as his grandfather, but was also chief judge until the Almoravids were replaced by the Almohads in 1146. According to his traditional biographers, Averroes's education was "excellent", beginning with studies in hadith (traditions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad), fiqh (jurisprudence), medicine and theology. He learned Maliki jurisprudence under al-Hafiz Abu Muhammad ibn Rizq and hadith with Ibn Bashkuwal, a student of his grandfather. His father also taught him about jurisprudence, including on Imam Malik's magnum opus the Muwatta, which Averroes went on to memorize. He studied medicine under Abu Jafar Jarim al-Tajail, who probably taught him philosophy too. He also knew the works of the philosopher Ibn Bajjah (also known as Avempace), and might have known him personally or been tutored by him. He joined a regular meeting of philosophers, physicians and poets in Seville which was attended by philosophers Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Zuhr as well as the future caliph Abu Yusuf Yaqub. He also studied the kalam theology of the Ashari school, which he criticized later in life. His 13th century biographer Ibn al-Abbar said he was more interested in the study of law and its principles (usul) than that of hadith and he was especially competent in the field of khilaf (disputes and controversies in the Islamic jurisprudence). Ibn al-Abbar also mentioned his interests in "the sciences of the ancients", probably in reference to Greek philosophy and sciences. Career By 1153 Averroes was in Marrakesh (Morocco), the capital of the Almohad Caliphate, to perform astronomical observations and to support the Almohad project of building new colleges. He was hoping to find physical laws of astronomical movements instead of only the mathematical laws known at the time but this research was unsuccessful. During his stay in Marrakesh he likely met Ibn Tufayl, a renowned philosopher and the author of Hayy ibn Yaqdhan who was also the court physician in Marrakesh. Averroes and ibn Tufayl became friends despite the differences in their philosophies. In 1169 Ibn Tufayl introduced Averroes to the Almohad caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf. In a famous account reported by historian Abdelwahid al-Marrakushi the caliph asked Averroes whether the heavens had existed since eternity or had a beginning. Knowing this question was controversial and worried a wrong answer could put him in danger, Averroes did not answer. The caliph then elaborated the views of Plato, Aristotle and Muslim philosophers on the topic and discussed them with Ibn Tufayl. This display of knowledge put Averroes at ease; Averroes then explained his own views on the subject, which impressed the caliph. Averroes was similarly impressed by Abu Yaqub and later said the caliph had "a profuseness of learning I did not suspect". After their introduction, Averroes remained in Abu Yaqub's favor until the caliph's death in 1184. When the caliph complained to Ibn Tufayl about the difficulty of understanding Aristotle's work, Ibn Tufayl recommended to the caliph that Averroes work on explaining it. This was the beginning of Averroes's massive commentaries on Aristotle; his first works on the subject were written in 1169. In the same year, Averroes was appointed qadi (judge) in Seville. In 1171 he became qadi in his hometown of Córdoba. As qadi he would decide cases and give fatwas (legal opinions) based on the Islamic law (sharia). The rate of his writing increased during this time despite other obligations and his travels within the Almohad empire. He also took the opportunity from his travels to conduct astronomical researches. Many of his works produced between 1169 and 1179 were dated in Seville rather than Córdoba. In 1179 he was again appointed qadi in Seville. In 1182 he succeeded his friend Ibn Tufayl as court physician and later the same year he was appointed the chief qadi of Córdoba, a prestigious office that had once been held by his grandfather. In 1184 Caliph Abu Yaqub died and was succeeded by Abu Yusuf Yaqub. Initially, Averroes remained in royal favor but in 1195 his fortune reversed. Various charges were made against him and he was tried by a tribunal in Córdoba. The tribunal condemned his teachings, ordered the burning of his works and banished Averroes to nearby Lucena. Early biographers's reasons for this fall from grace include a possible insult to the caliph in his writings but modern scholars attribute it to political reasons. The Encyclopaedia of Islam said the caliph distanced himself from Averroes to gain support from more orthodox ulema, who opposed Averroes and whose support al-Mansur needed for his war against Christian kingdoms. Historian of Islamic philosophy Majid Fakhry also wrote that public pressure from traditional Maliki jurists who were opposed to Averroes played a role. After a few years, Averroes returned to court in Marrakesh and was again in the caliph's favor. He died shortly afterwards, on 11 December 1198 (9 Safar 595 in the Islamic calendar). He was initially buried in North Africa but his body was later moved to Córdoba for another funeral, at which future Sufi mystic and philosopher Ibn Arabi (1165–1240) was present. Works Averroes was a prolific writer and his works, according to Fakhry, "covered a greater variety of subjects" than those of any of his predecessors in the East, including philosophy, medicine, jurisprudence or legal theory, and linguistics. Most of his writings were commentaries on or paraphrasings of the works of Aristotle that—especially the long ones—often contain his original thoughts. According to French author Ernest Renan, Averroes wrote at least 67 original works, including 28 works on philosophy, 20 on medicine, 8 on law, 5 on theology, and 4 on grammar, in addition to his commentaries on most of Aristotle's works and his commentary on Plato's The Republic. Many of Averroes's works in Arabic did not survive, but their translations into Hebrew or Latin did. For example, of his long commentaries on Aristotle, only "a tiny handful of Arabic manuscript remains". Commentaries on Aristotle Averroes wrote commentaries on nearly all of Aristotle's surviving works. The only exception is Politics, which he did not have access to, so he wrote commentaries on Plato's Republic. He classified his commentaries into three categories that modern scholars have named short, middle and long commentaries. Most of the short commentaries (jami) were written early in his career and contain summaries of Aristotlean doctrines. The middle commentaries (talkhis) contain paraphrases that clarify and simplify Aristotle's original text. The middle commentaries were probably written in response to his patron caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf's complaints about the difficulty of understanding Aristotle's original texts and to help others in a similar position. The long commentaries (tafsir or sharh), or line-by-line commentaries, include the complete text of the original works with a detailed analysis of each line. The long commentaries are very detailed and contain a high degree of original thought, and were unlikely to be intended for a general audience. Only five of Aristotle's works had all three types of commentaries: Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul, On the Heavens, and Posterior Analytics. Stand alone philosophical works Averroes also wrote stand alone philosophical treatises, including On the Intellect, On the Syllogism, On Conjunction with the Active Intellect, On Time, On the Heavenly Sphere and On the Motion of the Sphere. He also wrote several polemics: Essay on al-Farabi's Approach to Logic, as Compared to that of Aristotle, Metaphysical Questions Dealt with in the Book of Healing by Ibn Sina, and Rebuttal of Ibn Sina's Classification of Existing Entities. Islamic theology Scholarly sources, including Fakhry and the Encyclopedia of Islam, have named three works as Averroes's key writings in this area. Fasl al-Maqal ("The Decisive Treatise") is an 1178 treatise that argues for the compatibility of Islam and philosophy. Al-Kashf 'an Manahij al-Adillah ("Exposition of the Methods of Proof"), written in 1179, criticizes the theologies of the Asharites, and lays out Averroes's argument for proving the existence of God, as well as his thoughts on God's attributes and actions. The 1180 Tahafut al-Tahafut ("Incoherence of the Incoherence") is a rebuttal of al-Ghazali's (d. 1111) landmark criticism of philosophy The Incoherence of the Philosophers. It combines ideas in his commentaries and stand alone works, and uses them to respond to al-Ghazali. The work also criticizes Avicenna and his neo-Platonist tendencies, sometimes agreeing with al-Ghazali's critique against him. Medicine Averroes, who served as the royal physician at the Almohad court, wrote a number of medical treatises. The most famous was al-Kulliyat fi al-Tibb ("The General Principles of Medicine", Latinized in the west as the Colliget), written around 1162, before his appointment at court. The title of this book is the opposite of al-Juz'iyyat fi al-Tibb ("The Specificities of Medicine"), written by his friend Ibn Zuhr, and the two collaborated intending that their works complement each other. The Latin translation of the Colliget became a medical textbook in Europe for centuries. His other surviving titles include On Treacle, The Differences in Temperament, and Medicinal Herbs. He also wrote summaries of the works of Greek physician Galen (died ) and a commentary on Avicenna's Urjuzah fi al-Tibb ("Poem on Medicine"). Jurisprudence and law Averroes served multiple tenures as judge and produced multiple works in the fields of Islamic jurisprudence or legal theory. The only book that survives today is Bidāyat al-Mujtahid wa Nihāyat al-Muqtaṣid ("Primer of the Discretionary Scholar"). In this work he explains the differences of opinion (ikhtilaf) between the Sunni madhhabs (schools of Islamic jurisprudence) both in practice and in their underlying juristic principles, as well as the reason why they are inevitable. Despite his status as a Maliki judge, the book also discusses the opinion of other schools, including liberal and conservative ones. Other than this surviving text, bibliographical information shows he wrote a summary of Al-Ghazali's On Legal Theory of Muslim Jurisprudence (Al-Mustasfa) and tracts on sacrifices and land tax. Philosophical ideas Aristotelianism in the Islamic philosophical tradition In his philosophical writings, Averroes attempted to return to Aristotelianism, which according to him had been distorted by the Neoplatonist tendencies of Muslim philosophers such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna. He rejected al-Farabi's attempt to merge the ideas of Plato and Aristotle, pointing out the differences between the two, such as Aristotle's rejection of Plato's theory of ideas. He also criticized Al-Farabi's works on logic for misinterpreting its Aristotelian source. He wrote an extensive critique of Avicenna, who was the standard-bearer of Islamic Neoplatonism in the Middle Ages. He argued that Avicenna's theory of emanation had many fallacies and was not found in the works of Aristotle. Averroes disagreed with Avicenna's view that existence is merely an accident added to essence, arguing the reverse; something exists per se and essence can only be found by subsequent abstraction. He also rejected Avicenna's modality and Avicenna's argument to prove the existence of God as the Necessary Existent. Averroes felt strongly about the incorporation of Greek thought into the Muslim world, and wrote that "if before us someone has inquired into [wisdom], it behooves us to seek help from what he has said. It is irrelevant whether he belongs to our community or to another". Relation between religion and philosophy During Averroes's lifetime, philosophy came under attack from the Sunni Islam tradition, especially from theological schools like the traditionalist (Hanbalite) and the Ashari schools. In particular, the Ashari scholar al-Ghazali (1058 – 1111) wrote The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-falasifa), a scathing and influential critique of the Neoplatonic philosophical tradition in the Islamic world and against the works of Avicenna in particular. Among others, Al-Ghazali charged philosophers with non-belief in Islam and sought to disprove the teaching of the philosophers using logical arguments. In Decisive Treatise, Averroes argues that philosophy—which for him represented conclusions reached using reason and careful method—cannot contradict revelations in Islam because they are just two different methods of reaching the truth, and "truth cannot contradict truth". When conclusions reached by philosophy appear to contradict the text of the revelation, then according to Averroes, revelation must be subjected to interpretation or allegorical understanding to remove the contradiction. This interpretation must be done by those "rooted in knowledge"a phrase taken from the Quran, 3:7, which for Averroes refers to philosophers who during his lifetime had access to the "highest methods of knowledge". He also argues that the Quran calls for Muslims to study philosophy because the study and reflection of nature would increase a person's knowledge of "the Artisan" (God). He quotes Quranic passages calling on Muslims to reflect on nature and uses them to render a fatwa (legal opinion) that philosophy is allowed for Muslims and is probably an obligation, at least among those who have the talent for it. Averroes also distinguishes between three modes of discourse: the rhetorical (based on persuasion) accessible to the common masses; the dialectical (based on debate) and often employed by theologians and the ulama (scholars); and the demonstrative (based on logical deduction). According to Averroes, the Quran uses the rhetorical method of inviting people to the truth, which allows it to reach the common masses with its persuasiveness, whereas philosophy uses the demonstrative methods that were only available to the learned but provided the best possible understanding and knowledge. Averroes also tries to deflect Al-Ghazali's criticisms of philosophy by saying that many of them apply only to the philosophy of Avicenna and not to that of Aristotle, which Averroes argues to be the true philosophy from which Avicenna has deviated. Nature of God Existence Averroes lays out his views on the existence and nature of God in the treatise The Exposition of the Methods of Proof. He examines and critiques the doctrines of four sects of Islam: the Asharites, the Mutazilites, the Sufis and those he calls the "literalists" (al-hashwiyah). Among other things, he examines their proofs of God's existence and critiques each one. Averroes argues that there are two arguments for God's existence that he deems logically sound and in accordance to the Quran; the arguments from "providence" and "from invention". The providence argument considers that the world and the universe seem finely tuned to support human life. Averroes cited the sun, the moon, the rivers, the seas and the location of humans on the earth. According to him, this suggests a creator who created them for the welfare of mankind. The argument from invention contends that worldly entities such as animals and plants appear to have been invented. Therefore, Averroes argues that a designer was behind the creation and that is God. Averroes's two arguments are teleological in nature and not cosmological like the arguments of Aristotle and most contemporaneous Muslim kalam theologians. God's attributes Averroes upholds the doctrine of divine unity (tawhid) and argues that God has seven divine attributes: knowledge, life, power, will, hearing, vision and speech. He devotes the most attention to the attribute of knowledge and argues that divine knowledge differs from human knowledge because God knows the universe because God is its cause while humans only know the universe through its effects. Averroes argues that the attribute of life can be inferred because it is the precondition of knowledge and also because God willed objects into being. Power can be inferred by God's ability to bring creations into existence. Averroes also argues that knowledge and power inevitably give rise to speech. Regarding vision and speech, he says that because God created the world, he necessarily knows every part of it in the same way an artist understands his or her work intimately. Because two elements of the world are the visual and the auditory, God must necessarily possess vision and speech. The omnipotence paradox was first addressed by Averroës and only later by Thomas Aquinas. Pre-eternity of the world In the centuries preceding Averroes, there had been a debate between Muslim thinkers questioning whether the world was created at a specific moment in time or whether it has always existed. Neo-Platonic philosophers such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna argued the world has always existed. This view was criticized by theologians and philosophers of the Ashari kalam tradition; in particular, al-Ghazali wrote an extensive refutation of the pre-eternity doctrine in his Incoherence of the Philosophers and accused the Neo-Platonic philosophers of unbelief (kufr). Averroes responded to Al-Ghazali in his Incoherence of the Incoherence. First, he argued that the differences between the two positions were not vast enough to warrant the charge of unbelief. He also said the pre-eternity doctrine did not necessarily contradict the Quran and cited verses that mention pre-existing "throne" and "water" in passages related to creation. Averroes argued that a careful reading of the Quran implied only the "form" of the universe was created in time but that its existence has been eternal. Averroes further criticized the kalam theologians for using their own interpretations of scripture to answer questions that should have been left to philosophers. Politics Averroes states his political philosophy in his commentary of Plato's Republic. He combines his ideas with Plato's and with Islamic tradition; he considers the ideal state to be one based on the Islamic law (shariah). His interpretation of Plato's philosopher-king followed that of Al-Farabi, which equates the philosopher-king with the imam, caliph and lawgiver of the state. Averroes's description of the characteristics of a philosopher-king are similar to those given by Al-Farabi; they include love of knowledge, good memory, love of learning, love of truth, dislike for sensual pleasures, dislike for amassing wealth, magnanimity, courage, steadfastness, eloquence and the ability to "light quickly on the middle term". Averroes writes that if philosophers cannot rule—as was the case in the Almoravid and Almohad empires around his lifetime—philosophers must still try to influence the rulers towards implementing the ideal state. According to Averroes, there are two methods of teaching virtue to citizens; persuasion and coercion. Persuasion is the more natural method consisting of rhetorical, dialectical and demonstrative methods; sometimes, however, coercion is necessary for those not amenable to persuasion, e.g. enemies of the state. Therefore, he justifies war as a last resort, which he also supports using Quranic arguments. Consequently, he argues that a ruler should have both wisdom and courage, which are needed for governance and defense of the state. Like Plato, Averroes calls for women to share with men in the administration of the state, including participating as soldiers, philosophers and rulers. He regrets that contemporaneous Muslim societies limited the public role of women; he says this limitation is harmful to the state's well-being. Averroes also accepted Plato's ideas of the deterioration of the ideal state. He cites examples from Islamic history when the Rashidun caliphate—which in Sunni tradition represented the ideal state led by "rightly guided caliphs"—became a dynastic state under Muawiyah, founder of the Umayyad dynasty. He also says the Almoravid and the Almohad empires started as ideal, shariah-based states but then deteriorated into timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny. Diversity of Islamic law In his tenure as judge and jurist, Averroes for the most part ruled and gave fatwas according to the Maliki school of Islamic law which was dominant in Al-Andalus and the western Islamic world during his time. However, he frequently acted as "his own man", including sometimes rejecting the "consensus of the people of Medina" argument that is one of the traditional Maliki position. In Bidāyat al-Mujtahid, one of his major contributions to the field of Islamic law, he not only describes the differences between various school of Islamic laws but also tries to theoretically explain the reasons for the difference and why they are inevitable. Even though all the schools of Islamic law are ultimately rooted in the Quran and hadith, there are "causes that necessitate differences" (al-asbab al-lati awjabat al-ikhtilaf). They include differences in interpreting scripture in a general or specific sense, in interpreting scriptural commands as obligatory or merely recommended, or prohibitions as discouragement or total prohibition, as well as ambiguities in the meaning of words or expressions. Averroes also writes that the application of qiyas (reasoning by analogy) could give rise to different legal opinion because jurists might disagree on the applicability of certain analogies and different analogies might contradict each other. Natural philosophy Astronomy As did Avempace and Ibn Tufail, Averroes criticizes the Ptolemaic system using philosophical arguments and rejects the use of eccentrics and epicycles to explain the apparent motions of the moon, the sun and the planets. He argued that those objects move uniformly in a strictly circular motion around the earth, following Aristotelian principles. He postulates that there are three type of planetary motions; those that can be seen with the naked eye, those that requires instruments to observe and those that can only be known by philosophical reasoning. Averroes argues that the occasional opaque colors of the moon are caused by variations in its thickness; the thicker parts receive more light from the Sun—and therefore emit more light—than the thinner parts. This explanation was used up to the seventeenth century by the European Scholastics to account for Galileo's observations of spots on the moon's surface, until the Scholastics such as Antoine Goudin in 1668 conceded that the observation was more likely caused by mountains on the moon. He and Ibn Bajja observed sunspots, which they thought were transits of Venus and Mercury between the Sun and the Earth. In 1153 he conducted astronomical observations in Marrakesh, where he observed the star Canopus (Arabic: Suhayl) which was invisible in the latitude of his native Spain. He used this observation to support Aristotle's argument for the spherical Earth. Averroes was aware that Arabic and Andalusian astronomers of his time focused on "mathematical" astronomy, which enabled accurate predictions through calculations but did not provide a detailed physical explanation of how the universe worked. According to him, "the astronomy of our time offers no truth, but only agrees with the calculations and not with what exists." He attempted to reform astronomy to be reconciled with physics, especially the physics of Aristotle. His long commentary of Aristotle's Metaphysics describes the principles of his attempted reform, but later in his life he declared that his attempts had failed. He confessed that he had not enough time or knowledge to reconcile the observed planetary motions with Aristotelian principles. In addition, he did not know the works of Eudoxus and Callippus, and so he missed the context of some of Aristotle's astronomical works. However, his works influenced astronomer Nur ad-Din al-Bitruji (d. 1204) who adopted most of his reform principles and did succeed in proposing an early astronomical system based on Aristotelian physics. Physics In physics, Averroes did not adopt the inductive method that was being developed by Al-Biruni in the Islamic world and is closer to today's physics. Rather, he was—in the words of historian of science Ruth Glasner—a "exegetical" scientist who produced new theses about nature through discussions of previous texts, especially the writings of Aristotle. because of this approach, he was often depicted as an unimaginative follower of Aristotle, but Glasner argues that Averroes's work introduced highly original theories of physics, especially his elaboration of Aristotle's minima naturalia and on motion as forma fluens, which were taken up in the west and are important to the overall development of physics. Averroes also proposed a definition of force as "the rate at which work is done in changing the kinetic condition of a material body"—a definition close to that of power in today's physics. Psychology Averroes expounds his thoughts on psychology in his three commentaries on Aristotle's On the Soul. Averroes is interested in explaining the human intellect using philosophical methods and by interpreting Aristotle's ideas. His position on the topic changed throughout his career as his thoughts developed. In his short commentary, the first of the three works, Averroes follows Ibn Bajja's theory that something called the "material intellect" stores specific images that a person encounters. These images serve as basis for the "unification" by the universal "agent intellect", which, once it happens, allow a person to gain universal knowledge about that concept. In his middle commentary, Averroes moves towards the ideas of Al-Farabi and Avicenna, saying the agent intellect gives humans the power of universal understanding, which is the material intellect. Once the person has sufficient empirical encounters with a certain concept, the power activates and gives the person universal knowledge (see also logical induction). In his last commentary—called the Long Commentary—he proposes another theory, which becomes known as the theory of "the unity of the intellect". In it, Averroes argues that there is only one material intellect, which is the same for all humans and is unmixed with human body. To explain how different individuals can have different thoughts, he uses a concept he calls fikr—known as cogitatio in Latin—a process that happens in human brains and contains not universal knowledge but "active consideration of particular things" the person has encountered. This theory attracted controversy when Averroes's works entered Christian Europe; in 1229 Thomas Aquinas wrote a detailed critique titled On the Unity of the Intellect against the Averroists. Medicine While his works in medicine indicate an in-depth theoretical knowledge in medicine of his time, he likely had limited expertise as a practitioner, and declared in one of his works that he had not "practiced much apart from myself, my relatives or my friends." He did serve as a royal physician, but his qualification and education was mostly theoretical. For the most part, Averroes's medical work Al-Kulliyat fi al-Tibb follows the medical doctrine of Galen, an influential Greek physician and author from the 2nd century, which was based on the four humors—blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm, whose balance is necessary for the health of the human body. Averroes's original contributions include his observations on the retina: he might have been the first to recognize that retina was the part of the eye responsible for sensing light, rather than the lens as was commonly thought. Modern scholars dispute whether this is what he meant it his Kulliyat, but Averroes also stated a similar observation in his commentary to Aristotle's Sense and Sensibilia: "the innermost of the coats of the eye [the retina] must necessarily receive the light from the humors of the eye [the lens], just like the humors receive the light from air." Another of his departure from Galen and the medical theories of the time is his description of stroke as produced by the brain and caused by an obstruction of the arteries from the heart to the brain. This explanation is closer to the modern understanding of the disease compared to that of Galen, which attributes it to the obstruction between heart and the periphery. He was also the first to describe the signs and symptoms of Parkinson's disease in his Kulliyat, although he did not give the disease a name. Legacy In Jewish tradition Maimonides (d. 1204) was among early Jewish scholars who received Averroes's works enthusiastically, saying he "received lately everything Averroes had written on the works of Aristotle" and that Averroes "was extremely right". Thirteenth-century Jewish writers, including Samuel ibn Tibbon in his work Opinion of the Philosophers, Judah ibn Solomon Cohen in his Search for Wisdom and Shem-Tov ibn Falaquera, relied heavily on Averroes's texts. In 1232, Joseph Ben Abba Mari translated Averroes's commentaries on the Organon; this was the first Jewish translation of a complete work. In 1260 Moses ibn Tibbon published the translation of almost all of Averroes's commentaries and some of his works on medicine. Jewish Averroism peaked in the fourteenth century; Jewish writers of this time who translated or were influenced by Averroes include Kalonymus ben Kalonymus of Arles, France, Todros Todrosi of Arles, Elia del Medigo of Candia and Gersonides of Languedoc. In Latin tradition Averroes's main influence on the Christian west was through his extensive commentaries on Aristotle. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, western Europe fell into a cultural decline that resulted in the loss of nearly all of the intellectual legacy of the Classical Greek scholars, including Aristotle. Averroes's commentaries, which were translated into Latin and entered western Europe in the thirteenth century, provided an expert account of Aristotle's legacy and made them available again. The influence of his commentaries led to Averroes being referred to simply as "The Commentator" rather than by name in Latin Christian writings. He has been sometimes described as the "father of free thought and unbelief" and "father of rationalism". Michael Scot (1175 – c. 1232) was the first Latin translator of Averroes who translated the long commentaries of Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul and On the Heavens, as well as multiple middle and short commentaries, starting in 1217 in Paris and Toledo. Following this, European authors such as Hermannus Alemannus, William de Luna and Armengaud of Montpellier translated Averroes's other works, sometimes with help from Jewish authors. Soon after, Averroes's works propagated among Christian scholars in the scholastic tradition. His writing attracted a strong circle of followers known as the Latin Averroists. Paris and Padua were major centers of Latin Averroism, and its prominent thirteenth-century leaders included Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia. Authorities of the Roman Catholic Church reacted against the spread of Averroism. In 1270, the Bishop of Paris Étienne Tempier issued a condemnation against 15 doctrines—many of which were Aristotelian or Averroist—that he said were in conflict with the doctrines of the church. In 1277, at the request of Pope John XXI, Tempier issued another condemnation, this time targeting 219 theses drawn from many sources, mainly the teachings of Aristotle and Averroes. Averroes received a mixed reception from other Catholic thinkers; Thomas Aquinas, a leading Catholic thinker of the thirteenth century, relied extensively on Averroes's interpretation of Aristotle but disagreed with him on many points. For example, he wrote a detailed attack on Averroes's theory that all humans share the same intellect. He also opposed Averroes on the eternity of the universe and divine providence. The Catholic Church's condemnations of 1270 and 1277, and the detailed critique by Aquinas weakened the spread of Averroism in Latin Christendom, though it maintained a following until the sixteenth century, when European thought began to diverge from Aristotelianism. Leading Averroists in the following centuries included John of Jandun and Marsilius of Padua (fourteenth century), Gaetano da Thiene and Pietro Pomponazzi (fifteenth century), and Agostino Nifo and Marcantonio Zimara (sixteenth century). In Islamic tradition Averroes had no major influence on Islamic philosophic thought until modern times. Part of the reason was geography; Averroes lived in Spain, the extreme west of the Islamic civilization far from the centers of Islamic intellectual traditions. Also, his philosophy may not have appealed to Islamic scholars of his time. His focus on Aristotle's works was outdated in the twelfth-century Muslim world, which had already scrutinized Aristotle since the ninth century and by now was engaging deeply with newer schools of thought, especially that of Avicenna. In the nineteenth century, Muslim thinkers begin to engage with the works of Averroes again. By this time, there was a cultural renaissance called Al-Nahda ("reawakening") in the Arabic-speaking world and the works of Averroes were seen as inspiration to modernize the Muslim intellectual tradition. Cultural references References to Averroes appear in the popular culture of both the western and Muslim world. The poem The Divine Comedy by the Italian writer Dante Alighieri, completed in 1320, depicts Averroes, "who made the Great Commentary", along with other non-Christian Greek and Muslim thinkers, in the first circle of hell around Saladin. The prolog of The Canterbury Tales (1387) by Geoffrey Chaucer lists Averroes among other medical authorities known in Europe at the time. Averroes is depicted in Raphael's 1501 fresco The School of Athens that decorates the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, which features seminal figures of philosophy. In the painting, Averroes wears a green robe and a turban, and peers out from behind Pythagoras, who is shown writing a book. Averroes is referenced briefly in Victor Hugo's 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' (written 1831, but set in the Paris of 1482). The novel's villain, the Priest Claude Frollo, extols Averroes' talents as an alchemist in his obsessive quest to find the Philosophers Stone. A 1947 short story by Jorge Luis Borges, "Averroes's Search" (), features his attempts to understand Aristotle's Poetics within a culture that lacks a tradition of live theatrical performance. In the afterwords of the story, Borges comments, "I felt that [the story] mocked me, foiled me, thwarted me. I felt that Averroës, trying to imagine what a play is without ever having suspected what a theater is, was no more absurd than I, trying to imagine Averroës yet with no more material than a few snatches from Renan, Lane, and Asín Palacios." Averroes is also the hero of the 1997 Egyptian movie Destiny by Youssef Chahine, made partly in commemoration of the 800th anniversary of his death. The plant genus Averrhoa (whose members include the starfruit and the bilimbi), the lunar crater ibn Rushd, and the asteroid 8318 Averroes are named after him. References Works cited External links Works of Averroes DARE, the Digital Averroes Research Environment, an ongoing effort to collect digital images of all Averroes manuscripts and full texts of all three language-traditions. Averroes, Islamic Philosophy Online (links to works by and about Averroes in several languages) The Philosophy and Theology of Averroes: Tractata translated from the Arabic, trans. Mohammad Jamil-ur-Rehman, 1921 The Incoherence of the Incoherence translation by Simon van den Bergh. [N. B. : Because these refutations consist mainly of commentary on statements by al-Ghazali which are quoted verbatim, this work contains a translation of most of the Tahafut.] There is also an Italian translation by Massimo Campanini, Averroè, L'incoerenza dell'incoerenza dei filosofi, Turin, Utet, 1997. SIEPM Virtual Library, including scanned copies (PDF) of the Editio Juntina of Averroes's works in Latin (Venice 1550–1562) Information about Averroes on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Bibliography, a comprehensive overview of the extant bibliography Averroes Database, including a full bibliography of his works Podcast on Averroes, at NPR's Throughline 1126 births 1198 deaths 12th-century Al-Andalus people 12th-century astronomers 12th-century philosophers 12th-century physicians Almoravid dynasty Arabic commentators on Aristotle Aristotelian philosophers Astronomers of medieval Islam Commentators on Plato Cultural critics Deaths in Morocco Epistemologists Ethicists Founders of philosophical traditions Islamic philosophers Logicians Medieval Arab astronomers Medieval Arab philosophers Medieval Arab physicians Medieval Moorish astronomers Medieval Moorish physicians Medieval physicists Metaphysicians Moorish Maliki scholars Moral philosophers 12th-century Muslim theologians Ontologists People from Córdoba, Spain Philosophers of culture Philosophers of ethics and morality Philosophers of history Philosophers of language Philosophers of literature Philosophers of logic Philosophers of mind Philosophers of psychology Philosophers of religion Philosophers of science Physicians of medieval Islam Political philosophers Psychologists Social critics Social philosophers Sunni Muslim scholars World Digital Library exhibits Philosophers of Al-Andalus

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When was he preaching about the eternity of the world?

When was Averroes preaching about the eternity of the world?

Averroes

Ibn Rushd looked to Aristotle as to whether the world was eternal. In his Physics, the Greek philosopher argues that everything that comes into existence does so from a substratum. Therefore, if the underlying matter of the universe came into existence, it would come into existence from a substratum. But the nature of matter is precisely to be the substratum from which other things arise. Consequently, the underlying matter of the universe could have come into evidence only from an already existing matter exactly like itself; to assume that the underlying matter of the universe came into existence would require assuming that an underlying matter already existed. As this assumption is self-contradictory, Aristotle argued, matter must be eternal. Because in his eyes, "Aristotle demonstrated the eternity of matter", Ibn Rushd "abandon[ed] belief in the creation out of nothing." This is not to say that Ibn Rushd denied the Creation; rather, he proposed an eternal creation. Oliver Leaman explains Ibn Rushd's argument as such: We [as humans] can decide to do something, we can wait for a certain time before acting, we can wonder about our future actions; but such possibilities cannot arise for [an eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent] God. In his case there is no gap between desire and action, nothing stands in the way of his activity; and yet we are told by al-Ghazali that God suddenly created the world. What differentiates one time from another for God? What could motivate him to create the world at one particular time as opposed to another? For us, different times are different because they have different qualitative aspects, yet before the creation of the world, when there was nothing around to characterize one time as distinct from another, there is nothing to characterize one time over another as the time for creation to take place. CANNOTANSWER

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Ibn Rushd (; full name in ; 14 April 112611 December 1198), often Latinized as Averroes ( ), was a Muslim Andalusian polymath and jurist who wrote about many subjects, including philosophy, theology, medicine, astronomy, physics, psychology, mathematics, Islamic jurisprudence and law, and linguistics. The author of more than 100 books and treatises, his philosophical works include numerous commentaries on Aristotle, for which he was known in the western world as The Commentator and Father of Rationalism. Ibn Rushd also served as a chief judge and a court physician for the Almohad Caliphate. Averroes was a strong proponent of Aristotelianism; he attempted to restore what he considered the original teachings of Aristotle and opposed the Neoplatonist tendencies of earlier Muslim thinkers, such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna. He also defended the pursuit of philosophy against criticism by Ashari theologians such as Al-Ghazali. Averroes argued that philosophy was permissible in Islam and even compulsory among certain elites. He also argued scriptural text should be interpreted allegorically if it appeared to contradict conclusions reached by reason and philosophy. In Islamic jurisprudence, he wrote the Bidāyat al-Mujtahid on the differences between Islamic schools of law and the principles that caused their differences. In medicine, he proposed a new theory of stroke, described the signs and symptoms of Parkinson's disease for the first time, and might have been the first to identify the retina as the part of the eye responsible for sensing light. His medical book Al-Kulliyat fi al-Tibb, translated into Latin and known as the Colliget, became a textbook in Europe for centuries. His legacy in the Islamic world was modest for geographical and intellectual reasons. In the west, Averroes was known for his extensive commentaries on Aristotle, many of which were translated into Latin and Hebrew. The translations of his work reawakened western European interest in Aristotle and Greek thinkers, an area of study that had been widely abandoned after the fall of the Roman Empire. His thoughts generated controversies in Latin Christendom and triggered a philosophical movement called Averroism based on his writings. His unity of the intellect thesis, proposing that all humans share the same intellect, became one of the best-known and most controversial Averroist doctrines in the west. His works were condemned by the Catholic Church in 1270 and 1277. Although weakened by condemnations and sustained critique from Thomas Aquinas, Latin Averroism continued to attract followers up to the sixteenth century. Name Ibn Rushd's full, transliterated Arabic name is "Abū l-Walīd Muḥammad ibn ʾAḥmad Ibn Rushd". Sometimes, the nickname al-Hafid ("The Grandson") is appended to his name, to distinguish him from his grandfather, a famous judge and jurist. "Averroes" is the Medieval Latin form of "Ibn Rushd"; it was derived from the Spanish pronunciation of the original Arabic name, wherein "Ibn" becomes "Aben" or "Aven". Other forms of the name in European languages include "Ibin-Ros-din", "Filius Rosadis", "Ibn-Rusid", "Ben-Raxid", "Ibn-Ruschod", "Den-Resched", "Aben-Rassad", "Aben-Rasd", "Aben-Rust", "Avenrosdy", "Avenryz", "Adveroys", "Benroist", "Avenroyth" and "Averroysta". Biography Early life and education Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Rushd was born on 14 April 1126 (520 AH) in Córdoba. His family was well known in the city for their public service, especially in the legal and religious fields. His grandfather Abu al-Walid Muhammad (d. 1126) was the chief judge (qadi) of Córdoba and the imam of the Great Mosque of Córdoba under the Almoravids. His father Abu al-Qasim Ahmad was not as celebrated as his grandfather, but was also chief judge until the Almoravids were replaced by the Almohads in 1146. According to his traditional biographers, Averroes's education was "excellent", beginning with studies in hadith (traditions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad), fiqh (jurisprudence), medicine and theology. He learned Maliki jurisprudence under al-Hafiz Abu Muhammad ibn Rizq and hadith with Ibn Bashkuwal, a student of his grandfather. His father also taught him about jurisprudence, including on Imam Malik's magnum opus the Muwatta, which Averroes went on to memorize. He studied medicine under Abu Jafar Jarim al-Tajail, who probably taught him philosophy too. He also knew the works of the philosopher Ibn Bajjah (also known as Avempace), and might have known him personally or been tutored by him. He joined a regular meeting of philosophers, physicians and poets in Seville which was attended by philosophers Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Zuhr as well as the future caliph Abu Yusuf Yaqub. He also studied the kalam theology of the Ashari school, which he criticized later in life. His 13th century biographer Ibn al-Abbar said he was more interested in the study of law and its principles (usul) than that of hadith and he was especially competent in the field of khilaf (disputes and controversies in the Islamic jurisprudence). Ibn al-Abbar also mentioned his interests in "the sciences of the ancients", probably in reference to Greek philosophy and sciences. Career By 1153 Averroes was in Marrakesh (Morocco), the capital of the Almohad Caliphate, to perform astronomical observations and to support the Almohad project of building new colleges. He was hoping to find physical laws of astronomical movements instead of only the mathematical laws known at the time but this research was unsuccessful. During his stay in Marrakesh he likely met Ibn Tufayl, a renowned philosopher and the author of Hayy ibn Yaqdhan who was also the court physician in Marrakesh. Averroes and ibn Tufayl became friends despite the differences in their philosophies. In 1169 Ibn Tufayl introduced Averroes to the Almohad caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf. In a famous account reported by historian Abdelwahid al-Marrakushi the caliph asked Averroes whether the heavens had existed since eternity or had a beginning. Knowing this question was controversial and worried a wrong answer could put him in danger, Averroes did not answer. The caliph then elaborated the views of Plato, Aristotle and Muslim philosophers on the topic and discussed them with Ibn Tufayl. This display of knowledge put Averroes at ease; Averroes then explained his own views on the subject, which impressed the caliph. Averroes was similarly impressed by Abu Yaqub and later said the caliph had "a profuseness of learning I did not suspect". After their introduction, Averroes remained in Abu Yaqub's favor until the caliph's death in 1184. When the caliph complained to Ibn Tufayl about the difficulty of understanding Aristotle's work, Ibn Tufayl recommended to the caliph that Averroes work on explaining it. This was the beginning of Averroes's massive commentaries on Aristotle; his first works on the subject were written in 1169. In the same year, Averroes was appointed qadi (judge) in Seville. In 1171 he became qadi in his hometown of Córdoba. As qadi he would decide cases and give fatwas (legal opinions) based on the Islamic law (sharia). The rate of his writing increased during this time despite other obligations and his travels within the Almohad empire. He also took the opportunity from his travels to conduct astronomical researches. Many of his works produced between 1169 and 1179 were dated in Seville rather than Córdoba. In 1179 he was again appointed qadi in Seville. In 1182 he succeeded his friend Ibn Tufayl as court physician and later the same year he was appointed the chief qadi of Córdoba, a prestigious office that had once been held by his grandfather. In 1184 Caliph Abu Yaqub died and was succeeded by Abu Yusuf Yaqub. Initially, Averroes remained in royal favor but in 1195 his fortune reversed. Various charges were made against him and he was tried by a tribunal in Córdoba. The tribunal condemned his teachings, ordered the burning of his works and banished Averroes to nearby Lucena. Early biographers's reasons for this fall from grace include a possible insult to the caliph in his writings but modern scholars attribute it to political reasons. The Encyclopaedia of Islam said the caliph distanced himself from Averroes to gain support from more orthodox ulema, who opposed Averroes and whose support al-Mansur needed for his war against Christian kingdoms. Historian of Islamic philosophy Majid Fakhry also wrote that public pressure from traditional Maliki jurists who were opposed to Averroes played a role. After a few years, Averroes returned to court in Marrakesh and was again in the caliph's favor. He died shortly afterwards, on 11 December 1198 (9 Safar 595 in the Islamic calendar). He was initially buried in North Africa but his body was later moved to Córdoba for another funeral, at which future Sufi mystic and philosopher Ibn Arabi (1165–1240) was present. Works Averroes was a prolific writer and his works, according to Fakhry, "covered a greater variety of subjects" than those of any of his predecessors in the East, including philosophy, medicine, jurisprudence or legal theory, and linguistics. Most of his writings were commentaries on or paraphrasings of the works of Aristotle that—especially the long ones—often contain his original thoughts. According to French author Ernest Renan, Averroes wrote at least 67 original works, including 28 works on philosophy, 20 on medicine, 8 on law, 5 on theology, and 4 on grammar, in addition to his commentaries on most of Aristotle's works and his commentary on Plato's The Republic. Many of Averroes's works in Arabic did not survive, but their translations into Hebrew or Latin did. For example, of his long commentaries on Aristotle, only "a tiny handful of Arabic manuscript remains". Commentaries on Aristotle Averroes wrote commentaries on nearly all of Aristotle's surviving works. The only exception is Politics, which he did not have access to, so he wrote commentaries on Plato's Republic. He classified his commentaries into three categories that modern scholars have named short, middle and long commentaries. Most of the short commentaries (jami) were written early in his career and contain summaries of Aristotlean doctrines. The middle commentaries (talkhis) contain paraphrases that clarify and simplify Aristotle's original text. The middle commentaries were probably written in response to his patron caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf's complaints about the difficulty of understanding Aristotle's original texts and to help others in a similar position. The long commentaries (tafsir or sharh), or line-by-line commentaries, include the complete text of the original works with a detailed analysis of each line. The long commentaries are very detailed and contain a high degree of original thought, and were unlikely to be intended for a general audience. Only five of Aristotle's works had all three types of commentaries: Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul, On the Heavens, and Posterior Analytics. Stand alone philosophical works Averroes also wrote stand alone philosophical treatises, including On the Intellect, On the Syllogism, On Conjunction with the Active Intellect, On Time, On the Heavenly Sphere and On the Motion of the Sphere. He also wrote several polemics: Essay on al-Farabi's Approach to Logic, as Compared to that of Aristotle, Metaphysical Questions Dealt with in the Book of Healing by Ibn Sina, and Rebuttal of Ibn Sina's Classification of Existing Entities. Islamic theology Scholarly sources, including Fakhry and the Encyclopedia of Islam, have named three works as Averroes's key writings in this area. Fasl al-Maqal ("The Decisive Treatise") is an 1178 treatise that argues for the compatibility of Islam and philosophy. Al-Kashf 'an Manahij al-Adillah ("Exposition of the Methods of Proof"), written in 1179, criticizes the theologies of the Asharites, and lays out Averroes's argument for proving the existence of God, as well as his thoughts on God's attributes and actions. The 1180 Tahafut al-Tahafut ("Incoherence of the Incoherence") is a rebuttal of al-Ghazali's (d. 1111) landmark criticism of philosophy The Incoherence of the Philosophers. It combines ideas in his commentaries and stand alone works, and uses them to respond to al-Ghazali. The work also criticizes Avicenna and his neo-Platonist tendencies, sometimes agreeing with al-Ghazali's critique against him. Medicine Averroes, who served as the royal physician at the Almohad court, wrote a number of medical treatises. The most famous was al-Kulliyat fi al-Tibb ("The General Principles of Medicine", Latinized in the west as the Colliget), written around 1162, before his appointment at court. The title of this book is the opposite of al-Juz'iyyat fi al-Tibb ("The Specificities of Medicine"), written by his friend Ibn Zuhr, and the two collaborated intending that their works complement each other. The Latin translation of the Colliget became a medical textbook in Europe for centuries. His other surviving titles include On Treacle, The Differences in Temperament, and Medicinal Herbs. He also wrote summaries of the works of Greek physician Galen (died ) and a commentary on Avicenna's Urjuzah fi al-Tibb ("Poem on Medicine"). Jurisprudence and law Averroes served multiple tenures as judge and produced multiple works in the fields of Islamic jurisprudence or legal theory. The only book that survives today is Bidāyat al-Mujtahid wa Nihāyat al-Muqtaṣid ("Primer of the Discretionary Scholar"). In this work he explains the differences of opinion (ikhtilaf) between the Sunni madhhabs (schools of Islamic jurisprudence) both in practice and in their underlying juristic principles, as well as the reason why they are inevitable. Despite his status as a Maliki judge, the book also discusses the opinion of other schools, including liberal and conservative ones. Other than this surviving text, bibliographical information shows he wrote a summary of Al-Ghazali's On Legal Theory of Muslim Jurisprudence (Al-Mustasfa) and tracts on sacrifices and land tax. Philosophical ideas Aristotelianism in the Islamic philosophical tradition In his philosophical writings, Averroes attempted to return to Aristotelianism, which according to him had been distorted by the Neoplatonist tendencies of Muslim philosophers such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna. He rejected al-Farabi's attempt to merge the ideas of Plato and Aristotle, pointing out the differences between the two, such as Aristotle's rejection of Plato's theory of ideas. He also criticized Al-Farabi's works on logic for misinterpreting its Aristotelian source. He wrote an extensive critique of Avicenna, who was the standard-bearer of Islamic Neoplatonism in the Middle Ages. He argued that Avicenna's theory of emanation had many fallacies and was not found in the works of Aristotle. Averroes disagreed with Avicenna's view that existence is merely an accident added to essence, arguing the reverse; something exists per se and essence can only be found by subsequent abstraction. He also rejected Avicenna's modality and Avicenna's argument to prove the existence of God as the Necessary Existent. Averroes felt strongly about the incorporation of Greek thought into the Muslim world, and wrote that "if before us someone has inquired into [wisdom], it behooves us to seek help from what he has said. It is irrelevant whether he belongs to our community or to another". Relation between religion and philosophy During Averroes's lifetime, philosophy came under attack from the Sunni Islam tradition, especially from theological schools like the traditionalist (Hanbalite) and the Ashari schools. In particular, the Ashari scholar al-Ghazali (1058 – 1111) wrote The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-falasifa), a scathing and influential critique of the Neoplatonic philosophical tradition in the Islamic world and against the works of Avicenna in particular. Among others, Al-Ghazali charged philosophers with non-belief in Islam and sought to disprove the teaching of the philosophers using logical arguments. In Decisive Treatise, Averroes argues that philosophy—which for him represented conclusions reached using reason and careful method—cannot contradict revelations in Islam because they are just two different methods of reaching the truth, and "truth cannot contradict truth". When conclusions reached by philosophy appear to contradict the text of the revelation, then according to Averroes, revelation must be subjected to interpretation or allegorical understanding to remove the contradiction. This interpretation must be done by those "rooted in knowledge"a phrase taken from the Quran, 3:7, which for Averroes refers to philosophers who during his lifetime had access to the "highest methods of knowledge". He also argues that the Quran calls for Muslims to study philosophy because the study and reflection of nature would increase a person's knowledge of "the Artisan" (God). He quotes Quranic passages calling on Muslims to reflect on nature and uses them to render a fatwa (legal opinion) that philosophy is allowed for Muslims and is probably an obligation, at least among those who have the talent for it. Averroes also distinguishes between three modes of discourse: the rhetorical (based on persuasion) accessible to the common masses; the dialectical (based on debate) and often employed by theologians and the ulama (scholars); and the demonstrative (based on logical deduction). According to Averroes, the Quran uses the rhetorical method of inviting people to the truth, which allows it to reach the common masses with its persuasiveness, whereas philosophy uses the demonstrative methods that were only available to the learned but provided the best possible understanding and knowledge. Averroes also tries to deflect Al-Ghazali's criticisms of philosophy by saying that many of them apply only to the philosophy of Avicenna and not to that of Aristotle, which Averroes argues to be the true philosophy from which Avicenna has deviated. Nature of God Existence Averroes lays out his views on the existence and nature of God in the treatise The Exposition of the Methods of Proof. He examines and critiques the doctrines of four sects of Islam: the Asharites, the Mutazilites, the Sufis and those he calls the "literalists" (al-hashwiyah). Among other things, he examines their proofs of God's existence and critiques each one. Averroes argues that there are two arguments for God's existence that he deems logically sound and in accordance to the Quran; the arguments from "providence" and "from invention". The providence argument considers that the world and the universe seem finely tuned to support human life. Averroes cited the sun, the moon, the rivers, the seas and the location of humans on the earth. According to him, this suggests a creator who created them for the welfare of mankind. The argument from invention contends that worldly entities such as animals and plants appear to have been invented. Therefore, Averroes argues that a designer was behind the creation and that is God. Averroes's two arguments are teleological in nature and not cosmological like the arguments of Aristotle and most contemporaneous Muslim kalam theologians. God's attributes Averroes upholds the doctrine of divine unity (tawhid) and argues that God has seven divine attributes: knowledge, life, power, will, hearing, vision and speech. He devotes the most attention to the attribute of knowledge and argues that divine knowledge differs from human knowledge because God knows the universe because God is its cause while humans only know the universe through its effects. Averroes argues that the attribute of life can be inferred because it is the precondition of knowledge and also because God willed objects into being. Power can be inferred by God's ability to bring creations into existence. Averroes also argues that knowledge and power inevitably give rise to speech. Regarding vision and speech, he says that because God created the world, he necessarily knows every part of it in the same way an artist understands his or her work intimately. Because two elements of the world are the visual and the auditory, God must necessarily possess vision and speech. The omnipotence paradox was first addressed by Averroës and only later by Thomas Aquinas. Pre-eternity of the world In the centuries preceding Averroes, there had been a debate between Muslim thinkers questioning whether the world was created at a specific moment in time or whether it has always existed. Neo-Platonic philosophers such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna argued the world has always existed. This view was criticized by theologians and philosophers of the Ashari kalam tradition; in particular, al-Ghazali wrote an extensive refutation of the pre-eternity doctrine in his Incoherence of the Philosophers and accused the Neo-Platonic philosophers of unbelief (kufr). Averroes responded to Al-Ghazali in his Incoherence of the Incoherence. First, he argued that the differences between the two positions were not vast enough to warrant the charge of unbelief. He also said the pre-eternity doctrine did not necessarily contradict the Quran and cited verses that mention pre-existing "throne" and "water" in passages related to creation. Averroes argued that a careful reading of the Quran implied only the "form" of the universe was created in time but that its existence has been eternal. Averroes further criticized the kalam theologians for using their own interpretations of scripture to answer questions that should have been left to philosophers. Politics Averroes states his political philosophy in his commentary of Plato's Republic. He combines his ideas with Plato's and with Islamic tradition; he considers the ideal state to be one based on the Islamic law (shariah). His interpretation of Plato's philosopher-king followed that of Al-Farabi, which equates the philosopher-king with the imam, caliph and lawgiver of the state. Averroes's description of the characteristics of a philosopher-king are similar to those given by Al-Farabi; they include love of knowledge, good memory, love of learning, love of truth, dislike for sensual pleasures, dislike for amassing wealth, magnanimity, courage, steadfastness, eloquence and the ability to "light quickly on the middle term". Averroes writes that if philosophers cannot rule—as was the case in the Almoravid and Almohad empires around his lifetime—philosophers must still try to influence the rulers towards implementing the ideal state. According to Averroes, there are two methods of teaching virtue to citizens; persuasion and coercion. Persuasion is the more natural method consisting of rhetorical, dialectical and demonstrative methods; sometimes, however, coercion is necessary for those not amenable to persuasion, e.g. enemies of the state. Therefore, he justifies war as a last resort, which he also supports using Quranic arguments. Consequently, he argues that a ruler should have both wisdom and courage, which are needed for governance and defense of the state. Like Plato, Averroes calls for women to share with men in the administration of the state, including participating as soldiers, philosophers and rulers. He regrets that contemporaneous Muslim societies limited the public role of women; he says this limitation is harmful to the state's well-being. Averroes also accepted Plato's ideas of the deterioration of the ideal state. He cites examples from Islamic history when the Rashidun caliphate—which in Sunni tradition represented the ideal state led by "rightly guided caliphs"—became a dynastic state under Muawiyah, founder of the Umayyad dynasty. He also says the Almoravid and the Almohad empires started as ideal, shariah-based states but then deteriorated into timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny. Diversity of Islamic law In his tenure as judge and jurist, Averroes for the most part ruled and gave fatwas according to the Maliki school of Islamic law which was dominant in Al-Andalus and the western Islamic world during his time. However, he frequently acted as "his own man", including sometimes rejecting the "consensus of the people of Medina" argument that is one of the traditional Maliki position. In Bidāyat al-Mujtahid, one of his major contributions to the field of Islamic law, he not only describes the differences between various school of Islamic laws but also tries to theoretically explain the reasons for the difference and why they are inevitable. Even though all the schools of Islamic law are ultimately rooted in the Quran and hadith, there are "causes that necessitate differences" (al-asbab al-lati awjabat al-ikhtilaf). They include differences in interpreting scripture in a general or specific sense, in interpreting scriptural commands as obligatory or merely recommended, or prohibitions as discouragement or total prohibition, as well as ambiguities in the meaning of words or expressions. Averroes also writes that the application of qiyas (reasoning by analogy) could give rise to different legal opinion because jurists might disagree on the applicability of certain analogies and different analogies might contradict each other. Natural philosophy Astronomy As did Avempace and Ibn Tufail, Averroes criticizes the Ptolemaic system using philosophical arguments and rejects the use of eccentrics and epicycles to explain the apparent motions of the moon, the sun and the planets. He argued that those objects move uniformly in a strictly circular motion around the earth, following Aristotelian principles. He postulates that there are three type of planetary motions; those that can be seen with the naked eye, those that requires instruments to observe and those that can only be known by philosophical reasoning. Averroes argues that the occasional opaque colors of the moon are caused by variations in its thickness; the thicker parts receive more light from the Sun—and therefore emit more light—than the thinner parts. This explanation was used up to the seventeenth century by the European Scholastics to account for Galileo's observations of spots on the moon's surface, until the Scholastics such as Antoine Goudin in 1668 conceded that the observation was more likely caused by mountains on the moon. He and Ibn Bajja observed sunspots, which they thought were transits of Venus and Mercury between the Sun and the Earth. In 1153 he conducted astronomical observations in Marrakesh, where he observed the star Canopus (Arabic: Suhayl) which was invisible in the latitude of his native Spain. He used this observation to support Aristotle's argument for the spherical Earth. Averroes was aware that Arabic and Andalusian astronomers of his time focused on "mathematical" astronomy, which enabled accurate predictions through calculations but did not provide a detailed physical explanation of how the universe worked. According to him, "the astronomy of our time offers no truth, but only agrees with the calculations and not with what exists." He attempted to reform astronomy to be reconciled with physics, especially the physics of Aristotle. His long commentary of Aristotle's Metaphysics describes the principles of his attempted reform, but later in his life he declared that his attempts had failed. He confessed that he had not enough time or knowledge to reconcile the observed planetary motions with Aristotelian principles. In addition, he did not know the works of Eudoxus and Callippus, and so he missed the context of some of Aristotle's astronomical works. However, his works influenced astronomer Nur ad-Din al-Bitruji (d. 1204) who adopted most of his reform principles and did succeed in proposing an early astronomical system based on Aristotelian physics. Physics In physics, Averroes did not adopt the inductive method that was being developed by Al-Biruni in the Islamic world and is closer to today's physics. Rather, he was—in the words of historian of science Ruth Glasner—a "exegetical" scientist who produced new theses about nature through discussions of previous texts, especially the writings of Aristotle. because of this approach, he was often depicted as an unimaginative follower of Aristotle, but Glasner argues that Averroes's work introduced highly original theories of physics, especially his elaboration of Aristotle's minima naturalia and on motion as forma fluens, which were taken up in the west and are important to the overall development of physics. Averroes also proposed a definition of force as "the rate at which work is done in changing the kinetic condition of a material body"—a definition close to that of power in today's physics. Psychology Averroes expounds his thoughts on psychology in his three commentaries on Aristotle's On the Soul. Averroes is interested in explaining the human intellect using philosophical methods and by interpreting Aristotle's ideas. His position on the topic changed throughout his career as his thoughts developed. In his short commentary, the first of the three works, Averroes follows Ibn Bajja's theory that something called the "material intellect" stores specific images that a person encounters. These images serve as basis for the "unification" by the universal "agent intellect", which, once it happens, allow a person to gain universal knowledge about that concept. In his middle commentary, Averroes moves towards the ideas of Al-Farabi and Avicenna, saying the agent intellect gives humans the power of universal understanding, which is the material intellect. Once the person has sufficient empirical encounters with a certain concept, the power activates and gives the person universal knowledge (see also logical induction). In his last commentary—called the Long Commentary—he proposes another theory, which becomes known as the theory of "the unity of the intellect". In it, Averroes argues that there is only one material intellect, which is the same for all humans and is unmixed with human body. To explain how different individuals can have different thoughts, he uses a concept he calls fikr—known as cogitatio in Latin—a process that happens in human brains and contains not universal knowledge but "active consideration of particular things" the person has encountered. This theory attracted controversy when Averroes's works entered Christian Europe; in 1229 Thomas Aquinas wrote a detailed critique titled On the Unity of the Intellect against the Averroists. Medicine While his works in medicine indicate an in-depth theoretical knowledge in medicine of his time, he likely had limited expertise as a practitioner, and declared in one of his works that he had not "practiced much apart from myself, my relatives or my friends." He did serve as a royal physician, but his qualification and education was mostly theoretical. For the most part, Averroes's medical work Al-Kulliyat fi al-Tibb follows the medical doctrine of Galen, an influential Greek physician and author from the 2nd century, which was based on the four humors—blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm, whose balance is necessary for the health of the human body. Averroes's original contributions include his observations on the retina: he might have been the first to recognize that retina was the part of the eye responsible for sensing light, rather than the lens as was commonly thought. Modern scholars dispute whether this is what he meant it his Kulliyat, but Averroes also stated a similar observation in his commentary to Aristotle's Sense and Sensibilia: "the innermost of the coats of the eye [the retina] must necessarily receive the light from the humors of the eye [the lens], just like the humors receive the light from air." Another of his departure from Galen and the medical theories of the time is his description of stroke as produced by the brain and caused by an obstruction of the arteries from the heart to the brain. This explanation is closer to the modern understanding of the disease compared to that of Galen, which attributes it to the obstruction between heart and the periphery. He was also the first to describe the signs and symptoms of Parkinson's disease in his Kulliyat, although he did not give the disease a name. Legacy In Jewish tradition Maimonides (d. 1204) was among early Jewish scholars who received Averroes's works enthusiastically, saying he "received lately everything Averroes had written on the works of Aristotle" and that Averroes "was extremely right". Thirteenth-century Jewish writers, including Samuel ibn Tibbon in his work Opinion of the Philosophers, Judah ibn Solomon Cohen in his Search for Wisdom and Shem-Tov ibn Falaquera, relied heavily on Averroes's texts. In 1232, Joseph Ben Abba Mari translated Averroes's commentaries on the Organon; this was the first Jewish translation of a complete work. In 1260 Moses ibn Tibbon published the translation of almost all of Averroes's commentaries and some of his works on medicine. Jewish Averroism peaked in the fourteenth century; Jewish writers of this time who translated or were influenced by Averroes include Kalonymus ben Kalonymus of Arles, France, Todros Todrosi of Arles, Elia del Medigo of Candia and Gersonides of Languedoc. In Latin tradition Averroes's main influence on the Christian west was through his extensive commentaries on Aristotle. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, western Europe fell into a cultural decline that resulted in the loss of nearly all of the intellectual legacy of the Classical Greek scholars, including Aristotle. Averroes's commentaries, which were translated into Latin and entered western Europe in the thirteenth century, provided an expert account of Aristotle's legacy and made them available again. The influence of his commentaries led to Averroes being referred to simply as "The Commentator" rather than by name in Latin Christian writings. He has been sometimes described as the "father of free thought and unbelief" and "father of rationalism". Michael Scot (1175 – c. 1232) was the first Latin translator of Averroes who translated the long commentaries of Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul and On the Heavens, as well as multiple middle and short commentaries, starting in 1217 in Paris and Toledo. Following this, European authors such as Hermannus Alemannus, William de Luna and Armengaud of Montpellier translated Averroes's other works, sometimes with help from Jewish authors. Soon after, Averroes's works propagated among Christian scholars in the scholastic tradition. His writing attracted a strong circle of followers known as the Latin Averroists. Paris and Padua were major centers of Latin Averroism, and its prominent thirteenth-century leaders included Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia. Authorities of the Roman Catholic Church reacted against the spread of Averroism. In 1270, the Bishop of Paris Étienne Tempier issued a condemnation against 15 doctrines—many of which were Aristotelian or Averroist—that he said were in conflict with the doctrines of the church. In 1277, at the request of Pope John XXI, Tempier issued another condemnation, this time targeting 219 theses drawn from many sources, mainly the teachings of Aristotle and Averroes. Averroes received a mixed reception from other Catholic thinkers; Thomas Aquinas, a leading Catholic thinker of the thirteenth century, relied extensively on Averroes's interpretation of Aristotle but disagreed with him on many points. For example, he wrote a detailed attack on Averroes's theory that all humans share the same intellect. He also opposed Averroes on the eternity of the universe and divine providence. The Catholic Church's condemnations of 1270 and 1277, and the detailed critique by Aquinas weakened the spread of Averroism in Latin Christendom, though it maintained a following until the sixteenth century, when European thought began to diverge from Aristotelianism. Leading Averroists in the following centuries included John of Jandun and Marsilius of Padua (fourteenth century), Gaetano da Thiene and Pietro Pomponazzi (fifteenth century), and Agostino Nifo and Marcantonio Zimara (sixteenth century). In Islamic tradition Averroes had no major influence on Islamic philosophic thought until modern times. Part of the reason was geography; Averroes lived in Spain, the extreme west of the Islamic civilization far from the centers of Islamic intellectual traditions. Also, his philosophy may not have appealed to Islamic scholars of his time. His focus on Aristotle's works was outdated in the twelfth-century Muslim world, which had already scrutinized Aristotle since the ninth century and by now was engaging deeply with newer schools of thought, especially that of Avicenna. In the nineteenth century, Muslim thinkers begin to engage with the works of Averroes again. By this time, there was a cultural renaissance called Al-Nahda ("reawakening") in the Arabic-speaking world and the works of Averroes were seen as inspiration to modernize the Muslim intellectual tradition. Cultural references References to Averroes appear in the popular culture of both the western and Muslim world. The poem The Divine Comedy by the Italian writer Dante Alighieri, completed in 1320, depicts Averroes, "who made the Great Commentary", along with other non-Christian Greek and Muslim thinkers, in the first circle of hell around Saladin. The prolog of The Canterbury Tales (1387) by Geoffrey Chaucer lists Averroes among other medical authorities known in Europe at the time. Averroes is depicted in Raphael's 1501 fresco The School of Athens that decorates the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, which features seminal figures of philosophy. In the painting, Averroes wears a green robe and a turban, and peers out from behind Pythagoras, who is shown writing a book. Averroes is referenced briefly in Victor Hugo's 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' (written 1831, but set in the Paris of 1482). The novel's villain, the Priest Claude Frollo, extols Averroes' talents as an alchemist in his obsessive quest to find the Philosophers Stone. A 1947 short story by Jorge Luis Borges, "Averroes's Search" (), features his attempts to understand Aristotle's Poetics within a culture that lacks a tradition of live theatrical performance. In the afterwords of the story, Borges comments, "I felt that [the story] mocked me, foiled me, thwarted me. I felt that Averroës, trying to imagine what a play is without ever having suspected what a theater is, was no more absurd than I, trying to imagine Averroës yet with no more material than a few snatches from Renan, Lane, and Asín Palacios." Averroes is also the hero of the 1997 Egyptian movie Destiny by Youssef Chahine, made partly in commemoration of the 800th anniversary of his death. The plant genus Averrhoa (whose members include the starfruit and the bilimbi), the lunar crater ibn Rushd, and the asteroid 8318 Averroes are named after him. References Works cited External links Works of Averroes DARE, the Digital Averroes Research Environment, an ongoing effort to collect digital images of all Averroes manuscripts and full texts of all three language-traditions. Averroes, Islamic Philosophy Online (links to works by and about Averroes in several languages) The Philosophy and Theology of Averroes: Tractata translated from the Arabic, trans. Mohammad Jamil-ur-Rehman, 1921 The Incoherence of the Incoherence translation by Simon van den Bergh. [N. B. : Because these refutations consist mainly of commentary on statements by al-Ghazali which are quoted verbatim, this work contains a translation of most of the Tahafut.] There is also an Italian translation by Massimo Campanini, Averroè, L'incoerenza dell'incoerenza dei filosofi, Turin, Utet, 1997. SIEPM Virtual Library, including scanned copies (PDF) of the Editio Juntina of Averroes's works in Latin (Venice 1550–1562) Information about Averroes on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Bibliography, a comprehensive overview of the extant bibliography Averroes Database, including a full bibliography of his works Podcast on Averroes, at NPR's Throughline 1126 births 1198 deaths 12th-century Al-Andalus people 12th-century astronomers 12th-century philosophers 12th-century physicians Almoravid dynasty Arabic commentators on Aristotle Aristotelian philosophers Astronomers of medieval Islam Commentators on Plato Cultural critics Deaths in Morocco Epistemologists Ethicists Founders of philosophical traditions Islamic philosophers Logicians Medieval Arab astronomers Medieval Arab philosophers Medieval Arab physicians Medieval Moorish astronomers Medieval Moorish physicians Medieval physicists Metaphysicians Moorish Maliki scholars Moral philosophers 12th-century Muslim theologians Ontologists People from Córdoba, Spain Philosophers of culture Philosophers of ethics and morality Philosophers of history Philosophers of language Philosophers of literature Philosophers of logic Philosophers of mind Philosophers of psychology Philosophers of religion Philosophers of science Physicians of medieval Islam Political philosophers Psychologists Social critics Social philosophers Sunni Muslim scholars World Digital Library exhibits Philosophers of Al-Andalus

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Were people on board with the idea?

Were people on board with Averroes' idea about the Eternity of the world?

Averroes

Ibn Rushd looked to Aristotle as to whether the world was eternal. In his Physics, the Greek philosopher argues that everything that comes into existence does so from a substratum. Therefore, if the underlying matter of the universe came into existence, it would come into existence from a substratum. But the nature of matter is precisely to be the substratum from which other things arise. Consequently, the underlying matter of the universe could have come into evidence only from an already existing matter exactly like itself; to assume that the underlying matter of the universe came into existence would require assuming that an underlying matter already existed. As this assumption is self-contradictory, Aristotle argued, matter must be eternal. Because in his eyes, "Aristotle demonstrated the eternity of matter", Ibn Rushd "abandon[ed] belief in the creation out of nothing." This is not to say that Ibn Rushd denied the Creation; rather, he proposed an eternal creation. Oliver Leaman explains Ibn Rushd's argument as such: We [as humans] can decide to do something, we can wait for a certain time before acting, we can wonder about our future actions; but such possibilities cannot arise for [an eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent] God. In his case there is no gap between desire and action, nothing stands in the way of his activity; and yet we are told by al-Ghazali that God suddenly created the world. What differentiates one time from another for God? What could motivate him to create the world at one particular time as opposed to another? For us, different times are different because they have different qualitative aspects, yet before the creation of the world, when there was nothing around to characterize one time as distinct from another, there is nothing to characterize one time over another as the time for creation to take place. CANNOTANSWER

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Ibn Rushd (; full name in ; 14 April 112611 December 1198), often Latinized as Averroes ( ), was a Muslim Andalusian polymath and jurist who wrote about many subjects, including philosophy, theology, medicine, astronomy, physics, psychology, mathematics, Islamic jurisprudence and law, and linguistics. The author of more than 100 books and treatises, his philosophical works include numerous commentaries on Aristotle, for which he was known in the western world as The Commentator and Father of Rationalism. Ibn Rushd also served as a chief judge and a court physician for the Almohad Caliphate. Averroes was a strong proponent of Aristotelianism; he attempted to restore what he considered the original teachings of Aristotle and opposed the Neoplatonist tendencies of earlier Muslim thinkers, such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna. He also defended the pursuit of philosophy against criticism by Ashari theologians such as Al-Ghazali. Averroes argued that philosophy was permissible in Islam and even compulsory among certain elites. He also argued scriptural text should be interpreted allegorically if it appeared to contradict conclusions reached by reason and philosophy. In Islamic jurisprudence, he wrote the Bidāyat al-Mujtahid on the differences between Islamic schools of law and the principles that caused their differences. In medicine, he proposed a new theory of stroke, described the signs and symptoms of Parkinson's disease for the first time, and might have been the first to identify the retina as the part of the eye responsible for sensing light. His medical book Al-Kulliyat fi al-Tibb, translated into Latin and known as the Colliget, became a textbook in Europe for centuries. His legacy in the Islamic world was modest for geographical and intellectual reasons. In the west, Averroes was known for his extensive commentaries on Aristotle, many of which were translated into Latin and Hebrew. The translations of his work reawakened western European interest in Aristotle and Greek thinkers, an area of study that had been widely abandoned after the fall of the Roman Empire. His thoughts generated controversies in Latin Christendom and triggered a philosophical movement called Averroism based on his writings. His unity of the intellect thesis, proposing that all humans share the same intellect, became one of the best-known and most controversial Averroist doctrines in the west. His works were condemned by the Catholic Church in 1270 and 1277. Although weakened by condemnations and sustained critique from Thomas Aquinas, Latin Averroism continued to attract followers up to the sixteenth century. Name Ibn Rushd's full, transliterated Arabic name is "Abū l-Walīd Muḥammad ibn ʾAḥmad Ibn Rushd". Sometimes, the nickname al-Hafid ("The Grandson") is appended to his name, to distinguish him from his grandfather, a famous judge and jurist. "Averroes" is the Medieval Latin form of "Ibn Rushd"; it was derived from the Spanish pronunciation of the original Arabic name, wherein "Ibn" becomes "Aben" or "Aven". Other forms of the name in European languages include "Ibin-Ros-din", "Filius Rosadis", "Ibn-Rusid", "Ben-Raxid", "Ibn-Ruschod", "Den-Resched", "Aben-Rassad", "Aben-Rasd", "Aben-Rust", "Avenrosdy", "Avenryz", "Adveroys", "Benroist", "Avenroyth" and "Averroysta". Biography Early life and education Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Rushd was born on 14 April 1126 (520 AH) in Córdoba. His family was well known in the city for their public service, especially in the legal and religious fields. His grandfather Abu al-Walid Muhammad (d. 1126) was the chief judge (qadi) of Córdoba and the imam of the Great Mosque of Córdoba under the Almoravids. His father Abu al-Qasim Ahmad was not as celebrated as his grandfather, but was also chief judge until the Almoravids were replaced by the Almohads in 1146. According to his traditional biographers, Averroes's education was "excellent", beginning with studies in hadith (traditions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad), fiqh (jurisprudence), medicine and theology. He learned Maliki jurisprudence under al-Hafiz Abu Muhammad ibn Rizq and hadith with Ibn Bashkuwal, a student of his grandfather. His father also taught him about jurisprudence, including on Imam Malik's magnum opus the Muwatta, which Averroes went on to memorize. He studied medicine under Abu Jafar Jarim al-Tajail, who probably taught him philosophy too. He also knew the works of the philosopher Ibn Bajjah (also known as Avempace), and might have known him personally or been tutored by him. He joined a regular meeting of philosophers, physicians and poets in Seville which was attended by philosophers Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Zuhr as well as the future caliph Abu Yusuf Yaqub. He also studied the kalam theology of the Ashari school, which he criticized later in life. His 13th century biographer Ibn al-Abbar said he was more interested in the study of law and its principles (usul) than that of hadith and he was especially competent in the field of khilaf (disputes and controversies in the Islamic jurisprudence). Ibn al-Abbar also mentioned his interests in "the sciences of the ancients", probably in reference to Greek philosophy and sciences. Career By 1153 Averroes was in Marrakesh (Morocco), the capital of the Almohad Caliphate, to perform astronomical observations and to support the Almohad project of building new colleges. He was hoping to find physical laws of astronomical movements instead of only the mathematical laws known at the time but this research was unsuccessful. During his stay in Marrakesh he likely met Ibn Tufayl, a renowned philosopher and the author of Hayy ibn Yaqdhan who was also the court physician in Marrakesh. Averroes and ibn Tufayl became friends despite the differences in their philosophies. In 1169 Ibn Tufayl introduced Averroes to the Almohad caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf. In a famous account reported by historian Abdelwahid al-Marrakushi the caliph asked Averroes whether the heavens had existed since eternity or had a beginning. Knowing this question was controversial and worried a wrong answer could put him in danger, Averroes did not answer. The caliph then elaborated the views of Plato, Aristotle and Muslim philosophers on the topic and discussed them with Ibn Tufayl. This display of knowledge put Averroes at ease; Averroes then explained his own views on the subject, which impressed the caliph. Averroes was similarly impressed by Abu Yaqub and later said the caliph had "a profuseness of learning I did not suspect". After their introduction, Averroes remained in Abu Yaqub's favor until the caliph's death in 1184. When the caliph complained to Ibn Tufayl about the difficulty of understanding Aristotle's work, Ibn Tufayl recommended to the caliph that Averroes work on explaining it. This was the beginning of Averroes's massive commentaries on Aristotle; his first works on the subject were written in 1169. In the same year, Averroes was appointed qadi (judge) in Seville. In 1171 he became qadi in his hometown of Córdoba. As qadi he would decide cases and give fatwas (legal opinions) based on the Islamic law (sharia). The rate of his writing increased during this time despite other obligations and his travels within the Almohad empire. He also took the opportunity from his travels to conduct astronomical researches. Many of his works produced between 1169 and 1179 were dated in Seville rather than Córdoba. In 1179 he was again appointed qadi in Seville. In 1182 he succeeded his friend Ibn Tufayl as court physician and later the same year he was appointed the chief qadi of Córdoba, a prestigious office that had once been held by his grandfather. In 1184 Caliph Abu Yaqub died and was succeeded by Abu Yusuf Yaqub. Initially, Averroes remained in royal favor but in 1195 his fortune reversed. Various charges were made against him and he was tried by a tribunal in Córdoba. The tribunal condemned his teachings, ordered the burning of his works and banished Averroes to nearby Lucena. Early biographers's reasons for this fall from grace include a possible insult to the caliph in his writings but modern scholars attribute it to political reasons. The Encyclopaedia of Islam said the caliph distanced himself from Averroes to gain support from more orthodox ulema, who opposed Averroes and whose support al-Mansur needed for his war against Christian kingdoms. Historian of Islamic philosophy Majid Fakhry also wrote that public pressure from traditional Maliki jurists who were opposed to Averroes played a role. After a few years, Averroes returned to court in Marrakesh and was again in the caliph's favor. He died shortly afterwards, on 11 December 1198 (9 Safar 595 in the Islamic calendar). He was initially buried in North Africa but his body was later moved to Córdoba for another funeral, at which future Sufi mystic and philosopher Ibn Arabi (1165–1240) was present. Works Averroes was a prolific writer and his works, according to Fakhry, "covered a greater variety of subjects" than those of any of his predecessors in the East, including philosophy, medicine, jurisprudence or legal theory, and linguistics. Most of his writings were commentaries on or paraphrasings of the works of Aristotle that—especially the long ones—often contain his original thoughts. According to French author Ernest Renan, Averroes wrote at least 67 original works, including 28 works on philosophy, 20 on medicine, 8 on law, 5 on theology, and 4 on grammar, in addition to his commentaries on most of Aristotle's works and his commentary on Plato's The Republic. Many of Averroes's works in Arabic did not survive, but their translations into Hebrew or Latin did. For example, of his long commentaries on Aristotle, only "a tiny handful of Arabic manuscript remains". Commentaries on Aristotle Averroes wrote commentaries on nearly all of Aristotle's surviving works. The only exception is Politics, which he did not have access to, so he wrote commentaries on Plato's Republic. He classified his commentaries into three categories that modern scholars have named short, middle and long commentaries. Most of the short commentaries (jami) were written early in his career and contain summaries of Aristotlean doctrines. The middle commentaries (talkhis) contain paraphrases that clarify and simplify Aristotle's original text. The middle commentaries were probably written in response to his patron caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf's complaints about the difficulty of understanding Aristotle's original texts and to help others in a similar position. The long commentaries (tafsir or sharh), or line-by-line commentaries, include the complete text of the original works with a detailed analysis of each line. The long commentaries are very detailed and contain a high degree of original thought, and were unlikely to be intended for a general audience. Only five of Aristotle's works had all three types of commentaries: Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul, On the Heavens, and Posterior Analytics. Stand alone philosophical works Averroes also wrote stand alone philosophical treatises, including On the Intellect, On the Syllogism, On Conjunction with the Active Intellect, On Time, On the Heavenly Sphere and On the Motion of the Sphere. He also wrote several polemics: Essay on al-Farabi's Approach to Logic, as Compared to that of Aristotle, Metaphysical Questions Dealt with in the Book of Healing by Ibn Sina, and Rebuttal of Ibn Sina's Classification of Existing Entities. Islamic theology Scholarly sources, including Fakhry and the Encyclopedia of Islam, have named three works as Averroes's key writings in this area. Fasl al-Maqal ("The Decisive Treatise") is an 1178 treatise that argues for the compatibility of Islam and philosophy. Al-Kashf 'an Manahij al-Adillah ("Exposition of the Methods of Proof"), written in 1179, criticizes the theologies of the Asharites, and lays out Averroes's argument for proving the existence of God, as well as his thoughts on God's attributes and actions. The 1180 Tahafut al-Tahafut ("Incoherence of the Incoherence") is a rebuttal of al-Ghazali's (d. 1111) landmark criticism of philosophy The Incoherence of the Philosophers. It combines ideas in his commentaries and stand alone works, and uses them to respond to al-Ghazali. The work also criticizes Avicenna and his neo-Platonist tendencies, sometimes agreeing with al-Ghazali's critique against him. Medicine Averroes, who served as the royal physician at the Almohad court, wrote a number of medical treatises. The most famous was al-Kulliyat fi al-Tibb ("The General Principles of Medicine", Latinized in the west as the Colliget), written around 1162, before his appointment at court. The title of this book is the opposite of al-Juz'iyyat fi al-Tibb ("The Specificities of Medicine"), written by his friend Ibn Zuhr, and the two collaborated intending that their works complement each other. The Latin translation of the Colliget became a medical textbook in Europe for centuries. His other surviving titles include On Treacle, The Differences in Temperament, and Medicinal Herbs. He also wrote summaries of the works of Greek physician Galen (died ) and a commentary on Avicenna's Urjuzah fi al-Tibb ("Poem on Medicine"). Jurisprudence and law Averroes served multiple tenures as judge and produced multiple works in the fields of Islamic jurisprudence or legal theory. The only book that survives today is Bidāyat al-Mujtahid wa Nihāyat al-Muqtaṣid ("Primer of the Discretionary Scholar"). In this work he explains the differences of opinion (ikhtilaf) between the Sunni madhhabs (schools of Islamic jurisprudence) both in practice and in their underlying juristic principles, as well as the reason why they are inevitable. Despite his status as a Maliki judge, the book also discusses the opinion of other schools, including liberal and conservative ones. Other than this surviving text, bibliographical information shows he wrote a summary of Al-Ghazali's On Legal Theory of Muslim Jurisprudence (Al-Mustasfa) and tracts on sacrifices and land tax. Philosophical ideas Aristotelianism in the Islamic philosophical tradition In his philosophical writings, Averroes attempted to return to Aristotelianism, which according to him had been distorted by the Neoplatonist tendencies of Muslim philosophers such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna. He rejected al-Farabi's attempt to merge the ideas of Plato and Aristotle, pointing out the differences between the two, such as Aristotle's rejection of Plato's theory of ideas. He also criticized Al-Farabi's works on logic for misinterpreting its Aristotelian source. He wrote an extensive critique of Avicenna, who was the standard-bearer of Islamic Neoplatonism in the Middle Ages. He argued that Avicenna's theory of emanation had many fallacies and was not found in the works of Aristotle. Averroes disagreed with Avicenna's view that existence is merely an accident added to essence, arguing the reverse; something exists per se and essence can only be found by subsequent abstraction. He also rejected Avicenna's modality and Avicenna's argument to prove the existence of God as the Necessary Existent. Averroes felt strongly about the incorporation of Greek thought into the Muslim world, and wrote that "if before us someone has inquired into [wisdom], it behooves us to seek help from what he has said. It is irrelevant whether he belongs to our community or to another". Relation between religion and philosophy During Averroes's lifetime, philosophy came under attack from the Sunni Islam tradition, especially from theological schools like the traditionalist (Hanbalite) and the Ashari schools. In particular, the Ashari scholar al-Ghazali (1058 – 1111) wrote The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-falasifa), a scathing and influential critique of the Neoplatonic philosophical tradition in the Islamic world and against the works of Avicenna in particular. Among others, Al-Ghazali charged philosophers with non-belief in Islam and sought to disprove the teaching of the philosophers using logical arguments. In Decisive Treatise, Averroes argues that philosophy—which for him represented conclusions reached using reason and careful method—cannot contradict revelations in Islam because they are just two different methods of reaching the truth, and "truth cannot contradict truth". When conclusions reached by philosophy appear to contradict the text of the revelation, then according to Averroes, revelation must be subjected to interpretation or allegorical understanding to remove the contradiction. This interpretation must be done by those "rooted in knowledge"a phrase taken from the Quran, 3:7, which for Averroes refers to philosophers who during his lifetime had access to the "highest methods of knowledge". He also argues that the Quran calls for Muslims to study philosophy because the study and reflection of nature would increase a person's knowledge of "the Artisan" (God). He quotes Quranic passages calling on Muslims to reflect on nature and uses them to render a fatwa (legal opinion) that philosophy is allowed for Muslims and is probably an obligation, at least among those who have the talent for it. Averroes also distinguishes between three modes of discourse: the rhetorical (based on persuasion) accessible to the common masses; the dialectical (based on debate) and often employed by theologians and the ulama (scholars); and the demonstrative (based on logical deduction). According to Averroes, the Quran uses the rhetorical method of inviting people to the truth, which allows it to reach the common masses with its persuasiveness, whereas philosophy uses the demonstrative methods that were only available to the learned but provided the best possible understanding and knowledge. Averroes also tries to deflect Al-Ghazali's criticisms of philosophy by saying that many of them apply only to the philosophy of Avicenna and not to that of Aristotle, which Averroes argues to be the true philosophy from which Avicenna has deviated. Nature of God Existence Averroes lays out his views on the existence and nature of God in the treatise The Exposition of the Methods of Proof. He examines and critiques the doctrines of four sects of Islam: the Asharites, the Mutazilites, the Sufis and those he calls the "literalists" (al-hashwiyah). Among other things, he examines their proofs of God's existence and critiques each one. Averroes argues that there are two arguments for God's existence that he deems logically sound and in accordance to the Quran; the arguments from "providence" and "from invention". The providence argument considers that the world and the universe seem finely tuned to support human life. Averroes cited the sun, the moon, the rivers, the seas and the location of humans on the earth. According to him, this suggests a creator who created them for the welfare of mankind. The argument from invention contends that worldly entities such as animals and plants appear to have been invented. Therefore, Averroes argues that a designer was behind the creation and that is God. Averroes's two arguments are teleological in nature and not cosmological like the arguments of Aristotle and most contemporaneous Muslim kalam theologians. God's attributes Averroes upholds the doctrine of divine unity (tawhid) and argues that God has seven divine attributes: knowledge, life, power, will, hearing, vision and speech. He devotes the most attention to the attribute of knowledge and argues that divine knowledge differs from human knowledge because God knows the universe because God is its cause while humans only know the universe through its effects. Averroes argues that the attribute of life can be inferred because it is the precondition of knowledge and also because God willed objects into being. Power can be inferred by God's ability to bring creations into existence. Averroes also argues that knowledge and power inevitably give rise to speech. Regarding vision and speech, he says that because God created the world, he necessarily knows every part of it in the same way an artist understands his or her work intimately. Because two elements of the world are the visual and the auditory, God must necessarily possess vision and speech. The omnipotence paradox was first addressed by Averroës and only later by Thomas Aquinas. Pre-eternity of the world In the centuries preceding Averroes, there had been a debate between Muslim thinkers questioning whether the world was created at a specific moment in time or whether it has always existed. Neo-Platonic philosophers such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna argued the world has always existed. This view was criticized by theologians and philosophers of the Ashari kalam tradition; in particular, al-Ghazali wrote an extensive refutation of the pre-eternity doctrine in his Incoherence of the Philosophers and accused the Neo-Platonic philosophers of unbelief (kufr). Averroes responded to Al-Ghazali in his Incoherence of the Incoherence. First, he argued that the differences between the two positions were not vast enough to warrant the charge of unbelief. He also said the pre-eternity doctrine did not necessarily contradict the Quran and cited verses that mention pre-existing "throne" and "water" in passages related to creation. Averroes argued that a careful reading of the Quran implied only the "form" of the universe was created in time but that its existence has been eternal. Averroes further criticized the kalam theologians for using their own interpretations of scripture to answer questions that should have been left to philosophers. Politics Averroes states his political philosophy in his commentary of Plato's Republic. He combines his ideas with Plato's and with Islamic tradition; he considers the ideal state to be one based on the Islamic law (shariah). His interpretation of Plato's philosopher-king followed that of Al-Farabi, which equates the philosopher-king with the imam, caliph and lawgiver of the state. Averroes's description of the characteristics of a philosopher-king are similar to those given by Al-Farabi; they include love of knowledge, good memory, love of learning, love of truth, dislike for sensual pleasures, dislike for amassing wealth, magnanimity, courage, steadfastness, eloquence and the ability to "light quickly on the middle term". Averroes writes that if philosophers cannot rule—as was the case in the Almoravid and Almohad empires around his lifetime—philosophers must still try to influence the rulers towards implementing the ideal state. According to Averroes, there are two methods of teaching virtue to citizens; persuasion and coercion. Persuasion is the more natural method consisting of rhetorical, dialectical and demonstrative methods; sometimes, however, coercion is necessary for those not amenable to persuasion, e.g. enemies of the state. Therefore, he justifies war as a last resort, which he also supports using Quranic arguments. Consequently, he argues that a ruler should have both wisdom and courage, which are needed for governance and defense of the state. Like Plato, Averroes calls for women to share with men in the administration of the state, including participating as soldiers, philosophers and rulers. He regrets that contemporaneous Muslim societies limited the public role of women; he says this limitation is harmful to the state's well-being. Averroes also accepted Plato's ideas of the deterioration of the ideal state. He cites examples from Islamic history when the Rashidun caliphate—which in Sunni tradition represented the ideal state led by "rightly guided caliphs"—became a dynastic state under Muawiyah, founder of the Umayyad dynasty. He also says the Almoravid and the Almohad empires started as ideal, shariah-based states but then deteriorated into timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny. Diversity of Islamic law In his tenure as judge and jurist, Averroes for the most part ruled and gave fatwas according to the Maliki school of Islamic law which was dominant in Al-Andalus and the western Islamic world during his time. However, he frequently acted as "his own man", including sometimes rejecting the "consensus of the people of Medina" argument that is one of the traditional Maliki position. In Bidāyat al-Mujtahid, one of his major contributions to the field of Islamic law, he not only describes the differences between various school of Islamic laws but also tries to theoretically explain the reasons for the difference and why they are inevitable. Even though all the schools of Islamic law are ultimately rooted in the Quran and hadith, there are "causes that necessitate differences" (al-asbab al-lati awjabat al-ikhtilaf). They include differences in interpreting scripture in a general or specific sense, in interpreting scriptural commands as obligatory or merely recommended, or prohibitions as discouragement or total prohibition, as well as ambiguities in the meaning of words or expressions. Averroes also writes that the application of qiyas (reasoning by analogy) could give rise to different legal opinion because jurists might disagree on the applicability of certain analogies and different analogies might contradict each other. Natural philosophy Astronomy As did Avempace and Ibn Tufail, Averroes criticizes the Ptolemaic system using philosophical arguments and rejects the use of eccentrics and epicycles to explain the apparent motions of the moon, the sun and the planets. He argued that those objects move uniformly in a strictly circular motion around the earth, following Aristotelian principles. He postulates that there are three type of planetary motions; those that can be seen with the naked eye, those that requires instruments to observe and those that can only be known by philosophical reasoning. Averroes argues that the occasional opaque colors of the moon are caused by variations in its thickness; the thicker parts receive more light from the Sun—and therefore emit more light—than the thinner parts. This explanation was used up to the seventeenth century by the European Scholastics to account for Galileo's observations of spots on the moon's surface, until the Scholastics such as Antoine Goudin in 1668 conceded that the observation was more likely caused by mountains on the moon. He and Ibn Bajja observed sunspots, which they thought were transits of Venus and Mercury between the Sun and the Earth. In 1153 he conducted astronomical observations in Marrakesh, where he observed the star Canopus (Arabic: Suhayl) which was invisible in the latitude of his native Spain. He used this observation to support Aristotle's argument for the spherical Earth. Averroes was aware that Arabic and Andalusian astronomers of his time focused on "mathematical" astronomy, which enabled accurate predictions through calculations but did not provide a detailed physical explanation of how the universe worked. According to him, "the astronomy of our time offers no truth, but only agrees with the calculations and not with what exists." He attempted to reform astronomy to be reconciled with physics, especially the physics of Aristotle. His long commentary of Aristotle's Metaphysics describes the principles of his attempted reform, but later in his life he declared that his attempts had failed. He confessed that he had not enough time or knowledge to reconcile the observed planetary motions with Aristotelian principles. In addition, he did not know the works of Eudoxus and Callippus, and so he missed the context of some of Aristotle's astronomical works. However, his works influenced astronomer Nur ad-Din al-Bitruji (d. 1204) who adopted most of his reform principles and did succeed in proposing an early astronomical system based on Aristotelian physics. Physics In physics, Averroes did not adopt the inductive method that was being developed by Al-Biruni in the Islamic world and is closer to today's physics. Rather, he was—in the words of historian of science Ruth Glasner—a "exegetical" scientist who produced new theses about nature through discussions of previous texts, especially the writings of Aristotle. because of this approach, he was often depicted as an unimaginative follower of Aristotle, but Glasner argues that Averroes's work introduced highly original theories of physics, especially his elaboration of Aristotle's minima naturalia and on motion as forma fluens, which were taken up in the west and are important to the overall development of physics. Averroes also proposed a definition of force as "the rate at which work is done in changing the kinetic condition of a material body"—a definition close to that of power in today's physics. Psychology Averroes expounds his thoughts on psychology in his three commentaries on Aristotle's On the Soul. Averroes is interested in explaining the human intellect using philosophical methods and by interpreting Aristotle's ideas. His position on the topic changed throughout his career as his thoughts developed. In his short commentary, the first of the three works, Averroes follows Ibn Bajja's theory that something called the "material intellect" stores specific images that a person encounters. These images serve as basis for the "unification" by the universal "agent intellect", which, once it happens, allow a person to gain universal knowledge about that concept. In his middle commentary, Averroes moves towards the ideas of Al-Farabi and Avicenna, saying the agent intellect gives humans the power of universal understanding, which is the material intellect. Once the person has sufficient empirical encounters with a certain concept, the power activates and gives the person universal knowledge (see also logical induction). In his last commentary—called the Long Commentary—he proposes another theory, which becomes known as the theory of "the unity of the intellect". In it, Averroes argues that there is only one material intellect, which is the same for all humans and is unmixed with human body. To explain how different individuals can have different thoughts, he uses a concept he calls fikr—known as cogitatio in Latin—a process that happens in human brains and contains not universal knowledge but "active consideration of particular things" the person has encountered. This theory attracted controversy when Averroes's works entered Christian Europe; in 1229 Thomas Aquinas wrote a detailed critique titled On the Unity of the Intellect against the Averroists. Medicine While his works in medicine indicate an in-depth theoretical knowledge in medicine of his time, he likely had limited expertise as a practitioner, and declared in one of his works that he had not "practiced much apart from myself, my relatives or my friends." He did serve as a royal physician, but his qualification and education was mostly theoretical. For the most part, Averroes's medical work Al-Kulliyat fi al-Tibb follows the medical doctrine of Galen, an influential Greek physician and author from the 2nd century, which was based on the four humors—blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm, whose balance is necessary for the health of the human body. Averroes's original contributions include his observations on the retina: he might have been the first to recognize that retina was the part of the eye responsible for sensing light, rather than the lens as was commonly thought. Modern scholars dispute whether this is what he meant it his Kulliyat, but Averroes also stated a similar observation in his commentary to Aristotle's Sense and Sensibilia: "the innermost of the coats of the eye [the retina] must necessarily receive the light from the humors of the eye [the lens], just like the humors receive the light from air." Another of his departure from Galen and the medical theories of the time is his description of stroke as produced by the brain and caused by an obstruction of the arteries from the heart to the brain. This explanation is closer to the modern understanding of the disease compared to that of Galen, which attributes it to the obstruction between heart and the periphery. He was also the first to describe the signs and symptoms of Parkinson's disease in his Kulliyat, although he did not give the disease a name. Legacy In Jewish tradition Maimonides (d. 1204) was among early Jewish scholars who received Averroes's works enthusiastically, saying he "received lately everything Averroes had written on the works of Aristotle" and that Averroes "was extremely right". Thirteenth-century Jewish writers, including Samuel ibn Tibbon in his work Opinion of the Philosophers, Judah ibn Solomon Cohen in his Search for Wisdom and Shem-Tov ibn Falaquera, relied heavily on Averroes's texts. In 1232, Joseph Ben Abba Mari translated Averroes's commentaries on the Organon; this was the first Jewish translation of a complete work. In 1260 Moses ibn Tibbon published the translation of almost all of Averroes's commentaries and some of his works on medicine. Jewish Averroism peaked in the fourteenth century; Jewish writers of this time who translated or were influenced by Averroes include Kalonymus ben Kalonymus of Arles, France, Todros Todrosi of Arles, Elia del Medigo of Candia and Gersonides of Languedoc. In Latin tradition Averroes's main influence on the Christian west was through his extensive commentaries on Aristotle. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, western Europe fell into a cultural decline that resulted in the loss of nearly all of the intellectual legacy of the Classical Greek scholars, including Aristotle. Averroes's commentaries, which were translated into Latin and entered western Europe in the thirteenth century, provided an expert account of Aristotle's legacy and made them available again. The influence of his commentaries led to Averroes being referred to simply as "The Commentator" rather than by name in Latin Christian writings. He has been sometimes described as the "father of free thought and unbelief" and "father of rationalism". Michael Scot (1175 – c. 1232) was the first Latin translator of Averroes who translated the long commentaries of Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul and On the Heavens, as well as multiple middle and short commentaries, starting in 1217 in Paris and Toledo. Following this, European authors such as Hermannus Alemannus, William de Luna and Armengaud of Montpellier translated Averroes's other works, sometimes with help from Jewish authors. Soon after, Averroes's works propagated among Christian scholars in the scholastic tradition. His writing attracted a strong circle of followers known as the Latin Averroists. Paris and Padua were major centers of Latin Averroism, and its prominent thirteenth-century leaders included Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia. Authorities of the Roman Catholic Church reacted against the spread of Averroism. In 1270, the Bishop of Paris Étienne Tempier issued a condemnation against 15 doctrines—many of which were Aristotelian or Averroist—that he said were in conflict with the doctrines of the church. In 1277, at the request of Pope John XXI, Tempier issued another condemnation, this time targeting 219 theses drawn from many sources, mainly the teachings of Aristotle and Averroes. Averroes received a mixed reception from other Catholic thinkers; Thomas Aquinas, a leading Catholic thinker of the thirteenth century, relied extensively on Averroes's interpretation of Aristotle but disagreed with him on many points. For example, he wrote a detailed attack on Averroes's theory that all humans share the same intellect. He also opposed Averroes on the eternity of the universe and divine providence. The Catholic Church's condemnations of 1270 and 1277, and the detailed critique by Aquinas weakened the spread of Averroism in Latin Christendom, though it maintained a following until the sixteenth century, when European thought began to diverge from Aristotelianism. Leading Averroists in the following centuries included John of Jandun and Marsilius of Padua (fourteenth century), Gaetano da Thiene and Pietro Pomponazzi (fifteenth century), and Agostino Nifo and Marcantonio Zimara (sixteenth century). In Islamic tradition Averroes had no major influence on Islamic philosophic thought until modern times. Part of the reason was geography; Averroes lived in Spain, the extreme west of the Islamic civilization far from the centers of Islamic intellectual traditions. Also, his philosophy may not have appealed to Islamic scholars of his time. His focus on Aristotle's works was outdated in the twelfth-century Muslim world, which had already scrutinized Aristotle since the ninth century and by now was engaging deeply with newer schools of thought, especially that of Avicenna. In the nineteenth century, Muslim thinkers begin to engage with the works of Averroes again. By this time, there was a cultural renaissance called Al-Nahda ("reawakening") in the Arabic-speaking world and the works of Averroes were seen as inspiration to modernize the Muslim intellectual tradition. Cultural references References to Averroes appear in the popular culture of both the western and Muslim world. The poem The Divine Comedy by the Italian writer Dante Alighieri, completed in 1320, depicts Averroes, "who made the Great Commentary", along with other non-Christian Greek and Muslim thinkers, in the first circle of hell around Saladin. The prolog of The Canterbury Tales (1387) by Geoffrey Chaucer lists Averroes among other medical authorities known in Europe at the time. Averroes is depicted in Raphael's 1501 fresco The School of Athens that decorates the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, which features seminal figures of philosophy. In the painting, Averroes wears a green robe and a turban, and peers out from behind Pythagoras, who is shown writing a book. Averroes is referenced briefly in Victor Hugo's 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' (written 1831, but set in the Paris of 1482). The novel's villain, the Priest Claude Frollo, extols Averroes' talents as an alchemist in his obsessive quest to find the Philosophers Stone. A 1947 short story by Jorge Luis Borges, "Averroes's Search" (), features his attempts to understand Aristotle's Poetics within a culture that lacks a tradition of live theatrical performance. In the afterwords of the story, Borges comments, "I felt that [the story] mocked me, foiled me, thwarted me. I felt that Averroës, trying to imagine what a play is without ever having suspected what a theater is, was no more absurd than I, trying to imagine Averroës yet with no more material than a few snatches from Renan, Lane, and Asín Palacios." Averroes is also the hero of the 1997 Egyptian movie Destiny by Youssef Chahine, made partly in commemoration of the 800th anniversary of his death. The plant genus Averrhoa (whose members include the starfruit and the bilimbi), the lunar crater ibn Rushd, and the asteroid 8318 Averroes are named after him. References Works cited External links Works of Averroes DARE, the Digital Averroes Research Environment, an ongoing effort to collect digital images of all Averroes manuscripts and full texts of all three language-traditions. Averroes, Islamic Philosophy Online (links to works by and about Averroes in several languages) The Philosophy and Theology of Averroes: Tractata translated from the Arabic, trans. Mohammad Jamil-ur-Rehman, 1921 The Incoherence of the Incoherence translation by Simon van den Bergh. [N. B. : Because these refutations consist mainly of commentary on statements by al-Ghazali which are quoted verbatim, this work contains a translation of most of the Tahafut.] There is also an Italian translation by Massimo Campanini, Averroè, L'incoerenza dell'incoerenza dei filosofi, Turin, Utet, 1997. SIEPM Virtual Library, including scanned copies (PDF) of the Editio Juntina of Averroes's works in Latin (Venice 1550–1562) Information about Averroes on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Bibliography, a comprehensive overview of the extant bibliography Averroes Database, including a full bibliography of his works Podcast on Averroes, at NPR's Throughline 1126 births 1198 deaths 12th-century Al-Andalus people 12th-century astronomers 12th-century philosophers 12th-century physicians Almoravid dynasty Arabic commentators on Aristotle Aristotelian philosophers Astronomers of medieval Islam Commentators on Plato Cultural critics Deaths in Morocco Epistemologists Ethicists Founders of philosophical traditions Islamic philosophers Logicians Medieval Arab astronomers Medieval Arab philosophers Medieval Arab physicians Medieval Moorish astronomers Medieval Moorish physicians Medieval physicists Metaphysicians Moorish Maliki scholars Moral philosophers 12th-century Muslim theologians Ontologists People from Córdoba, Spain Philosophers of culture Philosophers of ethics and morality Philosophers of history Philosophers of language Philosophers of literature Philosophers of logic Philosophers of mind Philosophers of psychology Philosophers of religion Philosophers of science Physicians of medieval Islam Political philosophers Psychologists Social critics Social philosophers Sunni Muslim scholars World Digital Library exhibits Philosophers of Al-Andalus

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Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?

Besides Aristotle demonstrating the eternity of matter, Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?

Averroes

Ibn Rushd looked to Aristotle as to whether the world was eternal. In his Physics, the Greek philosopher argues that everything that comes into existence does so from a substratum. Therefore, if the underlying matter of the universe came into existence, it would come into existence from a substratum. But the nature of matter is precisely to be the substratum from which other things arise. Consequently, the underlying matter of the universe could have come into evidence only from an already existing matter exactly like itself; to assume that the underlying matter of the universe came into existence would require assuming that an underlying matter already existed. As this assumption is self-contradictory, Aristotle argued, matter must be eternal. Because in his eyes, "Aristotle demonstrated the eternity of matter", Ibn Rushd "abandon[ed] belief in the creation out of nothing." This is not to say that Ibn Rushd denied the Creation; rather, he proposed an eternal creation. Oliver Leaman explains Ibn Rushd's argument as such: We [as humans] can decide to do something, we can wait for a certain time before acting, we can wonder about our future actions; but such possibilities cannot arise for [an eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent] God. In his case there is no gap between desire and action, nothing stands in the way of his activity; and yet we are told by al-Ghazali that God suddenly created the world. What differentiates one time from another for God? What could motivate him to create the world at one particular time as opposed to another? For us, different times are different because they have different qualitative aspects, yet before the creation of the world, when there was nothing around to characterize one time as distinct from another, there is nothing to characterize one time over another as the time for creation to take place. CANNOTANSWER

Ibn Rushd "abandon[ed] belief in the creation out of nothing."

Ibn Rushd (; full name in ; 14 April 112611 December 1198), often Latinized as Averroes ( ), was a Muslim Andalusian polymath and jurist who wrote about many subjects, including philosophy, theology, medicine, astronomy, physics, psychology, mathematics, Islamic jurisprudence and law, and linguistics. The author of more than 100 books and treatises, his philosophical works include numerous commentaries on Aristotle, for which he was known in the western world as The Commentator and Father of Rationalism. Ibn Rushd also served as a chief judge and a court physician for the Almohad Caliphate. Averroes was a strong proponent of Aristotelianism; he attempted to restore what he considered the original teachings of Aristotle and opposed the Neoplatonist tendencies of earlier Muslim thinkers, such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna. He also defended the pursuit of philosophy against criticism by Ashari theologians such as Al-Ghazali. Averroes argued that philosophy was permissible in Islam and even compulsory among certain elites. He also argued scriptural text should be interpreted allegorically if it appeared to contradict conclusions reached by reason and philosophy. In Islamic jurisprudence, he wrote the Bidāyat al-Mujtahid on the differences between Islamic schools of law and the principles that caused their differences. In medicine, he proposed a new theory of stroke, described the signs and symptoms of Parkinson's disease for the first time, and might have been the first to identify the retina as the part of the eye responsible for sensing light. His medical book Al-Kulliyat fi al-Tibb, translated into Latin and known as the Colliget, became a textbook in Europe for centuries. His legacy in the Islamic world was modest for geographical and intellectual reasons. In the west, Averroes was known for his extensive commentaries on Aristotle, many of which were translated into Latin and Hebrew. The translations of his work reawakened western European interest in Aristotle and Greek thinkers, an area of study that had been widely abandoned after the fall of the Roman Empire. His thoughts generated controversies in Latin Christendom and triggered a philosophical movement called Averroism based on his writings. His unity of the intellect thesis, proposing that all humans share the same intellect, became one of the best-known and most controversial Averroist doctrines in the west. His works were condemned by the Catholic Church in 1270 and 1277. Although weakened by condemnations and sustained critique from Thomas Aquinas, Latin Averroism continued to attract followers up to the sixteenth century. Name Ibn Rushd's full, transliterated Arabic name is "Abū l-Walīd Muḥammad ibn ʾAḥmad Ibn Rushd". Sometimes, the nickname al-Hafid ("The Grandson") is appended to his name, to distinguish him from his grandfather, a famous judge and jurist. "Averroes" is the Medieval Latin form of "Ibn Rushd"; it was derived from the Spanish pronunciation of the original Arabic name, wherein "Ibn" becomes "Aben" or "Aven". Other forms of the name in European languages include "Ibin-Ros-din", "Filius Rosadis", "Ibn-Rusid", "Ben-Raxid", "Ibn-Ruschod", "Den-Resched", "Aben-Rassad", "Aben-Rasd", "Aben-Rust", "Avenrosdy", "Avenryz", "Adveroys", "Benroist", "Avenroyth" and "Averroysta". Biography Early life and education Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Rushd was born on 14 April 1126 (520 AH) in Córdoba. His family was well known in the city for their public service, especially in the legal and religious fields. His grandfather Abu al-Walid Muhammad (d. 1126) was the chief judge (qadi) of Córdoba and the imam of the Great Mosque of Córdoba under the Almoravids. His father Abu al-Qasim Ahmad was not as celebrated as his grandfather, but was also chief judge until the Almoravids were replaced by the Almohads in 1146. According to his traditional biographers, Averroes's education was "excellent", beginning with studies in hadith (traditions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad), fiqh (jurisprudence), medicine and theology. He learned Maliki jurisprudence under al-Hafiz Abu Muhammad ibn Rizq and hadith with Ibn Bashkuwal, a student of his grandfather. His father also taught him about jurisprudence, including on Imam Malik's magnum opus the Muwatta, which Averroes went on to memorize. He studied medicine under Abu Jafar Jarim al-Tajail, who probably taught him philosophy too. He also knew the works of the philosopher Ibn Bajjah (also known as Avempace), and might have known him personally or been tutored by him. He joined a regular meeting of philosophers, physicians and poets in Seville which was attended by philosophers Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Zuhr as well as the future caliph Abu Yusuf Yaqub. He also studied the kalam theology of the Ashari school, which he criticized later in life. His 13th century biographer Ibn al-Abbar said he was more interested in the study of law and its principles (usul) than that of hadith and he was especially competent in the field of khilaf (disputes and controversies in the Islamic jurisprudence). Ibn al-Abbar also mentioned his interests in "the sciences of the ancients", probably in reference to Greek philosophy and sciences. Career By 1153 Averroes was in Marrakesh (Morocco), the capital of the Almohad Caliphate, to perform astronomical observations and to support the Almohad project of building new colleges. He was hoping to find physical laws of astronomical movements instead of only the mathematical laws known at the time but this research was unsuccessful. During his stay in Marrakesh he likely met Ibn Tufayl, a renowned philosopher and the author of Hayy ibn Yaqdhan who was also the court physician in Marrakesh. Averroes and ibn Tufayl became friends despite the differences in their philosophies. In 1169 Ibn Tufayl introduced Averroes to the Almohad caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf. In a famous account reported by historian Abdelwahid al-Marrakushi the caliph asked Averroes whether the heavens had existed since eternity or had a beginning. Knowing this question was controversial and worried a wrong answer could put him in danger, Averroes did not answer. The caliph then elaborated the views of Plato, Aristotle and Muslim philosophers on the topic and discussed them with Ibn Tufayl. This display of knowledge put Averroes at ease; Averroes then explained his own views on the subject, which impressed the caliph. Averroes was similarly impressed by Abu Yaqub and later said the caliph had "a profuseness of learning I did not suspect". After their introduction, Averroes remained in Abu Yaqub's favor until the caliph's death in 1184. When the caliph complained to Ibn Tufayl about the difficulty of understanding Aristotle's work, Ibn Tufayl recommended to the caliph that Averroes work on explaining it. This was the beginning of Averroes's massive commentaries on Aristotle; his first works on the subject were written in 1169. In the same year, Averroes was appointed qadi (judge) in Seville. In 1171 he became qadi in his hometown of Córdoba. As qadi he would decide cases and give fatwas (legal opinions) based on the Islamic law (sharia). The rate of his writing increased during this time despite other obligations and his travels within the Almohad empire. He also took the opportunity from his travels to conduct astronomical researches. Many of his works produced between 1169 and 1179 were dated in Seville rather than Córdoba. In 1179 he was again appointed qadi in Seville. In 1182 he succeeded his friend Ibn Tufayl as court physician and later the same year he was appointed the chief qadi of Córdoba, a prestigious office that had once been held by his grandfather. In 1184 Caliph Abu Yaqub died and was succeeded by Abu Yusuf Yaqub. Initially, Averroes remained in royal favor but in 1195 his fortune reversed. Various charges were made against him and he was tried by a tribunal in Córdoba. The tribunal condemned his teachings, ordered the burning of his works and banished Averroes to nearby Lucena. Early biographers's reasons for this fall from grace include a possible insult to the caliph in his writings but modern scholars attribute it to political reasons. The Encyclopaedia of Islam said the caliph distanced himself from Averroes to gain support from more orthodox ulema, who opposed Averroes and whose support al-Mansur needed for his war against Christian kingdoms. Historian of Islamic philosophy Majid Fakhry also wrote that public pressure from traditional Maliki jurists who were opposed to Averroes played a role. After a few years, Averroes returned to court in Marrakesh and was again in the caliph's favor. He died shortly afterwards, on 11 December 1198 (9 Safar 595 in the Islamic calendar). He was initially buried in North Africa but his body was later moved to Córdoba for another funeral, at which future Sufi mystic and philosopher Ibn Arabi (1165–1240) was present. Works Averroes was a prolific writer and his works, according to Fakhry, "covered a greater variety of subjects" than those of any of his predecessors in the East, including philosophy, medicine, jurisprudence or legal theory, and linguistics. Most of his writings were commentaries on or paraphrasings of the works of Aristotle that—especially the long ones—often contain his original thoughts. According to French author Ernest Renan, Averroes wrote at least 67 original works, including 28 works on philosophy, 20 on medicine, 8 on law, 5 on theology, and 4 on grammar, in addition to his commentaries on most of Aristotle's works and his commentary on Plato's The Republic. Many of Averroes's works in Arabic did not survive, but their translations into Hebrew or Latin did. For example, of his long commentaries on Aristotle, only "a tiny handful of Arabic manuscript remains". Commentaries on Aristotle Averroes wrote commentaries on nearly all of Aristotle's surviving works. The only exception is Politics, which he did not have access to, so he wrote commentaries on Plato's Republic. He classified his commentaries into three categories that modern scholars have named short, middle and long commentaries. Most of the short commentaries (jami) were written early in his career and contain summaries of Aristotlean doctrines. The middle commentaries (talkhis) contain paraphrases that clarify and simplify Aristotle's original text. The middle commentaries were probably written in response to his patron caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf's complaints about the difficulty of understanding Aristotle's original texts and to help others in a similar position. The long commentaries (tafsir or sharh), or line-by-line commentaries, include the complete text of the original works with a detailed analysis of each line. The long commentaries are very detailed and contain a high degree of original thought, and were unlikely to be intended for a general audience. Only five of Aristotle's works had all three types of commentaries: Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul, On the Heavens, and Posterior Analytics. Stand alone philosophical works Averroes also wrote stand alone philosophical treatises, including On the Intellect, On the Syllogism, On Conjunction with the Active Intellect, On Time, On the Heavenly Sphere and On the Motion of the Sphere. He also wrote several polemics: Essay on al-Farabi's Approach to Logic, as Compared to that of Aristotle, Metaphysical Questions Dealt with in the Book of Healing by Ibn Sina, and Rebuttal of Ibn Sina's Classification of Existing Entities. Islamic theology Scholarly sources, including Fakhry and the Encyclopedia of Islam, have named three works as Averroes's key writings in this area. Fasl al-Maqal ("The Decisive Treatise") is an 1178 treatise that argues for the compatibility of Islam and philosophy. Al-Kashf 'an Manahij al-Adillah ("Exposition of the Methods of Proof"), written in 1179, criticizes the theologies of the Asharites, and lays out Averroes's argument for proving the existence of God, as well as his thoughts on God's attributes and actions. The 1180 Tahafut al-Tahafut ("Incoherence of the Incoherence") is a rebuttal of al-Ghazali's (d. 1111) landmark criticism of philosophy The Incoherence of the Philosophers. It combines ideas in his commentaries and stand alone works, and uses them to respond to al-Ghazali. The work also criticizes Avicenna and his neo-Platonist tendencies, sometimes agreeing with al-Ghazali's critique against him. Medicine Averroes, who served as the royal physician at the Almohad court, wrote a number of medical treatises. The most famous was al-Kulliyat fi al-Tibb ("The General Principles of Medicine", Latinized in the west as the Colliget), written around 1162, before his appointment at court. The title of this book is the opposite of al-Juz'iyyat fi al-Tibb ("The Specificities of Medicine"), written by his friend Ibn Zuhr, and the two collaborated intending that their works complement each other. The Latin translation of the Colliget became a medical textbook in Europe for centuries. His other surviving titles include On Treacle, The Differences in Temperament, and Medicinal Herbs. He also wrote summaries of the works of Greek physician Galen (died ) and a commentary on Avicenna's Urjuzah fi al-Tibb ("Poem on Medicine"). Jurisprudence and law Averroes served multiple tenures as judge and produced multiple works in the fields of Islamic jurisprudence or legal theory. The only book that survives today is Bidāyat al-Mujtahid wa Nihāyat al-Muqtaṣid ("Primer of the Discretionary Scholar"). In this work he explains the differences of opinion (ikhtilaf) between the Sunni madhhabs (schools of Islamic jurisprudence) both in practice and in their underlying juristic principles, as well as the reason why they are inevitable. Despite his status as a Maliki judge, the book also discusses the opinion of other schools, including liberal and conservative ones. Other than this surviving text, bibliographical information shows he wrote a summary of Al-Ghazali's On Legal Theory of Muslim Jurisprudence (Al-Mustasfa) and tracts on sacrifices and land tax. Philosophical ideas Aristotelianism in the Islamic philosophical tradition In his philosophical writings, Averroes attempted to return to Aristotelianism, which according to him had been distorted by the Neoplatonist tendencies of Muslim philosophers such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna. He rejected al-Farabi's attempt to merge the ideas of Plato and Aristotle, pointing out the differences between the two, such as Aristotle's rejection of Plato's theory of ideas. He also criticized Al-Farabi's works on logic for misinterpreting its Aristotelian source. He wrote an extensive critique of Avicenna, who was the standard-bearer of Islamic Neoplatonism in the Middle Ages. He argued that Avicenna's theory of emanation had many fallacies and was not found in the works of Aristotle. Averroes disagreed with Avicenna's view that existence is merely an accident added to essence, arguing the reverse; something exists per se and essence can only be found by subsequent abstraction. He also rejected Avicenna's modality and Avicenna's argument to prove the existence of God as the Necessary Existent. Averroes felt strongly about the incorporation of Greek thought into the Muslim world, and wrote that "if before us someone has inquired into [wisdom], it behooves us to seek help from what he has said. It is irrelevant whether he belongs to our community or to another". Relation between religion and philosophy During Averroes's lifetime, philosophy came under attack from the Sunni Islam tradition, especially from theological schools like the traditionalist (Hanbalite) and the Ashari schools. In particular, the Ashari scholar al-Ghazali (1058 – 1111) wrote The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-falasifa), a scathing and influential critique of the Neoplatonic philosophical tradition in the Islamic world and against the works of Avicenna in particular. Among others, Al-Ghazali charged philosophers with non-belief in Islam and sought to disprove the teaching of the philosophers using logical arguments. In Decisive Treatise, Averroes argues that philosophy—which for him represented conclusions reached using reason and careful method—cannot contradict revelations in Islam because they are just two different methods of reaching the truth, and "truth cannot contradict truth". When conclusions reached by philosophy appear to contradict the text of the revelation, then according to Averroes, revelation must be subjected to interpretation or allegorical understanding to remove the contradiction. This interpretation must be done by those "rooted in knowledge"a phrase taken from the Quran, 3:7, which for Averroes refers to philosophers who during his lifetime had access to the "highest methods of knowledge". He also argues that the Quran calls for Muslims to study philosophy because the study and reflection of nature would increase a person's knowledge of "the Artisan" (God). He quotes Quranic passages calling on Muslims to reflect on nature and uses them to render a fatwa (legal opinion) that philosophy is allowed for Muslims and is probably an obligation, at least among those who have the talent for it. Averroes also distinguishes between three modes of discourse: the rhetorical (based on persuasion) accessible to the common masses; the dialectical (based on debate) and often employed by theologians and the ulama (scholars); and the demonstrative (based on logical deduction). According to Averroes, the Quran uses the rhetorical method of inviting people to the truth, which allows it to reach the common masses with its persuasiveness, whereas philosophy uses the demonstrative methods that were only available to the learned but provided the best possible understanding and knowledge. Averroes also tries to deflect Al-Ghazali's criticisms of philosophy by saying that many of them apply only to the philosophy of Avicenna and not to that of Aristotle, which Averroes argues to be the true philosophy from which Avicenna has deviated. Nature of God Existence Averroes lays out his views on the existence and nature of God in the treatise The Exposition of the Methods of Proof. He examines and critiques the doctrines of four sects of Islam: the Asharites, the Mutazilites, the Sufis and those he calls the "literalists" (al-hashwiyah). Among other things, he examines their proofs of God's existence and critiques each one. Averroes argues that there are two arguments for God's existence that he deems logically sound and in accordance to the Quran; the arguments from "providence" and "from invention". The providence argument considers that the world and the universe seem finely tuned to support human life. Averroes cited the sun, the moon, the rivers, the seas and the location of humans on the earth. According to him, this suggests a creator who created them for the welfare of mankind. The argument from invention contends that worldly entities such as animals and plants appear to have been invented. Therefore, Averroes argues that a designer was behind the creation and that is God. Averroes's two arguments are teleological in nature and not cosmological like the arguments of Aristotle and most contemporaneous Muslim kalam theologians. God's attributes Averroes upholds the doctrine of divine unity (tawhid) and argues that God has seven divine attributes: knowledge, life, power, will, hearing, vision and speech. He devotes the most attention to the attribute of knowledge and argues that divine knowledge differs from human knowledge because God knows the universe because God is its cause while humans only know the universe through its effects. Averroes argues that the attribute of life can be inferred because it is the precondition of knowledge and also because God willed objects into being. Power can be inferred by God's ability to bring creations into existence. Averroes also argues that knowledge and power inevitably give rise to speech. Regarding vision and speech, he says that because God created the world, he necessarily knows every part of it in the same way an artist understands his or her work intimately. Because two elements of the world are the visual and the auditory, God must necessarily possess vision and speech. The omnipotence paradox was first addressed by Averroës and only later by Thomas Aquinas. Pre-eternity of the world In the centuries preceding Averroes, there had been a debate between Muslim thinkers questioning whether the world was created at a specific moment in time or whether it has always existed. Neo-Platonic philosophers such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna argued the world has always existed. This view was criticized by theologians and philosophers of the Ashari kalam tradition; in particular, al-Ghazali wrote an extensive refutation of the pre-eternity doctrine in his Incoherence of the Philosophers and accused the Neo-Platonic philosophers of unbelief (kufr). Averroes responded to Al-Ghazali in his Incoherence of the Incoherence. First, he argued that the differences between the two positions were not vast enough to warrant the charge of unbelief. He also said the pre-eternity doctrine did not necessarily contradict the Quran and cited verses that mention pre-existing "throne" and "water" in passages related to creation. Averroes argued that a careful reading of the Quran implied only the "form" of the universe was created in time but that its existence has been eternal. Averroes further criticized the kalam theologians for using their own interpretations of scripture to answer questions that should have been left to philosophers. Politics Averroes states his political philosophy in his commentary of Plato's Republic. He combines his ideas with Plato's and with Islamic tradition; he considers the ideal state to be one based on the Islamic law (shariah). His interpretation of Plato's philosopher-king followed that of Al-Farabi, which equates the philosopher-king with the imam, caliph and lawgiver of the state. Averroes's description of the characteristics of a philosopher-king are similar to those given by Al-Farabi; they include love of knowledge, good memory, love of learning, love of truth, dislike for sensual pleasures, dislike for amassing wealth, magnanimity, courage, steadfastness, eloquence and the ability to "light quickly on the middle term". Averroes writes that if philosophers cannot rule—as was the case in the Almoravid and Almohad empires around his lifetime—philosophers must still try to influence the rulers towards implementing the ideal state. According to Averroes, there are two methods of teaching virtue to citizens; persuasion and coercion. Persuasion is the more natural method consisting of rhetorical, dialectical and demonstrative methods; sometimes, however, coercion is necessary for those not amenable to persuasion, e.g. enemies of the state. Therefore, he justifies war as a last resort, which he also supports using Quranic arguments. Consequently, he argues that a ruler should have both wisdom and courage, which are needed for governance and defense of the state. Like Plato, Averroes calls for women to share with men in the administration of the state, including participating as soldiers, philosophers and rulers. He regrets that contemporaneous Muslim societies limited the public role of women; he says this limitation is harmful to the state's well-being. Averroes also accepted Plato's ideas of the deterioration of the ideal state. He cites examples from Islamic history when the Rashidun caliphate—which in Sunni tradition represented the ideal state led by "rightly guided caliphs"—became a dynastic state under Muawiyah, founder of the Umayyad dynasty. He also says the Almoravid and the Almohad empires started as ideal, shariah-based states but then deteriorated into timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny. Diversity of Islamic law In his tenure as judge and jurist, Averroes for the most part ruled and gave fatwas according to the Maliki school of Islamic law which was dominant in Al-Andalus and the western Islamic world during his time. However, he frequently acted as "his own man", including sometimes rejecting the "consensus of the people of Medina" argument that is one of the traditional Maliki position. In Bidāyat al-Mujtahid, one of his major contributions to the field of Islamic law, he not only describes the differences between various school of Islamic laws but also tries to theoretically explain the reasons for the difference and why they are inevitable. Even though all the schools of Islamic law are ultimately rooted in the Quran and hadith, there are "causes that necessitate differences" (al-asbab al-lati awjabat al-ikhtilaf). They include differences in interpreting scripture in a general or specific sense, in interpreting scriptural commands as obligatory or merely recommended, or prohibitions as discouragement or total prohibition, as well as ambiguities in the meaning of words or expressions. Averroes also writes that the application of qiyas (reasoning by analogy) could give rise to different legal opinion because jurists might disagree on the applicability of certain analogies and different analogies might contradict each other. Natural philosophy Astronomy As did Avempace and Ibn Tufail, Averroes criticizes the Ptolemaic system using philosophical arguments and rejects the use of eccentrics and epicycles to explain the apparent motions of the moon, the sun and the planets. He argued that those objects move uniformly in a strictly circular motion around the earth, following Aristotelian principles. He postulates that there are three type of planetary motions; those that can be seen with the naked eye, those that requires instruments to observe and those that can only be known by philosophical reasoning. Averroes argues that the occasional opaque colors of the moon are caused by variations in its thickness; the thicker parts receive more light from the Sun—and therefore emit more light—than the thinner parts. This explanation was used up to the seventeenth century by the European Scholastics to account for Galileo's observations of spots on the moon's surface, until the Scholastics such as Antoine Goudin in 1668 conceded that the observation was more likely caused by mountains on the moon. He and Ibn Bajja observed sunspots, which they thought were transits of Venus and Mercury between the Sun and the Earth. In 1153 he conducted astronomical observations in Marrakesh, where he observed the star Canopus (Arabic: Suhayl) which was invisible in the latitude of his native Spain. He used this observation to support Aristotle's argument for the spherical Earth. Averroes was aware that Arabic and Andalusian astronomers of his time focused on "mathematical" astronomy, which enabled accurate predictions through calculations but did not provide a detailed physical explanation of how the universe worked. According to him, "the astronomy of our time offers no truth, but only agrees with the calculations and not with what exists." He attempted to reform astronomy to be reconciled with physics, especially the physics of Aristotle. His long commentary of Aristotle's Metaphysics describes the principles of his attempted reform, but later in his life he declared that his attempts had failed. He confessed that he had not enough time or knowledge to reconcile the observed planetary motions with Aristotelian principles. In addition, he did not know the works of Eudoxus and Callippus, and so he missed the context of some of Aristotle's astronomical works. However, his works influenced astronomer Nur ad-Din al-Bitruji (d. 1204) who adopted most of his reform principles and did succeed in proposing an early astronomical system based on Aristotelian physics. Physics In physics, Averroes did not adopt the inductive method that was being developed by Al-Biruni in the Islamic world and is closer to today's physics. Rather, he was—in the words of historian of science Ruth Glasner—a "exegetical" scientist who produced new theses about nature through discussions of previous texts, especially the writings of Aristotle. because of this approach, he was often depicted as an unimaginative follower of Aristotle, but Glasner argues that Averroes's work introduced highly original theories of physics, especially his elaboration of Aristotle's minima naturalia and on motion as forma fluens, which were taken up in the west and are important to the overall development of physics. Averroes also proposed a definition of force as "the rate at which work is done in changing the kinetic condition of a material body"—a definition close to that of power in today's physics. Psychology Averroes expounds his thoughts on psychology in his three commentaries on Aristotle's On the Soul. Averroes is interested in explaining the human intellect using philosophical methods and by interpreting Aristotle's ideas. His position on the topic changed throughout his career as his thoughts developed. In his short commentary, the first of the three works, Averroes follows Ibn Bajja's theory that something called the "material intellect" stores specific images that a person encounters. These images serve as basis for the "unification" by the universal "agent intellect", which, once it happens, allow a person to gain universal knowledge about that concept. In his middle commentary, Averroes moves towards the ideas of Al-Farabi and Avicenna, saying the agent intellect gives humans the power of universal understanding, which is the material intellect. Once the person has sufficient empirical encounters with a certain concept, the power activates and gives the person universal knowledge (see also logical induction). In his last commentary—called the Long Commentary—he proposes another theory, which becomes known as the theory of "the unity of the intellect". In it, Averroes argues that there is only one material intellect, which is the same for all humans and is unmixed with human body. To explain how different individuals can have different thoughts, he uses a concept he calls fikr—known as cogitatio in Latin—a process that happens in human brains and contains not universal knowledge but "active consideration of particular things" the person has encountered. This theory attracted controversy when Averroes's works entered Christian Europe; in 1229 Thomas Aquinas wrote a detailed critique titled On the Unity of the Intellect against the Averroists. Medicine While his works in medicine indicate an in-depth theoretical knowledge in medicine of his time, he likely had limited expertise as a practitioner, and declared in one of his works that he had not "practiced much apart from myself, my relatives or my friends." He did serve as a royal physician, but his qualification and education was mostly theoretical. For the most part, Averroes's medical work Al-Kulliyat fi al-Tibb follows the medical doctrine of Galen, an influential Greek physician and author from the 2nd century, which was based on the four humors—blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm, whose balance is necessary for the health of the human body. Averroes's original contributions include his observations on the retina: he might have been the first to recognize that retina was the part of the eye responsible for sensing light, rather than the lens as was commonly thought. Modern scholars dispute whether this is what he meant it his Kulliyat, but Averroes also stated a similar observation in his commentary to Aristotle's Sense and Sensibilia: "the innermost of the coats of the eye [the retina] must necessarily receive the light from the humors of the eye [the lens], just like the humors receive the light from air." Another of his departure from Galen and the medical theories of the time is his description of stroke as produced by the brain and caused by an obstruction of the arteries from the heart to the brain. This explanation is closer to the modern understanding of the disease compared to that of Galen, which attributes it to the obstruction between heart and the periphery. He was also the first to describe the signs and symptoms of Parkinson's disease in his Kulliyat, although he did not give the disease a name. Legacy In Jewish tradition Maimonides (d. 1204) was among early Jewish scholars who received Averroes's works enthusiastically, saying he "received lately everything Averroes had written on the works of Aristotle" and that Averroes "was extremely right". Thirteenth-century Jewish writers, including Samuel ibn Tibbon in his work Opinion of the Philosophers, Judah ibn Solomon Cohen in his Search for Wisdom and Shem-Tov ibn Falaquera, relied heavily on Averroes's texts. In 1232, Joseph Ben Abba Mari translated Averroes's commentaries on the Organon; this was the first Jewish translation of a complete work. In 1260 Moses ibn Tibbon published the translation of almost all of Averroes's commentaries and some of his works on medicine. Jewish Averroism peaked in the fourteenth century; Jewish writers of this time who translated or were influenced by Averroes include Kalonymus ben Kalonymus of Arles, France, Todros Todrosi of Arles, Elia del Medigo of Candia and Gersonides of Languedoc. In Latin tradition Averroes's main influence on the Christian west was through his extensive commentaries on Aristotle. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, western Europe fell into a cultural decline that resulted in the loss of nearly all of the intellectual legacy of the Classical Greek scholars, including Aristotle. Averroes's commentaries, which were translated into Latin and entered western Europe in the thirteenth century, provided an expert account of Aristotle's legacy and made them available again. The influence of his commentaries led to Averroes being referred to simply as "The Commentator" rather than by name in Latin Christian writings. He has been sometimes described as the "father of free thought and unbelief" and "father of rationalism". Michael Scot (1175 – c. 1232) was the first Latin translator of Averroes who translated the long commentaries of Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul and On the Heavens, as well as multiple middle and short commentaries, starting in 1217 in Paris and Toledo. Following this, European authors such as Hermannus Alemannus, William de Luna and Armengaud of Montpellier translated Averroes's other works, sometimes with help from Jewish authors. Soon after, Averroes's works propagated among Christian scholars in the scholastic tradition. His writing attracted a strong circle of followers known as the Latin Averroists. Paris and Padua were major centers of Latin Averroism, and its prominent thirteenth-century leaders included Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia. Authorities of the Roman Catholic Church reacted against the spread of Averroism. In 1270, the Bishop of Paris Étienne Tempier issued a condemnation against 15 doctrines—many of which were Aristotelian or Averroist—that he said were in conflict with the doctrines of the church. In 1277, at the request of Pope John XXI, Tempier issued another condemnation, this time targeting 219 theses drawn from many sources, mainly the teachings of Aristotle and Averroes. Averroes received a mixed reception from other Catholic thinkers; Thomas Aquinas, a leading Catholic thinker of the thirteenth century, relied extensively on Averroes's interpretation of Aristotle but disagreed with him on many points. For example, he wrote a detailed attack on Averroes's theory that all humans share the same intellect. He also opposed Averroes on the eternity of the universe and divine providence. The Catholic Church's condemnations of 1270 and 1277, and the detailed critique by Aquinas weakened the spread of Averroism in Latin Christendom, though it maintained a following until the sixteenth century, when European thought began to diverge from Aristotelianism. Leading Averroists in the following centuries included John of Jandun and Marsilius of Padua (fourteenth century), Gaetano da Thiene and Pietro Pomponazzi (fifteenth century), and Agostino Nifo and Marcantonio Zimara (sixteenth century). In Islamic tradition Averroes had no major influence on Islamic philosophic thought until modern times. Part of the reason was geography; Averroes lived in Spain, the extreme west of the Islamic civilization far from the centers of Islamic intellectual traditions. Also, his philosophy may not have appealed to Islamic scholars of his time. His focus on Aristotle's works was outdated in the twelfth-century Muslim world, which had already scrutinized Aristotle since the ninth century and by now was engaging deeply with newer schools of thought, especially that of Avicenna. In the nineteenth century, Muslim thinkers begin to engage with the works of Averroes again. By this time, there was a cultural renaissance called Al-Nahda ("reawakening") in the Arabic-speaking world and the works of Averroes were seen as inspiration to modernize the Muslim intellectual tradition. Cultural references References to Averroes appear in the popular culture of both the western and Muslim world. The poem The Divine Comedy by the Italian writer Dante Alighieri, completed in 1320, depicts Averroes, "who made the Great Commentary", along with other non-Christian Greek and Muslim thinkers, in the first circle of hell around Saladin. The prolog of The Canterbury Tales (1387) by Geoffrey Chaucer lists Averroes among other medical authorities known in Europe at the time. Averroes is depicted in Raphael's 1501 fresco The School of Athens that decorates the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, which features seminal figures of philosophy. In the painting, Averroes wears a green robe and a turban, and peers out from behind Pythagoras, who is shown writing a book. Averroes is referenced briefly in Victor Hugo's 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' (written 1831, but set in the Paris of 1482). The novel's villain, the Priest Claude Frollo, extols Averroes' talents as an alchemist in his obsessive quest to find the Philosophers Stone. A 1947 short story by Jorge Luis Borges, "Averroes's Search" (), features his attempts to understand Aristotle's Poetics within a culture that lacks a tradition of live theatrical performance. In the afterwords of the story, Borges comments, "I felt that [the story] mocked me, foiled me, thwarted me. I felt that Averroës, trying to imagine what a play is without ever having suspected what a theater is, was no more absurd than I, trying to imagine Averroës yet with no more material than a few snatches from Renan, Lane, and Asín Palacios." Averroes is also the hero of the 1997 Egyptian movie Destiny by Youssef Chahine, made partly in commemoration of the 800th anniversary of his death. The plant genus Averrhoa (whose members include the starfruit and the bilimbi), the lunar crater ibn Rushd, and the asteroid 8318 Averroes are named after him. References Works cited External links Works of Averroes DARE, the Digital Averroes Research Environment, an ongoing effort to collect digital images of all Averroes manuscripts and full texts of all three language-traditions. Averroes, Islamic Philosophy Online (links to works by and about Averroes in several languages) The Philosophy and Theology of Averroes: Tractata translated from the Arabic, trans. Mohammad Jamil-ur-Rehman, 1921 The Incoherence of the Incoherence translation by Simon van den Bergh. [N. B. : Because these refutations consist mainly of commentary on statements by al-Ghazali which are quoted verbatim, this work contains a translation of most of the Tahafut.] There is also an Italian translation by Massimo Campanini, Averroè, L'incoerenza dell'incoerenza dei filosofi, Turin, Utet, 1997. SIEPM Virtual Library, including scanned copies (PDF) of the Editio Juntina of Averroes's works in Latin (Venice 1550–1562) Information about Averroes on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Bibliography, a comprehensive overview of the extant bibliography Averroes Database, including a full bibliography of his works Podcast on Averroes, at NPR's Throughline 1126 births 1198 deaths 12th-century Al-Andalus people 12th-century astronomers 12th-century philosophers 12th-century physicians Almoravid dynasty Arabic commentators on Aristotle Aristotelian philosophers Astronomers of medieval Islam Commentators on Plato Cultural critics Deaths in Morocco Epistemologists Ethicists Founders of philosophical traditions Islamic philosophers Logicians Medieval Arab astronomers Medieval Arab philosophers Medieval Arab physicians Medieval Moorish astronomers Medieval Moorish physicians Medieval physicists Metaphysicians Moorish Maliki scholars Moral philosophers 12th-century Muslim theologians Ontologists People from Córdoba, Spain Philosophers of culture Philosophers of ethics and morality Philosophers of history Philosophers of language Philosophers of literature Philosophers of logic Philosophers of mind Philosophers of psychology Philosophers of religion Philosophers of science Physicians of medieval Islam Political philosophers Psychologists Social critics Social philosophers Sunni Muslim scholars World Digital Library exhibits Philosophers of Al-Andalus

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What does Robert Owen have to do with the New Lanark textile mill?

What does Robert Owen have to do with the New Lanark textile mill?

Robert Owen

In July 1799 Owen and his partners bought the New Lanark mill from David Dale, and Owen became the New Lanark mill's manager in January 1800. Encouraged by his success in the management of cotton mills in Manchester, Owen hoped to conduct the New Lanark mill on higher principles than purely commercial ones. David Dale and Richard Arkwright had established the substantial mill at New Lanark in 1785. With its water power provided by the falls of the River Clyde, the cotton-spinning operation became one of Britain's largest. About 2,000 individuals were associations with the mill; 500 of them were children who were brought to the mill at the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dale, who was known for his benevolence, treated the children well, but the general condition of New Lanark's residents was unsatisfactory. Over the years, Dale and his son-in-law, Owen, worked to improve the factory workers' lives. Many of the workers were in the lowest levels of the population; theft, drunkenness, and other vices were common; education and sanitation were neglected; and most families lived in one room. The respectable country people refused to submit to the long hours and demoralising drudgery of the mills. Until a series of Truck Acts (1831-1887) required employees to be paid in common currency, many employers operated the truck system that paid workers in total or in part with tokens. The tokens had no monetary value outside the mill owner's "truck shop," where the owners could supply shoddy goods and charge top prices. In contrast to other employers, Owen's store offered goods at prices slightly above their wholesale cost. He also passed on the savings from the bulk purchase of goods to his workers, and placed the sale of alcohol under strict supervision. These principles became the basis for the cooperative shops in Britain, which continue in an altered form to trade today. CANNOTANSWER

manager in January 1800.

Robert Owen (; 14 May 1771 – 17 November 1858) was a Welsh textile manufacturer, philanthropist and social reformer, and a founder of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement. He strove to improve factory working conditions, promoted experimental socialistic communities, and sought a more collective approach to child rearing, including government control of education. He gained wealth in the early 1800s from a textile mill at New Lanark, Scotland. Having trained as a draper in Stamford, Lincolnshire he worked in London before relocating aged 18 to Manchester and textile manufacturing. In 1824, he moved to America and put most of his fortune in an experimental socialistic community at New Harmony, Indiana, as a preliminary for his Utopian society. It lasted about two years. Other Owenite communities also failed, and in 1828 Owen returned to London, where he continued to champion the working class, lead in developing cooperatives and the trade union movement, and support child labour legislation and free co-educational schools. Early life and education Robert Owen was born in Newtown, a small market town in Montgomeryshire, Wales, on 14 May 1771, to Anne (Williams) and Robert Owen. His father was a saddler, ironmonger and local postmaster; his mother was the daughter of a Newtown farming family. Young Robert was the sixth of the family's seven children, two of whom died at a young age. His surviving siblings were William, Anne, John and Richard. Owen received little formal education, but he was an avid reader. He left school at the age of ten to be apprenticed to a Stamford, Lincolnshire, draper for four years. He also worked in London drapery shops in his teens. At about the age of 18, Owen moved to Manchester, where he spent the next twelve years of his life, employed initially at Satterfield's Drapery in Saint Ann's Square. While in Manchester, Owen borrowed £100 from his brother William, so as to enter into a partnership to make spinning mules, a new invention for spinning cotton thread, but exchanged his business share within a few months for six spinning mules that he worked in rented factory space. In 1792, when Owen was about 21 years old, mill-owner Peter Drinkwater made him manager of the Piccadilly Mill at Manchester. However, after two years with Drinkwater, Owen voluntarily gave up a contracted promise of partnership, left the company, and went into partnership with other entrepreneurs to establish and later manage the Chorlton Twist Mills in Chorlton-on-Medlock. By the early 1790s, Owen's entrepreneurial spirit, management skills and progressive moral views were emerging. In 1793, he was elected a member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, where the ideas of the Enlightenment were discussed. He also became a committee member of the Manchester Board of Health, instigated principally by Thomas Percival to press for improvements in the health and working conditions of factory workers. Marriage and family On a visit to Scotland, Owen met and fell in love with Ann (or Anne) Caroline Dale, daughter of David Dale, a Glasgow philanthropist and the proprietor of the large New Lanark Mills. After their marriage on 30 September 1799, the Owens set up home in New Lanark, but later moved to Braxfield, Scotland. Robert and Caroline Owen had eight children, the first of whom died in infancy. Their seven survivors were four sons and three daughters: Robert Dale (1801–1877), William (1802–1842), Ann (or Anne) Caroline (1805–1831), Jane Dale (1805–1861), David Dale (1807–1860), Richard Dale (1809–1890) and Mary (1810–1832). Owen's four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale and Richard, and his daughter Jane Dale, followed their father to the United States, becoming US citizens and permanent residents in New Harmony, Indiana. Owen's wife Caroline and two of their daughters, Anne Caroline and Mary, remained in Britain, where they died in the 1830s. New Lanark mill In July 1799 Owen and his partners bought the New Lanark mill from David Dale, and Owen became its manager in January 1800. Encouraged by his management success in Manchester, Owen hoped to conduct the New Lanark mill on higher principles than purely commercial ones. It had been established in 1785 by David Dale and Richard Arkwright. Its water power provided by the falls of the River Clyde turned its cotton-spinning operation into one of Britain's largest. About 2,000 individuals were involved, 500 of them children brought to the mill at the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dale, known for his benevolence, treated the children well, but the general condition of New Lanark residents was unsatisfactory, despite efforts by Dale and his son-in-law Owen to improve their workers' lives. Many of the workers were from the lowest social levels: theft, drunkenness and other vices were common and education and sanitation neglected. Most families lived in one room. More respected people rejected the long hours and demoralising drudgery of the mills. Until a series of Truck Acts (1831–1887) required employers to pay their employees in common currency, many operated a truck system, paying workers wholly or in part with tokens that had no monetary value outside the mill owner's "truck shop", which charged high prices for shoddy goods. Unlike others, Owen's truck store offered goods at prices only slightly above their wholesale cost, passing on the savings from bulk purchases to his customers and placing alcohol sales under strict supervision. These principles became the basis for Britain's Co-operative shops, some of which continue trading in altered forms to this day. Philosophy and influence Owen tested his social and economic ideas at New Lanark, where he won his workers' confidence and continued to have success through the improved efficiency at the mill. The community also earned an international reputation. Social reformers, statesmen and royalty, including the future Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, visited New Lanark to study its methods. The opinions of many such visitors were favourable. Owen's biggest success was in support of youth education and early child care. As a pioneer in Britain, notably Scotland, Owen provided an alternative to the "normal authoritarian approach to child education". The manners of children brought up under his system were more graceful, genial and unconstrained; health, plenty and contentment prevailed; drunkenness was almost unknown and illegitimacy extremely rare. Owen's relations with his workers remained excellent and operations at the mill proceeded in a smooth, regular and commercially successful way. However, some of Owen's schemes displeased his partners, forcing him to arrange for other investors to buy his share of the business in 1813, for the equivalent of US$800,000. The new investors, who included Jeremy Bentham and the well-known Quaker William Allen, were content to accept a £5,000 return on their capital. The ownership change also provided Owen with a chance to broaden his philanthropy, advocating improvements in workers' rights and child labour laws, and free education for children. In 1813 Owen authored and published A New View of Society, or Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character, the first of four essays he wrote to explain the principles behind his philosophy of socialistic reform. In this he writes: Owen had originally been a follower of the classical liberal, utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, who believed that free markets, in particular the right of workers to move and choose their employers, would release workers from the excessive power of capitalists. However, Owen developed his own, pro-socialist outlook. In addition, Owen as a deist, criticised organised religion, including the Church of England, and developed a belief system of his own. Owen felt that human character is formed by conditions over which individuals have no control. Thus individuals could not be praised or blamed for their behaviour or situation in life. This principle led Owen to conclude that the correct formation of people's characters called for placing them under proper environmental influences – physical, moral and social – from their earliest years. These notions of inherent irresponsibility in humans and the effect of early influences on an individual's character formed the basis of Owen's system of education and social reform. Relying on his own observations, experiences and thoughts, Owen saw his view of human nature as original and "the most basic and necessary constituent in an evolving science of society". His philosophy was influenced by Sir Isaac Newton's views on natural law, and his views resembled those of Plato, Denis Diderot, Claude Adrien Helvétius, William Godwin, John Locke, James Mill, and Jeremy Bentham, among others. Owen did not have the direct influence of Enlightenment philosophers. Owen's work at New Lanark continued to have significance in Britain and continental Europe. He was a "pioneer in factory reform, the father of distributive cooperation, and the founder of nursery schools." His schemes for educating his workers included opening an Institute for the Formation of Character at New Lanark in 1818. This and other programmes at New Lanark provided free education from infancy to adulthood. In addition, he zealously supported factory legislation that culminated in the Cotton Mills and Factories Act of 1819. Owen also had interviews and communications with leading members of the British government, including its premier, Robert Banks Jenkinson, Lord Liverpool. He also met many of the rulers and leading statesmen of Europe. Owen adopted new principles to raise the standard of goods his workers produced. A cube with faces painted in different colours was installed above each machinist's workplace. The colour of the face showed to all who saw it the quality and quantity of goods the worker completed. The intention was to encourage workers to do their best. Although it was no great incentive in itself, conditions at New Lanark for workers and their families were idyllic for the time. Eight-hour day Owen raised the demand for an eight-hour day in 1810 and set about instituting the policy at New Lanark. By 1817 he had formulated the goal of an eight-hour working day with the slogan "eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest". Models for socialism (1817) Owen embraced socialism in 1817, a turning point in his life, in which he pursued a "New View of Society". He outlined his position in a report to the committee of the House of Commons on the country's Poor Laws. As misery and trade stagnation after the Napoleonic Wars drew national attention, the government called on Owen for advice on how to alleviate the industrial concerns. Although he ascribed the immediate misery to the wars, he saw as the underlying cause competition of human labour with machinery, and recommended setting up self-sufficient communities. Owen proposed that communities of some 1,200 people should settle on land from , all living in one building with a public kitchen and dining halls. (The proposed size may have been influenced by the size of the village of New Lanark.) Owen also proposed that each family have its own private apartments and the responsibility for the care of its children up to the age of three. Thereafter children would be raised by the community, but their parents would have access to them at mealtimes and on other occasions. Owen further suggested that such communities be established by individuals, parishes, counties, or other governmental units. In each case there would be effective supervision by qualified persons. Work and enjoyment of its results should be experienced communally. Owen believed his idea would be the best way to reorganise society in general, and called his vision the "New Moral World". Owen's utopian model changed little in his lifetime. His developed model envisaged an association of 500–3,000 people as the optimum for a working community. While mainly agricultural, it would possess the best machinery, offer varied employment, and as far as possible be self-contained. Owen went on to explain that as such communities proliferated, "unions of them federatively united shall be formed in circle of tens, hundreds and thousands", linked by common interest. Arguments against Owen and his answers Owen always tried to spread his ideas to wider communities. First, he started publishing his ideas in newspapers. Owen then sent such newspapers widely to parliamentarians, politicians and other important people. These articles spurred the first negative reactions to his ideas. Opponents thought that Owen's plans would result in an uncontrollable increase in population and poverty. The other main criticism was that Owen's plan and the common use of everything would essentially make the country one large workshop. William Hone claimed that Owen saw people as unravelled plants from their roots, and that he wanted to plant them in rectangles. Another commentator accused Owen of wanting to imprison people in workshops like barracks and eradicate their personal independence. Owen's opponents had begun to regard him as an enemy of religion. His influence in ruling circles, which he had hoped would help him to accomplish his "plan", started diminishing and rumours of his lack of religious conviction spread. Owen believed that without a change in the character of individuals and the environment in which they live, they would remain hostile to those around them. As long as such a social order continued, the positive aspects of Christianity could never be put into practice. Owen also considered it necessary to give people more freedom in order to improve the situation of the poor and working classes. Unless people were better educated, unless they gained more useful information and had permanent employment, they were a danger to the security of the state when given more freedom than the British Constitution did at the time. Without making any changes in the national institutions, he believed that even reorganizing the working classes would bring great benefits. So he opposed the views of radicals seeking to change in the public mentality by expanding voting rights. Other notable critics of Owen include Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who viewed his work as a precursor to their own. They recognized in Owen the important understanding, developed by Marx in Capital, that it is the working class that are responsible for creating the unparalleled wealth in capitalist societies. Similarly, Owen also recognized that under the existing economic system, the working class did not automatically receive the benefits of that newly created wealth. Marx and Engels, differentiated, however, their own scientific conception of socialism from Owen's societies. They argued that Owen's plan, to create a model socialist utopia to coexist with contemporary society and prove its superiority over time, was insufficient to create a new society. In their view, Owen's "socialism" was utopian, since to Owen and the other utopian socialists "[s]ocialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own power." Marx and Engels believed that the overthrow of the capitalist system could only occur once the working class was organized into a revolutionary socialist political party of the working class that was completely independent of all capitalist class influence whereas the utopians sought the assistance and the co-operation of the capitalists in order to achieve the transition to socialism. Community experiments To test the viability of his ideas for self-sufficient working communities, Owen began experimenting in communal living in America in 1825. Among the most famous efforts was the one set up at New Harmony, Indiana. Of the 130 identifiable communitarian experiments in America before the American Civil War, at least 16 were Owenite or Owenite-influenced. New Harmony was Owen's earliest and most ambitious of these. Owen and his son William sailed to America in October 1824 to establish an experimental community in Indiana. In January 1825 Owen used a portion of his own funds to purchase an existing town of 180 buildings and several thousand acres of land along the Wabash River in Indiana. George Rapp's Harmony Society, the religious group that owned the property and had founded the communal village of Harmony (or Harmonie) on the site in 1814, decided in 1824 to relocate to Pennsylvania. Owen renamed it New Harmony and made the village his preliminary model for a Utopian community. Owen sought support for his socialist vision among American thinkers, reformers, intellectuals and public statesmen. On 25 February and 7 March 1825, Owen gave addresses in the U.S. House of Representatives to the U.S. Congress and others in the US government, outlining his vision for the Utopian community at New Harmony, and his socialist beliefs. The audience for his ideas included three former U.S. presidents – John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison) – the outgoing US President James Monroe, and the President-elect, John Quincy Adams. His meetings were perhaps the first discussions of socialism in the Americas; they were certainly a big step towards discussion of it in the United States. Owenism, among the first socialist ideologies active in the United States, can be seen as an instigator of the later socialist movement. Owen convinced William Maclure, a wealthy Scottish scientist and philanthropist living in Philadelphia to join him at New Harmony and become his financial partner. Maclure's involvement went on to attract scientists, educators and artists such as Thomas Say, Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, and Madame Marie Duclos Fretageot. These helped to turn the New Harmony community into a centre for educational reform, scientific research and artistic expression. Although Owen sought to build a "Village of Unity and Mutual Cooperation" south of the town, his grand plan was never fully realised and he returned to Britain to continue his work. During his long absences from New Harmony, Owen left the experiment under the day-to-day management of his sons, Robert Dale Owen and William Owen, and his business partner, Maclure. However, New Harmony proved to be an economic failure, lasting about two years, although it had attracted over a thousand residents by the end of its first year. The socialistic society was dissolved in 1827, but many of its scientists, educators, artists and other inhabitants, including Owen's four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale, and Richard Dale Owen, and his daughter Jane Dale Owen Fauntleroy, remained at New Harmony after the experiment ended. Other experiments in the United States included communal settlements at Blue Spring, near Bloomington, Indiana, at Yellow Springs, Ohio, and at Forestville Commonwealth at Earlton, New York, as well as other projects in New York, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. Nearly all of these had ended before New Harmony was dissolved in April 1827. Owen's Utopian communities attracted a mix of people, many with the highest aims. They included vagrants, adventurers and other reform-minded enthusiasts. In the words of Owen's son David Dale Owen, they attracted "a heterogeneous collection of Radicals", "enthusiastic devotees to principle," and "honest latitudinarians, and lazy theorists," with "a sprinkling of unprincipled sharpers thrown in." Josiah Warren, a participant at New Harmony, asserted that it was doomed to failure for lack of individual sovereignty and personal property. In describing the community, Warren explained: "We had a world in miniature – we had enacted the French revolution over again with despairing hearts instead of corpses as a result.... It appeared that it was nature's own inherent law of diversity that had conquered us... our 'united interests' were directly at war with the individualities of persons and circumstances and the instinct of self-preservation...." Warren's observations on the reasons for the community's failure led to the development of American individualist anarchism, of which he was its original theorist. Some historians have traced the demise of New Harmony to serial disagreements among its members. Social experiments also began in Scotland in 1825, when Abram Combe, an Owenite, attempted a utopian experiment at Orbiston, near Glasgow, but this failed after about two years. In the 1830s, additional experiments in socialistic cooperatives were made in Ireland and Britain, the most important being at Ralahine, established in 1831 in County Clare, Ireland, and at Tytherley, begun in 1839 in Hampshire, England. The former proved a remarkable success for three-and-a-half years until the proprietor, having ruined himself by gambling, had to sell his interest. Tytherley, known as Harmony Hall or Queenwood College, was designed by the architect Joseph Hansom. This also failed. Another social experiment, Manea Colony in the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, launched in the late 1830s by William Hodson, likewise an Owenite, but it failed in a couple of years and Hodson emigrated to the United States. The Manea Colony site has been excavated by Cambridge Archaeology Unit (CAU) based at the University of Cambridge. Return to Britain Although Owen made further brief visits to the United States, London became his permanent home and the centre of his work in 1828. After extended friction with William Allen and some other business partners, Owen relinquished all connections with New Lanark. He is often quoted in a comment by Allen at the time, "All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer". Having invested most of his fortune in the failed New Harmony communal experiment, Owen was no longer a wealthy capitalist. However, he remained the head of a vigorous propaganda effort to promote industrial equality, free education for children and adequate living conditions in factory towns, while delivering lectures in Europe and publishing a weekly newspaper to gain support for his ideas. In 1832 Owen opened the National Equitable Labour Exchange system, a time-based currency in which the exchange of goods was effected by means of labour notes; this system superseded the usual means of exchange and middlemen. The London exchange continued until 1833, a Birmingham branch operating for just a few months until July 1833. Owen also became involved in trade unionism, briefly leading the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union (GNCTU) before its collapse in 1834. Socialism first became current in British terminology in discussions of the Association of all Classes of all Nations, which Owen formed in 1835 and served as its initial leader. Owen's secular views also gained enough influence among the working classes to cause the Westminster Review to comment in 1839 that his principles were the creed of many of them. However, by 1846, the only lasting result of Owen's agitation for social change, carried on through public meetings, pamphlets, periodicals, and occasional treatises, remained the Co-operative movement, and for a time even that seemed to have collapsed. Role in spiritualism In 1817, Owen publicly claimed that all religions were false. In 1854, aged 83, Owen converted to spiritualism after a series of sittings with Maria B. Hayden, an American medium credited with introducing spiritualism to England. He made a public profession of his new faith in his publication The Rational Quarterly Review and in a pamphlet titled The future of the Human race; or great glorious and future revolution to be effected through the agency of departed spirits of good and superior men and women. Owen claimed to have had medium contact with spirits of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and others. He explained that the purpose of these was to change "the present, false, disunited and miserable state of human existence, for a true, united and happy state... to prepare the world for universal peace, and to infuse into all the spirit of charity, forbearance and love." Spiritualists claimed after Owen's death that his spirit had dictated to the medium Emma Hardinge Britten in 1871 the "Seven Principles of Spiritualism", used by their National Union as "the basis of its religious philosophy". Death and legacy As Owen grew older and more radical in his views, his influence began to decline. Owen published his memoirs, The Life of Robert Owen, in 1857, a year before his death. Although he had spent most of his life in England and Scotland, Owen returned to his native town of Newtown at the end of his life. He died there on 17 November 1858 and was buried there on 21 November. He died penniless apart from an annual income drawn from a trust established by his sons in 1844. Owen was a reformer, philanthropist, community builder, and spiritualist who spent his life seeking to improve the lives of others. An advocate of the working class, he improved working conditions for factory workers, which he demonstrated at New Lanark, Scotland, became a leader in trade unionism, promoted social equality through his experimental Utopian communities, and supported the passage of child labour laws and free education for children. In these reforms he was ahead of his time. He envisioned a communal society that others could consider and apply as they wished. In Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race (1849), he went on to say that character is formed by a combination of Nature or God and the circumstances of the individual's experience. Citing beneficial results at New Lanark, Scotland, during 30 years of work there, Owen concluded that a person's "character is not made by, but for the individual," and that nature and society are responsible for each person's character and conduct. Owen's agitation for social change, along with the work of the Owenites and of his own children, helped to bring lasting social reforms in women's and workers' rights, establish free public libraries and museums, child care and public, co-educational schools, and pre-Marxian communism, and develop the Co-operative and trade union movements. New Harmony, Indiana, and New Lanark, Scotland, two towns with which he is closely associated, remain as reminders of his efforts. Owen's legacy of public service continued with his four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale, and Richard Dale, and his daughter, Jane, who followed him to America to live at New Harmony, Indiana: Robert Dale Owen (1801–1877), an able exponent of his father's doctrines, managed the New Harmony community after his father returned to Britain in 1825. He wrote articles and co-edited with Frances Wright the New-Harmony Gazette in the late 1820s in Indiana and the Free Enquirer in the 1830s in New York City. Owen returned to New Harmony in 1833 and became active in Indiana politics. He was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives (1836–1839 and 1851–1853) and U.S. House of Representatives (1843–1847), and was appointed chargé d'affaires in Naples in 1853–1858. While serving as a member of Congress, he drafted and helped to secure passage of a bill founding the Smithsonian Institution in 1846. He was elected a delegate to the Indiana Constitutional Convention in 1850, and argued in support of widows and married women's property and divorce rights. He also favoured legislation for Indiana's tax-supported public school system. Like his father, he believed in spiritualism, authoring two books on the subject: Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World (1859) and The Debatable Land Between this World and the Next (1872). William Owen (1802–1842) moved to the United States with his father in 1824. His business skill, notably his knowledge of cotton-goods manufacturing, allowed him to remain at New Harmony after his father returned to Scotland, and serve as adviser to the community. He organised New Harmony's Thespian Society in 1827, but died of unknown causes at the age of 40. Jane Dale Owen Fauntleroy (1805–1861) arrived in the United States in 1833 and settled in New Harmony. She was a musician and educator who set up a school in her home. In 1835 she married Robert Henry Fauntleroy, a civil engineer from Virginia living at New Harmony. David Dale Owen (1807–1860) moved to the United States in 1827 and resided at New Harmony for several years. He trained as a geologist and natural scientist and earned a medical degree. He was appointed a United States geologist in 1839. His work included geological surveys in the Midwest, more specifically the states of Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas, as well as Minnesota Territory. His brother Richard succeeded him as state geologist of Indiana. Richard Dale Owen (1810–1890) emigrated to the United States in 1827 and joined his siblings at New Harmony. He fought in the Mexican–American War in 1847, taught natural science at Western Military Institute in Tennessee in 1849–1859, and earned a medical degree in 1858. During the American Civil War he was a colonel in the Union army and served as a commandant of Camp Morton, a prisoner-of-war camp for Confederate soldiers at Indianapolis, Indiana. After the war, Owen served as Indiana's second state geologist. In addition, he was a professor at Indiana University and chaired its natural science department in 1864–1879. He helped plan Purdue University and was appointed its first president in 1872–1874, but resigned before its classes began and resumed teaching at Indiana University. He spent his retirement years on research and writing. Honours and tributes The Co-operative Movement erected a monument to Robert Owen in 1902 at his burial site in Newtown, Montgomeryshire. The Welsh people donated a bust of Owen by Welsh sculptor Sir William Goscombe John to the International Labour Office library in Geneva, Switzerland. Selected published works A New View of Society: Or, Essays on the Formation of Human Character, and the Application of the Principle to Practice (London, 1813). Retitled, A New View of Society: Or, Essays on the Formation of Human Character Preparatory to the Development of a Plan for Gradually Ameliorating the Condition of Mankind, for second edition, 1816 Observations on the Effect of the Manufacturing System. London, 1815 Report to the Committee of the Association for the Relief of the Manufacturing and Labouring Poor (1817) Two Memorials on Behalf of the Working Classes (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 181 An Address to the Master Manufacturers of Great Britain: On the Present Existing Evils in the Manufacturing System (Bolton, 1819) Report to the County of Lanark of a Plan for relieving Public Distress (Glasgow: Glasgow University Press, 1821) An Explanation of the Cause of Distress which pervades the civilised parts of the world (London and Paris, 1823) An Address to All Classes in the State. London, 1832 The Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race. London, 1849 Collected works: A New View of Society and Other Writings, introduction by G. D. H. Cole. London and New York: J. M. Dent & Sons, E. P. Dutton and Co., 1927 A New View of Society and Other Writings, G. Claeys, ed. London and New York: Penguin Books, 1991 The Selected Works of Robert Owen, G. Claeys, ed., 4 vols. London: Pickering and Chatto, 1993 Archival collections: Robert Owen Collection, National Co-operative Archive, United Kingdom. New Harmony, Indiana, Collection, 1814–1884, 1920, 1964, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, Indiana, United States New Harmony Series III Collection, Workingmen's Institute, New Harmony, Indiana, United States Owen family collection, 1826–1967, bulk 1830–1890, Indiana University Archives, Bloomington, Indiana, United States See also Cincinnati Time Store José María Arizmendiarrieta Labour voucher List of Owenite communities in the United States Owenstown Owenism William King References Bibliography (online version) Further reading Biographies of Owen A. J. Booth, Robert Owen, the Founder of Socialism in England (London, 1869) G. D. H. Cole, Life of Robert Owen. London, Ernest Benn Ltd., 1925; second edition Macmillan, 1930 Lloyd Jones. The Life, Times, and Labours of Robert Owen. London, 1889 A. L. Morton, The Life and Ideas of Robert Owen. New York, International Publishers, 1969 W. H. Oliver, "Robert Owen and the English Working-Class Movements", History Today (November 1958) 8–11, pp. 787–796 F. A. Packard, Life of Robert Owen. Philadelphia: Ashmead & Evans, 1866 Frank Podmore, Robert Owen: A Biography. London: Hutchinson and Company, 1906 David Santilli, Life of the Mill Man. London, B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1987 William Lucas Sargant, Robert Owen and his social philosophy . London, 1860 Richard Tames, Radicals, Railways & Reform. London, B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1986 Other works about Owen Arthur Bestor, Backwoods Utopias. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950, 2nd edition, 1970 John Butt (ed). Robert Owen: Aspects of his Life and Work. Humanities Press, 1971 Gregory Claeys, Citizens and Saints. Politics and Anti-Politics in Early British Socialism. Cambridge University Press, 1989 Gregory Claeys, Machinery, Money and the Millennium: From Moral Economy to Socialism 1815–1860. Princeton University Press, 1987 R. E. Davies, The Life of Robert Owen, Philanthropist and Social Reformer, An Appreciation. Robert Sutton, 1907 R. E. Davis and F. J. O'Hagan, Robert Owen. London: Continuum Press, 2010 E. Dolleans, Robert Owen. Paris, 1905 I. Donnachie, Robert Owen. Owen of New Lanark and New Harmony. 2000 Auguste Marie Fabre, Un Socialiste Pratique, Robert Owen. Nìmes, Bureaux de l'Émancipation, 1896 John F. C. Harrison, Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America: Quest for the New Moral World. New York, 1969 Alexander Herzen, My Past and Thoughts (University of California Press, 1982). (One chapter is devoted to Owen.) G. J. Holyoake, The History of Co-operation in England: Its Literature and Its Advocates V. 1. London, 1906 G. J. Holyoake, The History of Co-operation in England: Its Literature and Its Advocates V. 2. London, 1906 The National Library of Wales, A Bibliography of Robert Owen, The Socialist. 1914 H. Simon, Robert Owen: Sein Leben und Seine Bedeutung für die Gegenwart. Jena, 1905 O. Siméon, Robert Owen's Experiment at New Lanark. From Paternalism to Socialism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017 External links Essays by Owen at the Marxists Internet Archive Brief biography at the New Lanark World Heritage Site The Robert Owen Museum, Newtown, Wales Video of Owen's wool mill Brief biography at Cotton Times "Robert Owen (1771-1858) social reformer, founder of New Harmony", University of Evansville, Indiana "Robert Owen and the Co-operative movement" Brief biography at The History Guide Brief biography at age-of-the-sage.org Heaven On Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism at PBS {dead link 2021-02-22} 1771 births 1858 deaths Cooperative organizers Founders of utopian communities People from Newtown, Powys Owenites Utopian socialists Welsh agnostics Welsh humanists 19th-century Welsh businesspeople 18th-century Welsh businesspeople Welsh business theorists Welsh philanthropists Welsh socialists British reformers British social reformers Socialist economists

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When did he stop being a manager of the textile mill?

When did Robert Owen stop being a manager of the New Lanark textile mill?

Robert Owen

In July 1799 Owen and his partners bought the New Lanark mill from David Dale, and Owen became the New Lanark mill's manager in January 1800. Encouraged by his success in the management of cotton mills in Manchester, Owen hoped to conduct the New Lanark mill on higher principles than purely commercial ones. David Dale and Richard Arkwright had established the substantial mill at New Lanark in 1785. With its water power provided by the falls of the River Clyde, the cotton-spinning operation became one of Britain's largest. About 2,000 individuals were associations with the mill; 500 of them were children who were brought to the mill at the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dale, who was known for his benevolence, treated the children well, but the general condition of New Lanark's residents was unsatisfactory. Over the years, Dale and his son-in-law, Owen, worked to improve the factory workers' lives. Many of the workers were in the lowest levels of the population; theft, drunkenness, and other vices were common; education and sanitation were neglected; and most families lived in one room. The respectable country people refused to submit to the long hours and demoralising drudgery of the mills. Until a series of Truck Acts (1831-1887) required employees to be paid in common currency, many employers operated the truck system that paid workers in total or in part with tokens. The tokens had no monetary value outside the mill owner's "truck shop," where the owners could supply shoddy goods and charge top prices. In contrast to other employers, Owen's store offered goods at prices slightly above their wholesale cost. He also passed on the savings from the bulk purchase of goods to his workers, and placed the sale of alcohol under strict supervision. These principles became the basis for the cooperative shops in Britain, which continue in an altered form to trade today. CANNOTANSWER

1785.

Robert Owen (; 14 May 1771 – 17 November 1858) was a Welsh textile manufacturer, philanthropist and social reformer, and a founder of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement. He strove to improve factory working conditions, promoted experimental socialistic communities, and sought a more collective approach to child rearing, including government control of education. He gained wealth in the early 1800s from a textile mill at New Lanark, Scotland. Having trained as a draper in Stamford, Lincolnshire he worked in London before relocating aged 18 to Manchester and textile manufacturing. In 1824, he moved to America and put most of his fortune in an experimental socialistic community at New Harmony, Indiana, as a preliminary for his Utopian society. It lasted about two years. Other Owenite communities also failed, and in 1828 Owen returned to London, where he continued to champion the working class, lead in developing cooperatives and the trade union movement, and support child labour legislation and free co-educational schools. Early life and education Robert Owen was born in Newtown, a small market town in Montgomeryshire, Wales, on 14 May 1771, to Anne (Williams) and Robert Owen. His father was a saddler, ironmonger and local postmaster; his mother was the daughter of a Newtown farming family. Young Robert was the sixth of the family's seven children, two of whom died at a young age. His surviving siblings were William, Anne, John and Richard. Owen received little formal education, but he was an avid reader. He left school at the age of ten to be apprenticed to a Stamford, Lincolnshire, draper for four years. He also worked in London drapery shops in his teens. At about the age of 18, Owen moved to Manchester, where he spent the next twelve years of his life, employed initially at Satterfield's Drapery in Saint Ann's Square. While in Manchester, Owen borrowed £100 from his brother William, so as to enter into a partnership to make spinning mules, a new invention for spinning cotton thread, but exchanged his business share within a few months for six spinning mules that he worked in rented factory space. In 1792, when Owen was about 21 years old, mill-owner Peter Drinkwater made him manager of the Piccadilly Mill at Manchester. However, after two years with Drinkwater, Owen voluntarily gave up a contracted promise of partnership, left the company, and went into partnership with other entrepreneurs to establish and later manage the Chorlton Twist Mills in Chorlton-on-Medlock. By the early 1790s, Owen's entrepreneurial spirit, management skills and progressive moral views were emerging. In 1793, he was elected a member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, where the ideas of the Enlightenment were discussed. He also became a committee member of the Manchester Board of Health, instigated principally by Thomas Percival to press for improvements in the health and working conditions of factory workers. Marriage and family On a visit to Scotland, Owen met and fell in love with Ann (or Anne) Caroline Dale, daughter of David Dale, a Glasgow philanthropist and the proprietor of the large New Lanark Mills. After their marriage on 30 September 1799, the Owens set up home in New Lanark, but later moved to Braxfield, Scotland. Robert and Caroline Owen had eight children, the first of whom died in infancy. Their seven survivors were four sons and three daughters: Robert Dale (1801–1877), William (1802–1842), Ann (or Anne) Caroline (1805–1831), Jane Dale (1805–1861), David Dale (1807–1860), Richard Dale (1809–1890) and Mary (1810–1832). Owen's four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale and Richard, and his daughter Jane Dale, followed their father to the United States, becoming US citizens and permanent residents in New Harmony, Indiana. Owen's wife Caroline and two of their daughters, Anne Caroline and Mary, remained in Britain, where they died in the 1830s. New Lanark mill In July 1799 Owen and his partners bought the New Lanark mill from David Dale, and Owen became its manager in January 1800. Encouraged by his management success in Manchester, Owen hoped to conduct the New Lanark mill on higher principles than purely commercial ones. It had been established in 1785 by David Dale and Richard Arkwright. Its water power provided by the falls of the River Clyde turned its cotton-spinning operation into one of Britain's largest. About 2,000 individuals were involved, 500 of them children brought to the mill at the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dale, known for his benevolence, treated the children well, but the general condition of New Lanark residents was unsatisfactory, despite efforts by Dale and his son-in-law Owen to improve their workers' lives. Many of the workers were from the lowest social levels: theft, drunkenness and other vices were common and education and sanitation neglected. Most families lived in one room. More respected people rejected the long hours and demoralising drudgery of the mills. Until a series of Truck Acts (1831–1887) required employers to pay their employees in common currency, many operated a truck system, paying workers wholly or in part with tokens that had no monetary value outside the mill owner's "truck shop", which charged high prices for shoddy goods. Unlike others, Owen's truck store offered goods at prices only slightly above their wholesale cost, passing on the savings from bulk purchases to his customers and placing alcohol sales under strict supervision. These principles became the basis for Britain's Co-operative shops, some of which continue trading in altered forms to this day. Philosophy and influence Owen tested his social and economic ideas at New Lanark, where he won his workers' confidence and continued to have success through the improved efficiency at the mill. The community also earned an international reputation. Social reformers, statesmen and royalty, including the future Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, visited New Lanark to study its methods. The opinions of many such visitors were favourable. Owen's biggest success was in support of youth education and early child care. As a pioneer in Britain, notably Scotland, Owen provided an alternative to the "normal authoritarian approach to child education". The manners of children brought up under his system were more graceful, genial and unconstrained; health, plenty and contentment prevailed; drunkenness was almost unknown and illegitimacy extremely rare. Owen's relations with his workers remained excellent and operations at the mill proceeded in a smooth, regular and commercially successful way. However, some of Owen's schemes displeased his partners, forcing him to arrange for other investors to buy his share of the business in 1813, for the equivalent of US$800,000. The new investors, who included Jeremy Bentham and the well-known Quaker William Allen, were content to accept a £5,000 return on their capital. The ownership change also provided Owen with a chance to broaden his philanthropy, advocating improvements in workers' rights and child labour laws, and free education for children. In 1813 Owen authored and published A New View of Society, or Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character, the first of four essays he wrote to explain the principles behind his philosophy of socialistic reform. In this he writes: Owen had originally been a follower of the classical liberal, utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, who believed that free markets, in particular the right of workers to move and choose their employers, would release workers from the excessive power of capitalists. However, Owen developed his own, pro-socialist outlook. In addition, Owen as a deist, criticised organised religion, including the Church of England, and developed a belief system of his own. Owen felt that human character is formed by conditions over which individuals have no control. Thus individuals could not be praised or blamed for their behaviour or situation in life. This principle led Owen to conclude that the correct formation of people's characters called for placing them under proper environmental influences – physical, moral and social – from their earliest years. These notions of inherent irresponsibility in humans and the effect of early influences on an individual's character formed the basis of Owen's system of education and social reform. Relying on his own observations, experiences and thoughts, Owen saw his view of human nature as original and "the most basic and necessary constituent in an evolving science of society". His philosophy was influenced by Sir Isaac Newton's views on natural law, and his views resembled those of Plato, Denis Diderot, Claude Adrien Helvétius, William Godwin, John Locke, James Mill, and Jeremy Bentham, among others. Owen did not have the direct influence of Enlightenment philosophers. Owen's work at New Lanark continued to have significance in Britain and continental Europe. He was a "pioneer in factory reform, the father of distributive cooperation, and the founder of nursery schools." His schemes for educating his workers included opening an Institute for the Formation of Character at New Lanark in 1818. This and other programmes at New Lanark provided free education from infancy to adulthood. In addition, he zealously supported factory legislation that culminated in the Cotton Mills and Factories Act of 1819. Owen also had interviews and communications with leading members of the British government, including its premier, Robert Banks Jenkinson, Lord Liverpool. He also met many of the rulers and leading statesmen of Europe. Owen adopted new principles to raise the standard of goods his workers produced. A cube with faces painted in different colours was installed above each machinist's workplace. The colour of the face showed to all who saw it the quality and quantity of goods the worker completed. The intention was to encourage workers to do their best. Although it was no great incentive in itself, conditions at New Lanark for workers and their families were idyllic for the time. Eight-hour day Owen raised the demand for an eight-hour day in 1810 and set about instituting the policy at New Lanark. By 1817 he had formulated the goal of an eight-hour working day with the slogan "eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest". Models for socialism (1817) Owen embraced socialism in 1817, a turning point in his life, in which he pursued a "New View of Society". He outlined his position in a report to the committee of the House of Commons on the country's Poor Laws. As misery and trade stagnation after the Napoleonic Wars drew national attention, the government called on Owen for advice on how to alleviate the industrial concerns. Although he ascribed the immediate misery to the wars, he saw as the underlying cause competition of human labour with machinery, and recommended setting up self-sufficient communities. Owen proposed that communities of some 1,200 people should settle on land from , all living in one building with a public kitchen and dining halls. (The proposed size may have been influenced by the size of the village of New Lanark.) Owen also proposed that each family have its own private apartments and the responsibility for the care of its children up to the age of three. Thereafter children would be raised by the community, but their parents would have access to them at mealtimes and on other occasions. Owen further suggested that such communities be established by individuals, parishes, counties, or other governmental units. In each case there would be effective supervision by qualified persons. Work and enjoyment of its results should be experienced communally. Owen believed his idea would be the best way to reorganise society in general, and called his vision the "New Moral World". Owen's utopian model changed little in his lifetime. His developed model envisaged an association of 500–3,000 people as the optimum for a working community. While mainly agricultural, it would possess the best machinery, offer varied employment, and as far as possible be self-contained. Owen went on to explain that as such communities proliferated, "unions of them federatively united shall be formed in circle of tens, hundreds and thousands", linked by common interest. Arguments against Owen and his answers Owen always tried to spread his ideas to wider communities. First, he started publishing his ideas in newspapers. Owen then sent such newspapers widely to parliamentarians, politicians and other important people. These articles spurred the first negative reactions to his ideas. Opponents thought that Owen's plans would result in an uncontrollable increase in population and poverty. The other main criticism was that Owen's plan and the common use of everything would essentially make the country one large workshop. William Hone claimed that Owen saw people as unravelled plants from their roots, and that he wanted to plant them in rectangles. Another commentator accused Owen of wanting to imprison people in workshops like barracks and eradicate their personal independence. Owen's opponents had begun to regard him as an enemy of religion. His influence in ruling circles, which he had hoped would help him to accomplish his "plan", started diminishing and rumours of his lack of religious conviction spread. Owen believed that without a change in the character of individuals and the environment in which they live, they would remain hostile to those around them. As long as such a social order continued, the positive aspects of Christianity could never be put into practice. Owen also considered it necessary to give people more freedom in order to improve the situation of the poor and working classes. Unless people were better educated, unless they gained more useful information and had permanent employment, they were a danger to the security of the state when given more freedom than the British Constitution did at the time. Without making any changes in the national institutions, he believed that even reorganizing the working classes would bring great benefits. So he opposed the views of radicals seeking to change in the public mentality by expanding voting rights. Other notable critics of Owen include Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who viewed his work as a precursor to their own. They recognized in Owen the important understanding, developed by Marx in Capital, that it is the working class that are responsible for creating the unparalleled wealth in capitalist societies. Similarly, Owen also recognized that under the existing economic system, the working class did not automatically receive the benefits of that newly created wealth. Marx and Engels, differentiated, however, their own scientific conception of socialism from Owen's societies. They argued that Owen's plan, to create a model socialist utopia to coexist with contemporary society and prove its superiority over time, was insufficient to create a new society. In their view, Owen's "socialism" was utopian, since to Owen and the other utopian socialists "[s]ocialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own power." Marx and Engels believed that the overthrow of the capitalist system could only occur once the working class was organized into a revolutionary socialist political party of the working class that was completely independent of all capitalist class influence whereas the utopians sought the assistance and the co-operation of the capitalists in order to achieve the transition to socialism. Community experiments To test the viability of his ideas for self-sufficient working communities, Owen began experimenting in communal living in America in 1825. Among the most famous efforts was the one set up at New Harmony, Indiana. Of the 130 identifiable communitarian experiments in America before the American Civil War, at least 16 were Owenite or Owenite-influenced. New Harmony was Owen's earliest and most ambitious of these. Owen and his son William sailed to America in October 1824 to establish an experimental community in Indiana. In January 1825 Owen used a portion of his own funds to purchase an existing town of 180 buildings and several thousand acres of land along the Wabash River in Indiana. George Rapp's Harmony Society, the religious group that owned the property and had founded the communal village of Harmony (or Harmonie) on the site in 1814, decided in 1824 to relocate to Pennsylvania. Owen renamed it New Harmony and made the village his preliminary model for a Utopian community. Owen sought support for his socialist vision among American thinkers, reformers, intellectuals and public statesmen. On 25 February and 7 March 1825, Owen gave addresses in the U.S. House of Representatives to the U.S. Congress and others in the US government, outlining his vision for the Utopian community at New Harmony, and his socialist beliefs. The audience for his ideas included three former U.S. presidents – John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison) – the outgoing US President James Monroe, and the President-elect, John Quincy Adams. His meetings were perhaps the first discussions of socialism in the Americas; they were certainly a big step towards discussion of it in the United States. Owenism, among the first socialist ideologies active in the United States, can be seen as an instigator of the later socialist movement. Owen convinced William Maclure, a wealthy Scottish scientist and philanthropist living in Philadelphia to join him at New Harmony and become his financial partner. Maclure's involvement went on to attract scientists, educators and artists such as Thomas Say, Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, and Madame Marie Duclos Fretageot. These helped to turn the New Harmony community into a centre for educational reform, scientific research and artistic expression. Although Owen sought to build a "Village of Unity and Mutual Cooperation" south of the town, his grand plan was never fully realised and he returned to Britain to continue his work. During his long absences from New Harmony, Owen left the experiment under the day-to-day management of his sons, Robert Dale Owen and William Owen, and his business partner, Maclure. However, New Harmony proved to be an economic failure, lasting about two years, although it had attracted over a thousand residents by the end of its first year. The socialistic society was dissolved in 1827, but many of its scientists, educators, artists and other inhabitants, including Owen's four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale, and Richard Dale Owen, and his daughter Jane Dale Owen Fauntleroy, remained at New Harmony after the experiment ended. Other experiments in the United States included communal settlements at Blue Spring, near Bloomington, Indiana, at Yellow Springs, Ohio, and at Forestville Commonwealth at Earlton, New York, as well as other projects in New York, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. Nearly all of these had ended before New Harmony was dissolved in April 1827. Owen's Utopian communities attracted a mix of people, many with the highest aims. They included vagrants, adventurers and other reform-minded enthusiasts. In the words of Owen's son David Dale Owen, they attracted "a heterogeneous collection of Radicals", "enthusiastic devotees to principle," and "honest latitudinarians, and lazy theorists," with "a sprinkling of unprincipled sharpers thrown in." Josiah Warren, a participant at New Harmony, asserted that it was doomed to failure for lack of individual sovereignty and personal property. In describing the community, Warren explained: "We had a world in miniature – we had enacted the French revolution over again with despairing hearts instead of corpses as a result.... It appeared that it was nature's own inherent law of diversity that had conquered us... our 'united interests' were directly at war with the individualities of persons and circumstances and the instinct of self-preservation...." Warren's observations on the reasons for the community's failure led to the development of American individualist anarchism, of which he was its original theorist. Some historians have traced the demise of New Harmony to serial disagreements among its members. Social experiments also began in Scotland in 1825, when Abram Combe, an Owenite, attempted a utopian experiment at Orbiston, near Glasgow, but this failed after about two years. In the 1830s, additional experiments in socialistic cooperatives were made in Ireland and Britain, the most important being at Ralahine, established in 1831 in County Clare, Ireland, and at Tytherley, begun in 1839 in Hampshire, England. The former proved a remarkable success for three-and-a-half years until the proprietor, having ruined himself by gambling, had to sell his interest. Tytherley, known as Harmony Hall or Queenwood College, was designed by the architect Joseph Hansom. This also failed. Another social experiment, Manea Colony in the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, launched in the late 1830s by William Hodson, likewise an Owenite, but it failed in a couple of years and Hodson emigrated to the United States. The Manea Colony site has been excavated by Cambridge Archaeology Unit (CAU) based at the University of Cambridge. Return to Britain Although Owen made further brief visits to the United States, London became his permanent home and the centre of his work in 1828. After extended friction with William Allen and some other business partners, Owen relinquished all connections with New Lanark. He is often quoted in a comment by Allen at the time, "All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer". Having invested most of his fortune in the failed New Harmony communal experiment, Owen was no longer a wealthy capitalist. However, he remained the head of a vigorous propaganda effort to promote industrial equality, free education for children and adequate living conditions in factory towns, while delivering lectures in Europe and publishing a weekly newspaper to gain support for his ideas. In 1832 Owen opened the National Equitable Labour Exchange system, a time-based currency in which the exchange of goods was effected by means of labour notes; this system superseded the usual means of exchange and middlemen. The London exchange continued until 1833, a Birmingham branch operating for just a few months until July 1833. Owen also became involved in trade unionism, briefly leading the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union (GNCTU) before its collapse in 1834. Socialism first became current in British terminology in discussions of the Association of all Classes of all Nations, which Owen formed in 1835 and served as its initial leader. Owen's secular views also gained enough influence among the working classes to cause the Westminster Review to comment in 1839 that his principles were the creed of many of them. However, by 1846, the only lasting result of Owen's agitation for social change, carried on through public meetings, pamphlets, periodicals, and occasional treatises, remained the Co-operative movement, and for a time even that seemed to have collapsed. Role in spiritualism In 1817, Owen publicly claimed that all religions were false. In 1854, aged 83, Owen converted to spiritualism after a series of sittings with Maria B. Hayden, an American medium credited with introducing spiritualism to England. He made a public profession of his new faith in his publication The Rational Quarterly Review and in a pamphlet titled The future of the Human race; or great glorious and future revolution to be effected through the agency of departed spirits of good and superior men and women. Owen claimed to have had medium contact with spirits of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and others. He explained that the purpose of these was to change "the present, false, disunited and miserable state of human existence, for a true, united and happy state... to prepare the world for universal peace, and to infuse into all the spirit of charity, forbearance and love." Spiritualists claimed after Owen's death that his spirit had dictated to the medium Emma Hardinge Britten in 1871 the "Seven Principles of Spiritualism", used by their National Union as "the basis of its religious philosophy". Death and legacy As Owen grew older and more radical in his views, his influence began to decline. Owen published his memoirs, The Life of Robert Owen, in 1857, a year before his death. Although he had spent most of his life in England and Scotland, Owen returned to his native town of Newtown at the end of his life. He died there on 17 November 1858 and was buried there on 21 November. He died penniless apart from an annual income drawn from a trust established by his sons in 1844. Owen was a reformer, philanthropist, community builder, and spiritualist who spent his life seeking to improve the lives of others. An advocate of the working class, he improved working conditions for factory workers, which he demonstrated at New Lanark, Scotland, became a leader in trade unionism, promoted social equality through his experimental Utopian communities, and supported the passage of child labour laws and free education for children. In these reforms he was ahead of his time. He envisioned a communal society that others could consider and apply as they wished. In Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race (1849), he went on to say that character is formed by a combination of Nature or God and the circumstances of the individual's experience. Citing beneficial results at New Lanark, Scotland, during 30 years of work there, Owen concluded that a person's "character is not made by, but for the individual," and that nature and society are responsible for each person's character and conduct. Owen's agitation for social change, along with the work of the Owenites and of his own children, helped to bring lasting social reforms in women's and workers' rights, establish free public libraries and museums, child care and public, co-educational schools, and pre-Marxian communism, and develop the Co-operative and trade union movements. New Harmony, Indiana, and New Lanark, Scotland, two towns with which he is closely associated, remain as reminders of his efforts. Owen's legacy of public service continued with his four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale, and Richard Dale, and his daughter, Jane, who followed him to America to live at New Harmony, Indiana: Robert Dale Owen (1801–1877), an able exponent of his father's doctrines, managed the New Harmony community after his father returned to Britain in 1825. He wrote articles and co-edited with Frances Wright the New-Harmony Gazette in the late 1820s in Indiana and the Free Enquirer in the 1830s in New York City. Owen returned to New Harmony in 1833 and became active in Indiana politics. He was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives (1836–1839 and 1851–1853) and U.S. House of Representatives (1843–1847), and was appointed chargé d'affaires in Naples in 1853–1858. While serving as a member of Congress, he drafted and helped to secure passage of a bill founding the Smithsonian Institution in 1846. He was elected a delegate to the Indiana Constitutional Convention in 1850, and argued in support of widows and married women's property and divorce rights. He also favoured legislation for Indiana's tax-supported public school system. Like his father, he believed in spiritualism, authoring two books on the subject: Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World (1859) and The Debatable Land Between this World and the Next (1872). William Owen (1802–1842) moved to the United States with his father in 1824. His business skill, notably his knowledge of cotton-goods manufacturing, allowed him to remain at New Harmony after his father returned to Scotland, and serve as adviser to the community. He organised New Harmony's Thespian Society in 1827, but died of unknown causes at the age of 40. Jane Dale Owen Fauntleroy (1805–1861) arrived in the United States in 1833 and settled in New Harmony. She was a musician and educator who set up a school in her home. In 1835 she married Robert Henry Fauntleroy, a civil engineer from Virginia living at New Harmony. David Dale Owen (1807–1860) moved to the United States in 1827 and resided at New Harmony for several years. He trained as a geologist and natural scientist and earned a medical degree. He was appointed a United States geologist in 1839. His work included geological surveys in the Midwest, more specifically the states of Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas, as well as Minnesota Territory. His brother Richard succeeded him as state geologist of Indiana. Richard Dale Owen (1810–1890) emigrated to the United States in 1827 and joined his siblings at New Harmony. He fought in the Mexican–American War in 1847, taught natural science at Western Military Institute in Tennessee in 1849–1859, and earned a medical degree in 1858. During the American Civil War he was a colonel in the Union army and served as a commandant of Camp Morton, a prisoner-of-war camp for Confederate soldiers at Indianapolis, Indiana. After the war, Owen served as Indiana's second state geologist. In addition, he was a professor at Indiana University and chaired its natural science department in 1864–1879. He helped plan Purdue University and was appointed its first president in 1872–1874, but resigned before its classes began and resumed teaching at Indiana University. He spent his retirement years on research and writing. Honours and tributes The Co-operative Movement erected a monument to Robert Owen in 1902 at his burial site in Newtown, Montgomeryshire. The Welsh people donated a bust of Owen by Welsh sculptor Sir William Goscombe John to the International Labour Office library in Geneva, Switzerland. Selected published works A New View of Society: Or, Essays on the Formation of Human Character, and the Application of the Principle to Practice (London, 1813). Retitled, A New View of Society: Or, Essays on the Formation of Human Character Preparatory to the Development of a Plan for Gradually Ameliorating the Condition of Mankind, for second edition, 1816 Observations on the Effect of the Manufacturing System. London, 1815 Report to the Committee of the Association for the Relief of the Manufacturing and Labouring Poor (1817) Two Memorials on Behalf of the Working Classes (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 181 An Address to the Master Manufacturers of Great Britain: On the Present Existing Evils in the Manufacturing System (Bolton, 1819) Report to the County of Lanark of a Plan for relieving Public Distress (Glasgow: Glasgow University Press, 1821) An Explanation of the Cause of Distress which pervades the civilised parts of the world (London and Paris, 1823) An Address to All Classes in the State. London, 1832 The Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race. London, 1849 Collected works: A New View of Society and Other Writings, introduction by G. D. H. Cole. London and New York: J. M. Dent & Sons, E. P. Dutton and Co., 1927 A New View of Society and Other Writings, G. Claeys, ed. London and New York: Penguin Books, 1991 The Selected Works of Robert Owen, G. Claeys, ed., 4 vols. London: Pickering and Chatto, 1993 Archival collections: Robert Owen Collection, National Co-operative Archive, United Kingdom. New Harmony, Indiana, Collection, 1814–1884, 1920, 1964, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, Indiana, United States New Harmony Series III Collection, Workingmen's Institute, New Harmony, Indiana, United States Owen family collection, 1826–1967, bulk 1830–1890, Indiana University Archives, Bloomington, Indiana, United States See also Cincinnati Time Store José María Arizmendiarrieta Labour voucher List of Owenite communities in the United States Owenstown Owenism William King References Bibliography (online version) Further reading Biographies of Owen A. J. Booth, Robert Owen, the Founder of Socialism in England (London, 1869) G. D. H. Cole, Life of Robert Owen. London, Ernest Benn Ltd., 1925; second edition Macmillan, 1930 Lloyd Jones. The Life, Times, and Labours of Robert Owen. London, 1889 A. L. Morton, The Life and Ideas of Robert Owen. New York, International Publishers, 1969 W. H. Oliver, "Robert Owen and the English Working-Class Movements", History Today (November 1958) 8–11, pp. 787–796 F. A. Packard, Life of Robert Owen. Philadelphia: Ashmead & Evans, 1866 Frank Podmore, Robert Owen: A Biography. London: Hutchinson and Company, 1906 David Santilli, Life of the Mill Man. London, B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1987 William Lucas Sargant, Robert Owen and his social philosophy . London, 1860 Richard Tames, Radicals, Railways & Reform. London, B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1986 Other works about Owen Arthur Bestor, Backwoods Utopias. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950, 2nd edition, 1970 John Butt (ed). Robert Owen: Aspects of his Life and Work. Humanities Press, 1971 Gregory Claeys, Citizens and Saints. Politics and Anti-Politics in Early British Socialism. Cambridge University Press, 1989 Gregory Claeys, Machinery, Money and the Millennium: From Moral Economy to Socialism 1815–1860. Princeton University Press, 1987 R. E. Davies, The Life of Robert Owen, Philanthropist and Social Reformer, An Appreciation. Robert Sutton, 1907 R. E. Davis and F. J. O'Hagan, Robert Owen. London: Continuum Press, 2010 E. Dolleans, Robert Owen. Paris, 1905 I. Donnachie, Robert Owen. Owen of New Lanark and New Harmony. 2000 Auguste Marie Fabre, Un Socialiste Pratique, Robert Owen. Nìmes, Bureaux de l'Émancipation, 1896 John F. C. Harrison, Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America: Quest for the New Moral World. New York, 1969 Alexander Herzen, My Past and Thoughts (University of California Press, 1982). (One chapter is devoted to Owen.) G. J. Holyoake, The History of Co-operation in England: Its Literature and Its Advocates V. 1. London, 1906 G. J. Holyoake, The History of Co-operation in England: Its Literature and Its Advocates V. 2. London, 1906 The National Library of Wales, A Bibliography of Robert Owen, The Socialist. 1914 H. Simon, Robert Owen: Sein Leben und Seine Bedeutung für die Gegenwart. Jena, 1905 O. Siméon, Robert Owen's Experiment at New Lanark. From Paternalism to Socialism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017 External links Essays by Owen at the Marxists Internet Archive Brief biography at the New Lanark World Heritage Site The Robert Owen Museum, Newtown, Wales Video of Owen's wool mill Brief biography at Cotton Times "Robert Owen (1771-1858) social reformer, founder of New Harmony", University of Evansville, Indiana "Robert Owen and the Co-operative movement" Brief biography at The History Guide Brief biography at age-of-the-sage.org Heaven On Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism at PBS {dead link 2021-02-22} 1771 births 1858 deaths Cooperative organizers Founders of utopian communities People from Newtown, Powys Owenites Utopian socialists Welsh agnostics Welsh humanists 19th-century Welsh businesspeople 18th-century Welsh businesspeople Welsh business theorists Welsh philanthropists Welsh socialists British reformers British social reformers Socialist economists

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What was working in a textile mill like for Robert Owen?

What was working in a textile mill like for Robert Owen?

Robert Owen

In July 1799 Owen and his partners bought the New Lanark mill from David Dale, and Owen became the New Lanark mill's manager in January 1800. Encouraged by his success in the management of cotton mills in Manchester, Owen hoped to conduct the New Lanark mill on higher principles than purely commercial ones. David Dale and Richard Arkwright had established the substantial mill at New Lanark in 1785. With its water power provided by the falls of the River Clyde, the cotton-spinning operation became one of Britain's largest. About 2,000 individuals were associations with the mill; 500 of them were children who were brought to the mill at the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dale, who was known for his benevolence, treated the children well, but the general condition of New Lanark's residents was unsatisfactory. Over the years, Dale and his son-in-law, Owen, worked to improve the factory workers' lives. Many of the workers were in the lowest levels of the population; theft, drunkenness, and other vices were common; education and sanitation were neglected; and most families lived in one room. The respectable country people refused to submit to the long hours and demoralising drudgery of the mills. Until a series of Truck Acts (1831-1887) required employees to be paid in common currency, many employers operated the truck system that paid workers in total or in part with tokens. The tokens had no monetary value outside the mill owner's "truck shop," where the owners could supply shoddy goods and charge top prices. In contrast to other employers, Owen's store offered goods at prices slightly above their wholesale cost. He also passed on the savings from the bulk purchase of goods to his workers, and placed the sale of alcohol under strict supervision. These principles became the basis for the cooperative shops in Britain, which continue in an altered form to trade today. CANNOTANSWER

success in the management of cotton mills

Robert Owen (; 14 May 1771 – 17 November 1858) was a Welsh textile manufacturer, philanthropist and social reformer, and a founder of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement. He strove to improve factory working conditions, promoted experimental socialistic communities, and sought a more collective approach to child rearing, including government control of education. He gained wealth in the early 1800s from a textile mill at New Lanark, Scotland. Having trained as a draper in Stamford, Lincolnshire he worked in London before relocating aged 18 to Manchester and textile manufacturing. In 1824, he moved to America and put most of his fortune in an experimental socialistic community at New Harmony, Indiana, as a preliminary for his Utopian society. It lasted about two years. Other Owenite communities also failed, and in 1828 Owen returned to London, where he continued to champion the working class, lead in developing cooperatives and the trade union movement, and support child labour legislation and free co-educational schools. Early life and education Robert Owen was born in Newtown, a small market town in Montgomeryshire, Wales, on 14 May 1771, to Anne (Williams) and Robert Owen. His father was a saddler, ironmonger and local postmaster; his mother was the daughter of a Newtown farming family. Young Robert was the sixth of the family's seven children, two of whom died at a young age. His surviving siblings were William, Anne, John and Richard. Owen received little formal education, but he was an avid reader. He left school at the age of ten to be apprenticed to a Stamford, Lincolnshire, draper for four years. He also worked in London drapery shops in his teens. At about the age of 18, Owen moved to Manchester, where he spent the next twelve years of his life, employed initially at Satterfield's Drapery in Saint Ann's Square. While in Manchester, Owen borrowed £100 from his brother William, so as to enter into a partnership to make spinning mules, a new invention for spinning cotton thread, but exchanged his business share within a few months for six spinning mules that he worked in rented factory space. In 1792, when Owen was about 21 years old, mill-owner Peter Drinkwater made him manager of the Piccadilly Mill at Manchester. However, after two years with Drinkwater, Owen voluntarily gave up a contracted promise of partnership, left the company, and went into partnership with other entrepreneurs to establish and later manage the Chorlton Twist Mills in Chorlton-on-Medlock. By the early 1790s, Owen's entrepreneurial spirit, management skills and progressive moral views were emerging. In 1793, he was elected a member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, where the ideas of the Enlightenment were discussed. He also became a committee member of the Manchester Board of Health, instigated principally by Thomas Percival to press for improvements in the health and working conditions of factory workers. Marriage and family On a visit to Scotland, Owen met and fell in love with Ann (or Anne) Caroline Dale, daughter of David Dale, a Glasgow philanthropist and the proprietor of the large New Lanark Mills. After their marriage on 30 September 1799, the Owens set up home in New Lanark, but later moved to Braxfield, Scotland. Robert and Caroline Owen had eight children, the first of whom died in infancy. Their seven survivors were four sons and three daughters: Robert Dale (1801–1877), William (1802–1842), Ann (or Anne) Caroline (1805–1831), Jane Dale (1805–1861), David Dale (1807–1860), Richard Dale (1809–1890) and Mary (1810–1832). Owen's four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale and Richard, and his daughter Jane Dale, followed their father to the United States, becoming US citizens and permanent residents in New Harmony, Indiana. Owen's wife Caroline and two of their daughters, Anne Caroline and Mary, remained in Britain, where they died in the 1830s. New Lanark mill In July 1799 Owen and his partners bought the New Lanark mill from David Dale, and Owen became its manager in January 1800. Encouraged by his management success in Manchester, Owen hoped to conduct the New Lanark mill on higher principles than purely commercial ones. It had been established in 1785 by David Dale and Richard Arkwright. Its water power provided by the falls of the River Clyde turned its cotton-spinning operation into one of Britain's largest. About 2,000 individuals were involved, 500 of them children brought to the mill at the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dale, known for his benevolence, treated the children well, but the general condition of New Lanark residents was unsatisfactory, despite efforts by Dale and his son-in-law Owen to improve their workers' lives. Many of the workers were from the lowest social levels: theft, drunkenness and other vices were common and education and sanitation neglected. Most families lived in one room. More respected people rejected the long hours and demoralising drudgery of the mills. Until a series of Truck Acts (1831–1887) required employers to pay their employees in common currency, many operated a truck system, paying workers wholly or in part with tokens that had no monetary value outside the mill owner's "truck shop", which charged high prices for shoddy goods. Unlike others, Owen's truck store offered goods at prices only slightly above their wholesale cost, passing on the savings from bulk purchases to his customers and placing alcohol sales under strict supervision. These principles became the basis for Britain's Co-operative shops, some of which continue trading in altered forms to this day. Philosophy and influence Owen tested his social and economic ideas at New Lanark, where he won his workers' confidence and continued to have success through the improved efficiency at the mill. The community also earned an international reputation. Social reformers, statesmen and royalty, including the future Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, visited New Lanark to study its methods. The opinions of many such visitors were favourable. Owen's biggest success was in support of youth education and early child care. As a pioneer in Britain, notably Scotland, Owen provided an alternative to the "normal authoritarian approach to child education". The manners of children brought up under his system were more graceful, genial and unconstrained; health, plenty and contentment prevailed; drunkenness was almost unknown and illegitimacy extremely rare. Owen's relations with his workers remained excellent and operations at the mill proceeded in a smooth, regular and commercially successful way. However, some of Owen's schemes displeased his partners, forcing him to arrange for other investors to buy his share of the business in 1813, for the equivalent of US$800,000. The new investors, who included Jeremy Bentham and the well-known Quaker William Allen, were content to accept a £5,000 return on their capital. The ownership change also provided Owen with a chance to broaden his philanthropy, advocating improvements in workers' rights and child labour laws, and free education for children. In 1813 Owen authored and published A New View of Society, or Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character, the first of four essays he wrote to explain the principles behind his philosophy of socialistic reform. In this he writes: Owen had originally been a follower of the classical liberal, utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, who believed that free markets, in particular the right of workers to move and choose their employers, would release workers from the excessive power of capitalists. However, Owen developed his own, pro-socialist outlook. In addition, Owen as a deist, criticised organised religion, including the Church of England, and developed a belief system of his own. Owen felt that human character is formed by conditions over which individuals have no control. Thus individuals could not be praised or blamed for their behaviour or situation in life. This principle led Owen to conclude that the correct formation of people's characters called for placing them under proper environmental influences – physical, moral and social – from their earliest years. These notions of inherent irresponsibility in humans and the effect of early influences on an individual's character formed the basis of Owen's system of education and social reform. Relying on his own observations, experiences and thoughts, Owen saw his view of human nature as original and "the most basic and necessary constituent in an evolving science of society". His philosophy was influenced by Sir Isaac Newton's views on natural law, and his views resembled those of Plato, Denis Diderot, Claude Adrien Helvétius, William Godwin, John Locke, James Mill, and Jeremy Bentham, among others. Owen did not have the direct influence of Enlightenment philosophers. Owen's work at New Lanark continued to have significance in Britain and continental Europe. He was a "pioneer in factory reform, the father of distributive cooperation, and the founder of nursery schools." His schemes for educating his workers included opening an Institute for the Formation of Character at New Lanark in 1818. This and other programmes at New Lanark provided free education from infancy to adulthood. In addition, he zealously supported factory legislation that culminated in the Cotton Mills and Factories Act of 1819. Owen also had interviews and communications with leading members of the British government, including its premier, Robert Banks Jenkinson, Lord Liverpool. He also met many of the rulers and leading statesmen of Europe. Owen adopted new principles to raise the standard of goods his workers produced. A cube with faces painted in different colours was installed above each machinist's workplace. The colour of the face showed to all who saw it the quality and quantity of goods the worker completed. The intention was to encourage workers to do their best. Although it was no great incentive in itself, conditions at New Lanark for workers and their families were idyllic for the time. Eight-hour day Owen raised the demand for an eight-hour day in 1810 and set about instituting the policy at New Lanark. By 1817 he had formulated the goal of an eight-hour working day with the slogan "eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest". Models for socialism (1817) Owen embraced socialism in 1817, a turning point in his life, in which he pursued a "New View of Society". He outlined his position in a report to the committee of the House of Commons on the country's Poor Laws. As misery and trade stagnation after the Napoleonic Wars drew national attention, the government called on Owen for advice on how to alleviate the industrial concerns. Although he ascribed the immediate misery to the wars, he saw as the underlying cause competition of human labour with machinery, and recommended setting up self-sufficient communities. Owen proposed that communities of some 1,200 people should settle on land from , all living in one building with a public kitchen and dining halls. (The proposed size may have been influenced by the size of the village of New Lanark.) Owen also proposed that each family have its own private apartments and the responsibility for the care of its children up to the age of three. Thereafter children would be raised by the community, but their parents would have access to them at mealtimes and on other occasions. Owen further suggested that such communities be established by individuals, parishes, counties, or other governmental units. In each case there would be effective supervision by qualified persons. Work and enjoyment of its results should be experienced communally. Owen believed his idea would be the best way to reorganise society in general, and called his vision the "New Moral World". Owen's utopian model changed little in his lifetime. His developed model envisaged an association of 500–3,000 people as the optimum for a working community. While mainly agricultural, it would possess the best machinery, offer varied employment, and as far as possible be self-contained. Owen went on to explain that as such communities proliferated, "unions of them federatively united shall be formed in circle of tens, hundreds and thousands", linked by common interest. Arguments against Owen and his answers Owen always tried to spread his ideas to wider communities. First, he started publishing his ideas in newspapers. Owen then sent such newspapers widely to parliamentarians, politicians and other important people. These articles spurred the first negative reactions to his ideas. Opponents thought that Owen's plans would result in an uncontrollable increase in population and poverty. The other main criticism was that Owen's plan and the common use of everything would essentially make the country one large workshop. William Hone claimed that Owen saw people as unravelled plants from their roots, and that he wanted to plant them in rectangles. Another commentator accused Owen of wanting to imprison people in workshops like barracks and eradicate their personal independence. Owen's opponents had begun to regard him as an enemy of religion. His influence in ruling circles, which he had hoped would help him to accomplish his "plan", started diminishing and rumours of his lack of religious conviction spread. Owen believed that without a change in the character of individuals and the environment in which they live, they would remain hostile to those around them. As long as such a social order continued, the positive aspects of Christianity could never be put into practice. Owen also considered it necessary to give people more freedom in order to improve the situation of the poor and working classes. Unless people were better educated, unless they gained more useful information and had permanent employment, they were a danger to the security of the state when given more freedom than the British Constitution did at the time. Without making any changes in the national institutions, he believed that even reorganizing the working classes would bring great benefits. So he opposed the views of radicals seeking to change in the public mentality by expanding voting rights. Other notable critics of Owen include Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who viewed his work as a precursor to their own. They recognized in Owen the important understanding, developed by Marx in Capital, that it is the working class that are responsible for creating the unparalleled wealth in capitalist societies. Similarly, Owen also recognized that under the existing economic system, the working class did not automatically receive the benefits of that newly created wealth. Marx and Engels, differentiated, however, their own scientific conception of socialism from Owen's societies. They argued that Owen's plan, to create a model socialist utopia to coexist with contemporary society and prove its superiority over time, was insufficient to create a new society. In their view, Owen's "socialism" was utopian, since to Owen and the other utopian socialists "[s]ocialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own power." Marx and Engels believed that the overthrow of the capitalist system could only occur once the working class was organized into a revolutionary socialist political party of the working class that was completely independent of all capitalist class influence whereas the utopians sought the assistance and the co-operation of the capitalists in order to achieve the transition to socialism. Community experiments To test the viability of his ideas for self-sufficient working communities, Owen began experimenting in communal living in America in 1825. Among the most famous efforts was the one set up at New Harmony, Indiana. Of the 130 identifiable communitarian experiments in America before the American Civil War, at least 16 were Owenite or Owenite-influenced. New Harmony was Owen's earliest and most ambitious of these. Owen and his son William sailed to America in October 1824 to establish an experimental community in Indiana. In January 1825 Owen used a portion of his own funds to purchase an existing town of 180 buildings and several thousand acres of land along the Wabash River in Indiana. George Rapp's Harmony Society, the religious group that owned the property and had founded the communal village of Harmony (or Harmonie) on the site in 1814, decided in 1824 to relocate to Pennsylvania. Owen renamed it New Harmony and made the village his preliminary model for a Utopian community. Owen sought support for his socialist vision among American thinkers, reformers, intellectuals and public statesmen. On 25 February and 7 March 1825, Owen gave addresses in the U.S. House of Representatives to the U.S. Congress and others in the US government, outlining his vision for the Utopian community at New Harmony, and his socialist beliefs. The audience for his ideas included three former U.S. presidents – John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison) – the outgoing US President James Monroe, and the President-elect, John Quincy Adams. His meetings were perhaps the first discussions of socialism in the Americas; they were certainly a big step towards discussion of it in the United States. Owenism, among the first socialist ideologies active in the United States, can be seen as an instigator of the later socialist movement. Owen convinced William Maclure, a wealthy Scottish scientist and philanthropist living in Philadelphia to join him at New Harmony and become his financial partner. Maclure's involvement went on to attract scientists, educators and artists such as Thomas Say, Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, and Madame Marie Duclos Fretageot. These helped to turn the New Harmony community into a centre for educational reform, scientific research and artistic expression. Although Owen sought to build a "Village of Unity and Mutual Cooperation" south of the town, his grand plan was never fully realised and he returned to Britain to continue his work. During his long absences from New Harmony, Owen left the experiment under the day-to-day management of his sons, Robert Dale Owen and William Owen, and his business partner, Maclure. However, New Harmony proved to be an economic failure, lasting about two years, although it had attracted over a thousand residents by the end of its first year. The socialistic society was dissolved in 1827, but many of its scientists, educators, artists and other inhabitants, including Owen's four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale, and Richard Dale Owen, and his daughter Jane Dale Owen Fauntleroy, remained at New Harmony after the experiment ended. Other experiments in the United States included communal settlements at Blue Spring, near Bloomington, Indiana, at Yellow Springs, Ohio, and at Forestville Commonwealth at Earlton, New York, as well as other projects in New York, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. Nearly all of these had ended before New Harmony was dissolved in April 1827. Owen's Utopian communities attracted a mix of people, many with the highest aims. They included vagrants, adventurers and other reform-minded enthusiasts. In the words of Owen's son David Dale Owen, they attracted "a heterogeneous collection of Radicals", "enthusiastic devotees to principle," and "honest latitudinarians, and lazy theorists," with "a sprinkling of unprincipled sharpers thrown in." Josiah Warren, a participant at New Harmony, asserted that it was doomed to failure for lack of individual sovereignty and personal property. In describing the community, Warren explained: "We had a world in miniature – we had enacted the French revolution over again with despairing hearts instead of corpses as a result.... It appeared that it was nature's own inherent law of diversity that had conquered us... our 'united interests' were directly at war with the individualities of persons and circumstances and the instinct of self-preservation...." Warren's observations on the reasons for the community's failure led to the development of American individualist anarchism, of which he was its original theorist. Some historians have traced the demise of New Harmony to serial disagreements among its members. Social experiments also began in Scotland in 1825, when Abram Combe, an Owenite, attempted a utopian experiment at Orbiston, near Glasgow, but this failed after about two years. In the 1830s, additional experiments in socialistic cooperatives were made in Ireland and Britain, the most important being at Ralahine, established in 1831 in County Clare, Ireland, and at Tytherley, begun in 1839 in Hampshire, England. The former proved a remarkable success for three-and-a-half years until the proprietor, having ruined himself by gambling, had to sell his interest. Tytherley, known as Harmony Hall or Queenwood College, was designed by the architect Joseph Hansom. This also failed. Another social experiment, Manea Colony in the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, launched in the late 1830s by William Hodson, likewise an Owenite, but it failed in a couple of years and Hodson emigrated to the United States. The Manea Colony site has been excavated by Cambridge Archaeology Unit (CAU) based at the University of Cambridge. Return to Britain Although Owen made further brief visits to the United States, London became his permanent home and the centre of his work in 1828. After extended friction with William Allen and some other business partners, Owen relinquished all connections with New Lanark. He is often quoted in a comment by Allen at the time, "All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer". Having invested most of his fortune in the failed New Harmony communal experiment, Owen was no longer a wealthy capitalist. However, he remained the head of a vigorous propaganda effort to promote industrial equality, free education for children and adequate living conditions in factory towns, while delivering lectures in Europe and publishing a weekly newspaper to gain support for his ideas. In 1832 Owen opened the National Equitable Labour Exchange system, a time-based currency in which the exchange of goods was effected by means of labour notes; this system superseded the usual means of exchange and middlemen. The London exchange continued until 1833, a Birmingham branch operating for just a few months until July 1833. Owen also became involved in trade unionism, briefly leading the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union (GNCTU) before its collapse in 1834. Socialism first became current in British terminology in discussions of the Association of all Classes of all Nations, which Owen formed in 1835 and served as its initial leader. Owen's secular views also gained enough influence among the working classes to cause the Westminster Review to comment in 1839 that his principles were the creed of many of them. However, by 1846, the only lasting result of Owen's agitation for social change, carried on through public meetings, pamphlets, periodicals, and occasional treatises, remained the Co-operative movement, and for a time even that seemed to have collapsed. Role in spiritualism In 1817, Owen publicly claimed that all religions were false. In 1854, aged 83, Owen converted to spiritualism after a series of sittings with Maria B. Hayden, an American medium credited with introducing spiritualism to England. He made a public profession of his new faith in his publication The Rational Quarterly Review and in a pamphlet titled The future of the Human race; or great glorious and future revolution to be effected through the agency of departed spirits of good and superior men and women. Owen claimed to have had medium contact with spirits of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and others. He explained that the purpose of these was to change "the present, false, disunited and miserable state of human existence, for a true, united and happy state... to prepare the world for universal peace, and to infuse into all the spirit of charity, forbearance and love." Spiritualists claimed after Owen's death that his spirit had dictated to the medium Emma Hardinge Britten in 1871 the "Seven Principles of Spiritualism", used by their National Union as "the basis of its religious philosophy". Death and legacy As Owen grew older and more radical in his views, his influence began to decline. Owen published his memoirs, The Life of Robert Owen, in 1857, a year before his death. Although he had spent most of his life in England and Scotland, Owen returned to his native town of Newtown at the end of his life. He died there on 17 November 1858 and was buried there on 21 November. He died penniless apart from an annual income drawn from a trust established by his sons in 1844. Owen was a reformer, philanthropist, community builder, and spiritualist who spent his life seeking to improve the lives of others. An advocate of the working class, he improved working conditions for factory workers, which he demonstrated at New Lanark, Scotland, became a leader in trade unionism, promoted social equality through his experimental Utopian communities, and supported the passage of child labour laws and free education for children. In these reforms he was ahead of his time. He envisioned a communal society that others could consider and apply as they wished. In Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race (1849), he went on to say that character is formed by a combination of Nature or God and the circumstances of the individual's experience. Citing beneficial results at New Lanark, Scotland, during 30 years of work there, Owen concluded that a person's "character is not made by, but for the individual," and that nature and society are responsible for each person's character and conduct. Owen's agitation for social change, along with the work of the Owenites and of his own children, helped to bring lasting social reforms in women's and workers' rights, establish free public libraries and museums, child care and public, co-educational schools, and pre-Marxian communism, and develop the Co-operative and trade union movements. New Harmony, Indiana, and New Lanark, Scotland, two towns with which he is closely associated, remain as reminders of his efforts. Owen's legacy of public service continued with his four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale, and Richard Dale, and his daughter, Jane, who followed him to America to live at New Harmony, Indiana: Robert Dale Owen (1801–1877), an able exponent of his father's doctrines, managed the New Harmony community after his father returned to Britain in 1825. He wrote articles and co-edited with Frances Wright the New-Harmony Gazette in the late 1820s in Indiana and the Free Enquirer in the 1830s in New York City. Owen returned to New Harmony in 1833 and became active in Indiana politics. He was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives (1836–1839 and 1851–1853) and U.S. House of Representatives (1843–1847), and was appointed chargé d'affaires in Naples in 1853–1858. While serving as a member of Congress, he drafted and helped to secure passage of a bill founding the Smithsonian Institution in 1846. He was elected a delegate to the Indiana Constitutional Convention in 1850, and argued in support of widows and married women's property and divorce rights. He also favoured legislation for Indiana's tax-supported public school system. Like his father, he believed in spiritualism, authoring two books on the subject: Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World (1859) and The Debatable Land Between this World and the Next (1872). William Owen (1802–1842) moved to the United States with his father in 1824. His business skill, notably his knowledge of cotton-goods manufacturing, allowed him to remain at New Harmony after his father returned to Scotland, and serve as adviser to the community. He organised New Harmony's Thespian Society in 1827, but died of unknown causes at the age of 40. Jane Dale Owen Fauntleroy (1805–1861) arrived in the United States in 1833 and settled in New Harmony. She was a musician and educator who set up a school in her home. In 1835 she married Robert Henry Fauntleroy, a civil engineer from Virginia living at New Harmony. David Dale Owen (1807–1860) moved to the United States in 1827 and resided at New Harmony for several years. He trained as a geologist and natural scientist and earned a medical degree. He was appointed a United States geologist in 1839. His work included geological surveys in the Midwest, more specifically the states of Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas, as well as Minnesota Territory. His brother Richard succeeded him as state geologist of Indiana. Richard Dale Owen (1810–1890) emigrated to the United States in 1827 and joined his siblings at New Harmony. He fought in the Mexican–American War in 1847, taught natural science at Western Military Institute in Tennessee in 1849–1859, and earned a medical degree in 1858. During the American Civil War he was a colonel in the Union army and served as a commandant of Camp Morton, a prisoner-of-war camp for Confederate soldiers at Indianapolis, Indiana. After the war, Owen served as Indiana's second state geologist. In addition, he was a professor at Indiana University and chaired its natural science department in 1864–1879. He helped plan Purdue University and was appointed its first president in 1872–1874, but resigned before its classes began and resumed teaching at Indiana University. He spent his retirement years on research and writing. Honours and tributes The Co-operative Movement erected a monument to Robert Owen in 1902 at his burial site in Newtown, Montgomeryshire. The Welsh people donated a bust of Owen by Welsh sculptor Sir William Goscombe John to the International Labour Office library in Geneva, Switzerland. Selected published works A New View of Society: Or, Essays on the Formation of Human Character, and the Application of the Principle to Practice (London, 1813). Retitled, A New View of Society: Or, Essays on the Formation of Human Character Preparatory to the Development of a Plan for Gradually Ameliorating the Condition of Mankind, for second edition, 1816 Observations on the Effect of the Manufacturing System. London, 1815 Report to the Committee of the Association for the Relief of the Manufacturing and Labouring Poor (1817) Two Memorials on Behalf of the Working Classes (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 181 An Address to the Master Manufacturers of Great Britain: On the Present Existing Evils in the Manufacturing System (Bolton, 1819) Report to the County of Lanark of a Plan for relieving Public Distress (Glasgow: Glasgow University Press, 1821) An Explanation of the Cause of Distress which pervades the civilised parts of the world (London and Paris, 1823) An Address to All Classes in the State. London, 1832 The Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race. London, 1849 Collected works: A New View of Society and Other Writings, introduction by G. D. H. Cole. London and New York: J. M. Dent & Sons, E. P. Dutton and Co., 1927 A New View of Society and Other Writings, G. Claeys, ed. London and New York: Penguin Books, 1991 The Selected Works of Robert Owen, G. Claeys, ed., 4 vols. London: Pickering and Chatto, 1993 Archival collections: Robert Owen Collection, National Co-operative Archive, United Kingdom. New Harmony, Indiana, Collection, 1814–1884, 1920, 1964, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, Indiana, United States New Harmony Series III Collection, Workingmen's Institute, New Harmony, Indiana, United States Owen family collection, 1826–1967, bulk 1830–1890, Indiana University Archives, Bloomington, Indiana, United States See also Cincinnati Time Store José María Arizmendiarrieta Labour voucher List of Owenite communities in the United States Owenstown Owenism William King References Bibliography (online version) Further reading Biographies of Owen A. J. Booth, Robert Owen, the Founder of Socialism in England (London, 1869) G. D. H. Cole, Life of Robert Owen. London, Ernest Benn Ltd., 1925; second edition Macmillan, 1930 Lloyd Jones. The Life, Times, and Labours of Robert Owen. London, 1889 A. L. Morton, The Life and Ideas of Robert Owen. New York, International Publishers, 1969 W. H. Oliver, "Robert Owen and the English Working-Class Movements", History Today (November 1958) 8–11, pp. 787–796 F. A. Packard, Life of Robert Owen. Philadelphia: Ashmead & Evans, 1866 Frank Podmore, Robert Owen: A Biography. London: Hutchinson and Company, 1906 David Santilli, Life of the Mill Man. London, B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1987 William Lucas Sargant, Robert Owen and his social philosophy . London, 1860 Richard Tames, Radicals, Railways & Reform. London, B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1986 Other works about Owen Arthur Bestor, Backwoods Utopias. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950, 2nd edition, 1970 John Butt (ed). Robert Owen: Aspects of his Life and Work. Humanities Press, 1971 Gregory Claeys, Citizens and Saints. Politics and Anti-Politics in Early British Socialism. Cambridge University Press, 1989 Gregory Claeys, Machinery, Money and the Millennium: From Moral Economy to Socialism 1815–1860. Princeton University Press, 1987 R. E. Davies, The Life of Robert Owen, Philanthropist and Social Reformer, An Appreciation. Robert Sutton, 1907 R. E. Davis and F. J. O'Hagan, Robert Owen. London: Continuum Press, 2010 E. Dolleans, Robert Owen. Paris, 1905 I. Donnachie, Robert Owen. Owen of New Lanark and New Harmony. 2000 Auguste Marie Fabre, Un Socialiste Pratique, Robert Owen. Nìmes, Bureaux de l'Émancipation, 1896 John F. C. Harrison, Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America: Quest for the New Moral World. New York, 1969 Alexander Herzen, My Past and Thoughts (University of California Press, 1982). (One chapter is devoted to Owen.) G. J. Holyoake, The History of Co-operation in England: Its Literature and Its Advocates V. 1. London, 1906 G. J. Holyoake, The History of Co-operation in England: Its Literature and Its Advocates V. 2. London, 1906 The National Library of Wales, A Bibliography of Robert Owen, The Socialist. 1914 H. Simon, Robert Owen: Sein Leben und Seine Bedeutung für die Gegenwart. Jena, 1905 O. Siméon, Robert Owen's Experiment at New Lanark. From Paternalism to Socialism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017 External links Essays by Owen at the Marxists Internet Archive Brief biography at the New Lanark World Heritage Site The Robert Owen Museum, Newtown, Wales Video of Owen's wool mill Brief biography at Cotton Times "Robert Owen (1771-1858) social reformer, founder of New Harmony", University of Evansville, Indiana "Robert Owen and the Co-operative movement" Brief biography at The History Guide Brief biography at age-of-the-sage.org Heaven On Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism at PBS {dead link 2021-02-22} 1771 births 1858 deaths Cooperative organizers Founders of utopian communities People from Newtown, Powys Owenites Utopian socialists Welsh agnostics Welsh humanists 19th-century Welsh businesspeople 18th-century Welsh businesspeople Welsh business theorists Welsh philanthropists Welsh socialists British reformers British social reformers Socialist economists

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Are there any other interesting aspects about this article, besides Robert Owen having success in the management of cotton mills?

Robert Owen

In July 1799 Owen and his partners bought the New Lanark mill from David Dale, and Owen became the New Lanark mill's manager in January 1800. Encouraged by his success in the management of cotton mills in Manchester, Owen hoped to conduct the New Lanark mill on higher principles than purely commercial ones. David Dale and Richard Arkwright had established the substantial mill at New Lanark in 1785. With its water power provided by the falls of the River Clyde, the cotton-spinning operation became one of Britain's largest. About 2,000 individuals were associations with the mill; 500 of them were children who were brought to the mill at the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dale, who was known for his benevolence, treated the children well, but the general condition of New Lanark's residents was unsatisfactory. Over the years, Dale and his son-in-law, Owen, worked to improve the factory workers' lives. Many of the workers were in the lowest levels of the population; theft, drunkenness, and other vices were common; education and sanitation were neglected; and most families lived in one room. The respectable country people refused to submit to the long hours and demoralising drudgery of the mills. Until a series of Truck Acts (1831-1887) required employees to be paid in common currency, many employers operated the truck system that paid workers in total or in part with tokens. The tokens had no monetary value outside the mill owner's "truck shop," where the owners could supply shoddy goods and charge top prices. In contrast to other employers, Owen's store offered goods at prices slightly above their wholesale cost. He also passed on the savings from the bulk purchase of goods to his workers, and placed the sale of alcohol under strict supervision. These principles became the basis for the cooperative shops in Britain, which continue in an altered form to trade today. CANNOTANSWER

David Dale and Richard Arkwright had established the substantial mill at New Lanark in 1785.

Robert Owen (; 14 May 1771 – 17 November 1858) was a Welsh textile manufacturer, philanthropist and social reformer, and a founder of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement. He strove to improve factory working conditions, promoted experimental socialistic communities, and sought a more collective approach to child rearing, including government control of education. He gained wealth in the early 1800s from a textile mill at New Lanark, Scotland. Having trained as a draper in Stamford, Lincolnshire he worked in London before relocating aged 18 to Manchester and textile manufacturing. In 1824, he moved to America and put most of his fortune in an experimental socialistic community at New Harmony, Indiana, as a preliminary for his Utopian society. It lasted about two years. Other Owenite communities also failed, and in 1828 Owen returned to London, where he continued to champion the working class, lead in developing cooperatives and the trade union movement, and support child labour legislation and free co-educational schools. Early life and education Robert Owen was born in Newtown, a small market town in Montgomeryshire, Wales, on 14 May 1771, to Anne (Williams) and Robert Owen. His father was a saddler, ironmonger and local postmaster; his mother was the daughter of a Newtown farming family. Young Robert was the sixth of the family's seven children, two of whom died at a young age. His surviving siblings were William, Anne, John and Richard. Owen received little formal education, but he was an avid reader. He left school at the age of ten to be apprenticed to a Stamford, Lincolnshire, draper for four years. He also worked in London drapery shops in his teens. At about the age of 18, Owen moved to Manchester, where he spent the next twelve years of his life, employed initially at Satterfield's Drapery in Saint Ann's Square. While in Manchester, Owen borrowed £100 from his brother William, so as to enter into a partnership to make spinning mules, a new invention for spinning cotton thread, but exchanged his business share within a few months for six spinning mules that he worked in rented factory space. In 1792, when Owen was about 21 years old, mill-owner Peter Drinkwater made him manager of the Piccadilly Mill at Manchester. However, after two years with Drinkwater, Owen voluntarily gave up a contracted promise of partnership, left the company, and went into partnership with other entrepreneurs to establish and later manage the Chorlton Twist Mills in Chorlton-on-Medlock. By the early 1790s, Owen's entrepreneurial spirit, management skills and progressive moral views were emerging. In 1793, he was elected a member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, where the ideas of the Enlightenment were discussed. He also became a committee member of the Manchester Board of Health, instigated principally by Thomas Percival to press for improvements in the health and working conditions of factory workers. Marriage and family On a visit to Scotland, Owen met and fell in love with Ann (or Anne) Caroline Dale, daughter of David Dale, a Glasgow philanthropist and the proprietor of the large New Lanark Mills. After their marriage on 30 September 1799, the Owens set up home in New Lanark, but later moved to Braxfield, Scotland. Robert and Caroline Owen had eight children, the first of whom died in infancy. Their seven survivors were four sons and three daughters: Robert Dale (1801–1877), William (1802–1842), Ann (or Anne) Caroline (1805–1831), Jane Dale (1805–1861), David Dale (1807–1860), Richard Dale (1809–1890) and Mary (1810–1832). Owen's four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale and Richard, and his daughter Jane Dale, followed their father to the United States, becoming US citizens and permanent residents in New Harmony, Indiana. Owen's wife Caroline and two of their daughters, Anne Caroline and Mary, remained in Britain, where they died in the 1830s. New Lanark mill In July 1799 Owen and his partners bought the New Lanark mill from David Dale, and Owen became its manager in January 1800. Encouraged by his management success in Manchester, Owen hoped to conduct the New Lanark mill on higher principles than purely commercial ones. It had been established in 1785 by David Dale and Richard Arkwright. Its water power provided by the falls of the River Clyde turned its cotton-spinning operation into one of Britain's largest. About 2,000 individuals were involved, 500 of them children brought to the mill at the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dale, known for his benevolence, treated the children well, but the general condition of New Lanark residents was unsatisfactory, despite efforts by Dale and his son-in-law Owen to improve their workers' lives. Many of the workers were from the lowest social levels: theft, drunkenness and other vices were common and education and sanitation neglected. Most families lived in one room. More respected people rejected the long hours and demoralising drudgery of the mills. Until a series of Truck Acts (1831–1887) required employers to pay their employees in common currency, many operated a truck system, paying workers wholly or in part with tokens that had no monetary value outside the mill owner's "truck shop", which charged high prices for shoddy goods. Unlike others, Owen's truck store offered goods at prices only slightly above their wholesale cost, passing on the savings from bulk purchases to his customers and placing alcohol sales under strict supervision. These principles became the basis for Britain's Co-operative shops, some of which continue trading in altered forms to this day. Philosophy and influence Owen tested his social and economic ideas at New Lanark, where he won his workers' confidence and continued to have success through the improved efficiency at the mill. The community also earned an international reputation. Social reformers, statesmen and royalty, including the future Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, visited New Lanark to study its methods. The opinions of many such visitors were favourable. Owen's biggest success was in support of youth education and early child care. As a pioneer in Britain, notably Scotland, Owen provided an alternative to the "normal authoritarian approach to child education". The manners of children brought up under his system were more graceful, genial and unconstrained; health, plenty and contentment prevailed; drunkenness was almost unknown and illegitimacy extremely rare. Owen's relations with his workers remained excellent and operations at the mill proceeded in a smooth, regular and commercially successful way. However, some of Owen's schemes displeased his partners, forcing him to arrange for other investors to buy his share of the business in 1813, for the equivalent of US$800,000. The new investors, who included Jeremy Bentham and the well-known Quaker William Allen, were content to accept a £5,000 return on their capital. The ownership change also provided Owen with a chance to broaden his philanthropy, advocating improvements in workers' rights and child labour laws, and free education for children. In 1813 Owen authored and published A New View of Society, or Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character, the first of four essays he wrote to explain the principles behind his philosophy of socialistic reform. In this he writes: Owen had originally been a follower of the classical liberal, utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, who believed that free markets, in particular the right of workers to move and choose their employers, would release workers from the excessive power of capitalists. However, Owen developed his own, pro-socialist outlook. In addition, Owen as a deist, criticised organised religion, including the Church of England, and developed a belief system of his own. Owen felt that human character is formed by conditions over which individuals have no control. Thus individuals could not be praised or blamed for their behaviour or situation in life. This principle led Owen to conclude that the correct formation of people's characters called for placing them under proper environmental influences – physical, moral and social – from their earliest years. These notions of inherent irresponsibility in humans and the effect of early influences on an individual's character formed the basis of Owen's system of education and social reform. Relying on his own observations, experiences and thoughts, Owen saw his view of human nature as original and "the most basic and necessary constituent in an evolving science of society". His philosophy was influenced by Sir Isaac Newton's views on natural law, and his views resembled those of Plato, Denis Diderot, Claude Adrien Helvétius, William Godwin, John Locke, James Mill, and Jeremy Bentham, among others. Owen did not have the direct influence of Enlightenment philosophers. Owen's work at New Lanark continued to have significance in Britain and continental Europe. He was a "pioneer in factory reform, the father of distributive cooperation, and the founder of nursery schools." His schemes for educating his workers included opening an Institute for the Formation of Character at New Lanark in 1818. This and other programmes at New Lanark provided free education from infancy to adulthood. In addition, he zealously supported factory legislation that culminated in the Cotton Mills and Factories Act of 1819. Owen also had interviews and communications with leading members of the British government, including its premier, Robert Banks Jenkinson, Lord Liverpool. He also met many of the rulers and leading statesmen of Europe. Owen adopted new principles to raise the standard of goods his workers produced. A cube with faces painted in different colours was installed above each machinist's workplace. The colour of the face showed to all who saw it the quality and quantity of goods the worker completed. The intention was to encourage workers to do their best. Although it was no great incentive in itself, conditions at New Lanark for workers and their families were idyllic for the time. Eight-hour day Owen raised the demand for an eight-hour day in 1810 and set about instituting the policy at New Lanark. By 1817 he had formulated the goal of an eight-hour working day with the slogan "eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest". Models for socialism (1817) Owen embraced socialism in 1817, a turning point in his life, in which he pursued a "New View of Society". He outlined his position in a report to the committee of the House of Commons on the country's Poor Laws. As misery and trade stagnation after the Napoleonic Wars drew national attention, the government called on Owen for advice on how to alleviate the industrial concerns. Although he ascribed the immediate misery to the wars, he saw as the underlying cause competition of human labour with machinery, and recommended setting up self-sufficient communities. Owen proposed that communities of some 1,200 people should settle on land from , all living in one building with a public kitchen and dining halls. (The proposed size may have been influenced by the size of the village of New Lanark.) Owen also proposed that each family have its own private apartments and the responsibility for the care of its children up to the age of three. Thereafter children would be raised by the community, but their parents would have access to them at mealtimes and on other occasions. Owen further suggested that such communities be established by individuals, parishes, counties, or other governmental units. In each case there would be effective supervision by qualified persons. Work and enjoyment of its results should be experienced communally. Owen believed his idea would be the best way to reorganise society in general, and called his vision the "New Moral World". Owen's utopian model changed little in his lifetime. His developed model envisaged an association of 500–3,000 people as the optimum for a working community. While mainly agricultural, it would possess the best machinery, offer varied employment, and as far as possible be self-contained. Owen went on to explain that as such communities proliferated, "unions of them federatively united shall be formed in circle of tens, hundreds and thousands", linked by common interest. Arguments against Owen and his answers Owen always tried to spread his ideas to wider communities. First, he started publishing his ideas in newspapers. Owen then sent such newspapers widely to parliamentarians, politicians and other important people. These articles spurred the first negative reactions to his ideas. Opponents thought that Owen's plans would result in an uncontrollable increase in population and poverty. The other main criticism was that Owen's plan and the common use of everything would essentially make the country one large workshop. William Hone claimed that Owen saw people as unravelled plants from their roots, and that he wanted to plant them in rectangles. Another commentator accused Owen of wanting to imprison people in workshops like barracks and eradicate their personal independence. Owen's opponents had begun to regard him as an enemy of religion. His influence in ruling circles, which he had hoped would help him to accomplish his "plan", started diminishing and rumours of his lack of religious conviction spread. Owen believed that without a change in the character of individuals and the environment in which they live, they would remain hostile to those around them. As long as such a social order continued, the positive aspects of Christianity could never be put into practice. Owen also considered it necessary to give people more freedom in order to improve the situation of the poor and working classes. Unless people were better educated, unless they gained more useful information and had permanent employment, they were a danger to the security of the state when given more freedom than the British Constitution did at the time. Without making any changes in the national institutions, he believed that even reorganizing the working classes would bring great benefits. So he opposed the views of radicals seeking to change in the public mentality by expanding voting rights. Other notable critics of Owen include Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who viewed his work as a precursor to their own. They recognized in Owen the important understanding, developed by Marx in Capital, that it is the working class that are responsible for creating the unparalleled wealth in capitalist societies. Similarly, Owen also recognized that under the existing economic system, the working class did not automatically receive the benefits of that newly created wealth. Marx and Engels, differentiated, however, their own scientific conception of socialism from Owen's societies. They argued that Owen's plan, to create a model socialist utopia to coexist with contemporary society and prove its superiority over time, was insufficient to create a new society. In their view, Owen's "socialism" was utopian, since to Owen and the other utopian socialists "[s]ocialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own power." Marx and Engels believed that the overthrow of the capitalist system could only occur once the working class was organized into a revolutionary socialist political party of the working class that was completely independent of all capitalist class influence whereas the utopians sought the assistance and the co-operation of the capitalists in order to achieve the transition to socialism. Community experiments To test the viability of his ideas for self-sufficient working communities, Owen began experimenting in communal living in America in 1825. Among the most famous efforts was the one set up at New Harmony, Indiana. Of the 130 identifiable communitarian experiments in America before the American Civil War, at least 16 were Owenite or Owenite-influenced. New Harmony was Owen's earliest and most ambitious of these. Owen and his son William sailed to America in October 1824 to establish an experimental community in Indiana. In January 1825 Owen used a portion of his own funds to purchase an existing town of 180 buildings and several thousand acres of land along the Wabash River in Indiana. George Rapp's Harmony Society, the religious group that owned the property and had founded the communal village of Harmony (or Harmonie) on the site in 1814, decided in 1824 to relocate to Pennsylvania. Owen renamed it New Harmony and made the village his preliminary model for a Utopian community. Owen sought support for his socialist vision among American thinkers, reformers, intellectuals and public statesmen. On 25 February and 7 March 1825, Owen gave addresses in the U.S. House of Representatives to the U.S. Congress and others in the US government, outlining his vision for the Utopian community at New Harmony, and his socialist beliefs. The audience for his ideas included three former U.S. presidents – John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison) – the outgoing US President James Monroe, and the President-elect, John Quincy Adams. His meetings were perhaps the first discussions of socialism in the Americas; they were certainly a big step towards discussion of it in the United States. Owenism, among the first socialist ideologies active in the United States, can be seen as an instigator of the later socialist movement. Owen convinced William Maclure, a wealthy Scottish scientist and philanthropist living in Philadelphia to join him at New Harmony and become his financial partner. Maclure's involvement went on to attract scientists, educators and artists such as Thomas Say, Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, and Madame Marie Duclos Fretageot. These helped to turn the New Harmony community into a centre for educational reform, scientific research and artistic expression. Although Owen sought to build a "Village of Unity and Mutual Cooperation" south of the town, his grand plan was never fully realised and he returned to Britain to continue his work. During his long absences from New Harmony, Owen left the experiment under the day-to-day management of his sons, Robert Dale Owen and William Owen, and his business partner, Maclure. However, New Harmony proved to be an economic failure, lasting about two years, although it had attracted over a thousand residents by the end of its first year. The socialistic society was dissolved in 1827, but many of its scientists, educators, artists and other inhabitants, including Owen's four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale, and Richard Dale Owen, and his daughter Jane Dale Owen Fauntleroy, remained at New Harmony after the experiment ended. Other experiments in the United States included communal settlements at Blue Spring, near Bloomington, Indiana, at Yellow Springs, Ohio, and at Forestville Commonwealth at Earlton, New York, as well as other projects in New York, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. Nearly all of these had ended before New Harmony was dissolved in April 1827. Owen's Utopian communities attracted a mix of people, many with the highest aims. They included vagrants, adventurers and other reform-minded enthusiasts. In the words of Owen's son David Dale Owen, they attracted "a heterogeneous collection of Radicals", "enthusiastic devotees to principle," and "honest latitudinarians, and lazy theorists," with "a sprinkling of unprincipled sharpers thrown in." Josiah Warren, a participant at New Harmony, asserted that it was doomed to failure for lack of individual sovereignty and personal property. In describing the community, Warren explained: "We had a world in miniature – we had enacted the French revolution over again with despairing hearts instead of corpses as a result.... It appeared that it was nature's own inherent law of diversity that had conquered us... our 'united interests' were directly at war with the individualities of persons and circumstances and the instinct of self-preservation...." Warren's observations on the reasons for the community's failure led to the development of American individualist anarchism, of which he was its original theorist. Some historians have traced the demise of New Harmony to serial disagreements among its members. Social experiments also began in Scotland in 1825, when Abram Combe, an Owenite, attempted a utopian experiment at Orbiston, near Glasgow, but this failed after about two years. In the 1830s, additional experiments in socialistic cooperatives were made in Ireland and Britain, the most important being at Ralahine, established in 1831 in County Clare, Ireland, and at Tytherley, begun in 1839 in Hampshire, England. The former proved a remarkable success for three-and-a-half years until the proprietor, having ruined himself by gambling, had to sell his interest. Tytherley, known as Harmony Hall or Queenwood College, was designed by the architect Joseph Hansom. This also failed. Another social experiment, Manea Colony in the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, launched in the late 1830s by William Hodson, likewise an Owenite, but it failed in a couple of years and Hodson emigrated to the United States. The Manea Colony site has been excavated by Cambridge Archaeology Unit (CAU) based at the University of Cambridge. Return to Britain Although Owen made further brief visits to the United States, London became his permanent home and the centre of his work in 1828. After extended friction with William Allen and some other business partners, Owen relinquished all connections with New Lanark. He is often quoted in a comment by Allen at the time, "All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer". Having invested most of his fortune in the failed New Harmony communal experiment, Owen was no longer a wealthy capitalist. However, he remained the head of a vigorous propaganda effort to promote industrial equality, free education for children and adequate living conditions in factory towns, while delivering lectures in Europe and publishing a weekly newspaper to gain support for his ideas. In 1832 Owen opened the National Equitable Labour Exchange system, a time-based currency in which the exchange of goods was effected by means of labour notes; this system superseded the usual means of exchange and middlemen. The London exchange continued until 1833, a Birmingham branch operating for just a few months until July 1833. Owen also became involved in trade unionism, briefly leading the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union (GNCTU) before its collapse in 1834. Socialism first became current in British terminology in discussions of the Association of all Classes of all Nations, which Owen formed in 1835 and served as its initial leader. Owen's secular views also gained enough influence among the working classes to cause the Westminster Review to comment in 1839 that his principles were the creed of many of them. However, by 1846, the only lasting result of Owen's agitation for social change, carried on through public meetings, pamphlets, periodicals, and occasional treatises, remained the Co-operative movement, and for a time even that seemed to have collapsed. Role in spiritualism In 1817, Owen publicly claimed that all religions were false. In 1854, aged 83, Owen converted to spiritualism after a series of sittings with Maria B. Hayden, an American medium credited with introducing spiritualism to England. He made a public profession of his new faith in his publication The Rational Quarterly Review and in a pamphlet titled The future of the Human race; or great glorious and future revolution to be effected through the agency of departed spirits of good and superior men and women. Owen claimed to have had medium contact with spirits of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and others. He explained that the purpose of these was to change "the present, false, disunited and miserable state of human existence, for a true, united and happy state... to prepare the world for universal peace, and to infuse into all the spirit of charity, forbearance and love." Spiritualists claimed after Owen's death that his spirit had dictated to the medium Emma Hardinge Britten in 1871 the "Seven Principles of Spiritualism", used by their National Union as "the basis of its religious philosophy". Death and legacy As Owen grew older and more radical in his views, his influence began to decline. Owen published his memoirs, The Life of Robert Owen, in 1857, a year before his death. Although he had spent most of his life in England and Scotland, Owen returned to his native town of Newtown at the end of his life. He died there on 17 November 1858 and was buried there on 21 November. He died penniless apart from an annual income drawn from a trust established by his sons in 1844. Owen was a reformer, philanthropist, community builder, and spiritualist who spent his life seeking to improve the lives of others. An advocate of the working class, he improved working conditions for factory workers, which he demonstrated at New Lanark, Scotland, became a leader in trade unionism, promoted social equality through his experimental Utopian communities, and supported the passage of child labour laws and free education for children. In these reforms he was ahead of his time. He envisioned a communal society that others could consider and apply as they wished. In Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race (1849), he went on to say that character is formed by a combination of Nature or God and the circumstances of the individual's experience. Citing beneficial results at New Lanark, Scotland, during 30 years of work there, Owen concluded that a person's "character is not made by, but for the individual," and that nature and society are responsible for each person's character and conduct. Owen's agitation for social change, along with the work of the Owenites and of his own children, helped to bring lasting social reforms in women's and workers' rights, establish free public libraries and museums, child care and public, co-educational schools, and pre-Marxian communism, and develop the Co-operative and trade union movements. New Harmony, Indiana, and New Lanark, Scotland, two towns with which he is closely associated, remain as reminders of his efforts. Owen's legacy of public service continued with his four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale, and Richard Dale, and his daughter, Jane, who followed him to America to live at New Harmony, Indiana: Robert Dale Owen (1801–1877), an able exponent of his father's doctrines, managed the New Harmony community after his father returned to Britain in 1825. He wrote articles and co-edited with Frances Wright the New-Harmony Gazette in the late 1820s in Indiana and the Free Enquirer in the 1830s in New York City. Owen returned to New Harmony in 1833 and became active in Indiana politics. He was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives (1836–1839 and 1851–1853) and U.S. House of Representatives (1843–1847), and was appointed chargé d'affaires in Naples in 1853–1858. While serving as a member of Congress, he drafted and helped to secure passage of a bill founding the Smithsonian Institution in 1846. He was elected a delegate to the Indiana Constitutional Convention in 1850, and argued in support of widows and married women's property and divorce rights. He also favoured legislation for Indiana's tax-supported public school system. Like his father, he believed in spiritualism, authoring two books on the subject: Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World (1859) and The Debatable Land Between this World and the Next (1872). William Owen (1802–1842) moved to the United States with his father in 1824. His business skill, notably his knowledge of cotton-goods manufacturing, allowed him to remain at New Harmony after his father returned to Scotland, and serve as adviser to the community. He organised New Harmony's Thespian Society in 1827, but died of unknown causes at the age of 40. Jane Dale Owen Fauntleroy (1805–1861) arrived in the United States in 1833 and settled in New Harmony. She was a musician and educator who set up a school in her home. In 1835 she married Robert Henry Fauntleroy, a civil engineer from Virginia living at New Harmony. David Dale Owen (1807–1860) moved to the United States in 1827 and resided at New Harmony for several years. He trained as a geologist and natural scientist and earned a medical degree. He was appointed a United States geologist in 1839. His work included geological surveys in the Midwest, more specifically the states of Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas, as well as Minnesota Territory. His brother Richard succeeded him as state geologist of Indiana. Richard Dale Owen (1810–1890) emigrated to the United States in 1827 and joined his siblings at New Harmony. He fought in the Mexican–American War in 1847, taught natural science at Western Military Institute in Tennessee in 1849–1859, and earned a medical degree in 1858. During the American Civil War he was a colonel in the Union army and served as a commandant of Camp Morton, a prisoner-of-war camp for Confederate soldiers at Indianapolis, Indiana. After the war, Owen served as Indiana's second state geologist. In addition, he was a professor at Indiana University and chaired its natural science department in 1864–1879. He helped plan Purdue University and was appointed its first president in 1872–1874, but resigned before its classes began and resumed teaching at Indiana University. He spent his retirement years on research and writing. Honours and tributes The Co-operative Movement erected a monument to Robert Owen in 1902 at his burial site in Newtown, Montgomeryshire. The Welsh people donated a bust of Owen by Welsh sculptor Sir William Goscombe John to the International Labour Office library in Geneva, Switzerland. Selected published works A New View of Society: Or, Essays on the Formation of Human Character, and the Application of the Principle to Practice (London, 1813). Retitled, A New View of Society: Or, Essays on the Formation of Human Character Preparatory to the Development of a Plan for Gradually Ameliorating the Condition of Mankind, for second edition, 1816 Observations on the Effect of the Manufacturing System. London, 1815 Report to the Committee of the Association for the Relief of the Manufacturing and Labouring Poor (1817) Two Memorials on Behalf of the Working Classes (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 181 An Address to the Master Manufacturers of Great Britain: On the Present Existing Evils in the Manufacturing System (Bolton, 1819) Report to the County of Lanark of a Plan for relieving Public Distress (Glasgow: Glasgow University Press, 1821) An Explanation of the Cause of Distress which pervades the civilised parts of the world (London and Paris, 1823) An Address to All Classes in the State. London, 1832 The Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race. London, 1849 Collected works: A New View of Society and Other Writings, introduction by G. D. H. Cole. London and New York: J. M. Dent & Sons, E. P. Dutton and Co., 1927 A New View of Society and Other Writings, G. Claeys, ed. London and New York: Penguin Books, 1991 The Selected Works of Robert Owen, G. Claeys, ed., 4 vols. London: Pickering and Chatto, 1993 Archival collections: Robert Owen Collection, National Co-operative Archive, United Kingdom. New Harmony, Indiana, Collection, 1814–1884, 1920, 1964, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, Indiana, United States New Harmony Series III Collection, Workingmen's Institute, New Harmony, Indiana, United States Owen family collection, 1826–1967, bulk 1830–1890, Indiana University Archives, Bloomington, Indiana, United States See also Cincinnati Time Store José María Arizmendiarrieta Labour voucher List of Owenite communities in the United States Owenstown Owenism William King References Bibliography (online version) Further reading Biographies of Owen A. J. Booth, Robert Owen, the Founder of Socialism in England (London, 1869) G. D. H. Cole, Life of Robert Owen. London, Ernest Benn Ltd., 1925; second edition Macmillan, 1930 Lloyd Jones. The Life, Times, and Labours of Robert Owen. London, 1889 A. L. Morton, The Life and Ideas of Robert Owen. New York, International Publishers, 1969 W. H. Oliver, "Robert Owen and the English Working-Class Movements", History Today (November 1958) 8–11, pp. 787–796 F. A. Packard, Life of Robert Owen. Philadelphia: Ashmead & Evans, 1866 Frank Podmore, Robert Owen: A Biography. London: Hutchinson and Company, 1906 David Santilli, Life of the Mill Man. London, B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1987 William Lucas Sargant, Robert Owen and his social philosophy . London, 1860 Richard Tames, Radicals, Railways & Reform. London, B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1986 Other works about Owen Arthur Bestor, Backwoods Utopias. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950, 2nd edition, 1970 John Butt (ed). Robert Owen: Aspects of his Life and Work. Humanities Press, 1971 Gregory Claeys, Citizens and Saints. Politics and Anti-Politics in Early British Socialism. Cambridge University Press, 1989 Gregory Claeys, Machinery, Money and the Millennium: From Moral Economy to Socialism 1815–1860. Princeton University Press, 1987 R. E. Davies, The Life of Robert Owen, Philanthropist and Social Reformer, An Appreciation. Robert Sutton, 1907 R. E. Davis and F. J. O'Hagan, Robert Owen. London: Continuum Press, 2010 E. Dolleans, Robert Owen. Paris, 1905 I. Donnachie, Robert Owen. Owen of New Lanark and New Harmony. 2000 Auguste Marie Fabre, Un Socialiste Pratique, Robert Owen. Nìmes, Bureaux de l'Émancipation, 1896 John F. C. Harrison, Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America: Quest for the New Moral World. New York, 1969 Alexander Herzen, My Past and Thoughts (University of California Press, 1982). (One chapter is devoted to Owen.) G. J. Holyoake, The History of Co-operation in England: Its Literature and Its Advocates V. 1. London, 1906 G. J. Holyoake, The History of Co-operation in England: Its Literature and Its Advocates V. 2. London, 1906 The National Library of Wales, A Bibliography of Robert Owen, The Socialist. 1914 H. Simon, Robert Owen: Sein Leben und Seine Bedeutung für die Gegenwart. Jena, 1905 O. Siméon, Robert Owen's Experiment at New Lanark. From Paternalism to Socialism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017 External links Essays by Owen at the Marxists Internet Archive Brief biography at the New Lanark World Heritage Site The Robert Owen Museum, Newtown, Wales Video of Owen's wool mill Brief biography at Cotton Times "Robert Owen (1771-1858) social reformer, founder of New Harmony", University of Evansville, Indiana "Robert Owen and the Co-operative movement" Brief biography at The History Guide Brief biography at age-of-the-sage.org Heaven On Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism at PBS {dead link 2021-02-22} 1771 births 1858 deaths Cooperative organizers Founders of utopian communities People from Newtown, Powys Owenites Utopian socialists Welsh agnostics Welsh humanists 19th-century Welsh businesspeople 18th-century Welsh businesspeople Welsh business theorists Welsh philanthropists Welsh socialists British reformers British social reformers Socialist economists

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Is the New Lanark textile mill around today?

Is the New Lanark textile mill from 1785 around today?

Robert Owen

In July 1799 Owen and his partners bought the New Lanark mill from David Dale, and Owen became the New Lanark mill's manager in January 1800. Encouraged by his success in the management of cotton mills in Manchester, Owen hoped to conduct the New Lanark mill on higher principles than purely commercial ones. David Dale and Richard Arkwright had established the substantial mill at New Lanark in 1785. With its water power provided by the falls of the River Clyde, the cotton-spinning operation became one of Britain's largest. About 2,000 individuals were associations with the mill; 500 of them were children who were brought to the mill at the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dale, who was known for his benevolence, treated the children well, but the general condition of New Lanark's residents was unsatisfactory. Over the years, Dale and his son-in-law, Owen, worked to improve the factory workers' lives. Many of the workers were in the lowest levels of the population; theft, drunkenness, and other vices were common; education and sanitation were neglected; and most families lived in one room. The respectable country people refused to submit to the long hours and demoralising drudgery of the mills. Until a series of Truck Acts (1831-1887) required employees to be paid in common currency, many employers operated the truck system that paid workers in total or in part with tokens. The tokens had no monetary value outside the mill owner's "truck shop," where the owners could supply shoddy goods and charge top prices. In contrast to other employers, Owen's store offered goods at prices slightly above their wholesale cost. He also passed on the savings from the bulk purchase of goods to his workers, and placed the sale of alcohol under strict supervision. These principles became the basis for the cooperative shops in Britain, which continue in an altered form to trade today. CANNOTANSWER

CANNOTANSWER

Robert Owen (; 14 May 1771 – 17 November 1858) was a Welsh textile manufacturer, philanthropist and social reformer, and a founder of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement. He strove to improve factory working conditions, promoted experimental socialistic communities, and sought a more collective approach to child rearing, including government control of education. He gained wealth in the early 1800s from a textile mill at New Lanark, Scotland. Having trained as a draper in Stamford, Lincolnshire he worked in London before relocating aged 18 to Manchester and textile manufacturing. In 1824, he moved to America and put most of his fortune in an experimental socialistic community at New Harmony, Indiana, as a preliminary for his Utopian society. It lasted about two years. Other Owenite communities also failed, and in 1828 Owen returned to London, where he continued to champion the working class, lead in developing cooperatives and the trade union movement, and support child labour legislation and free co-educational schools. Early life and education Robert Owen was born in Newtown, a small market town in Montgomeryshire, Wales, on 14 May 1771, to Anne (Williams) and Robert Owen. His father was a saddler, ironmonger and local postmaster; his mother was the daughter of a Newtown farming family. Young Robert was the sixth of the family's seven children, two of whom died at a young age. His surviving siblings were William, Anne, John and Richard. Owen received little formal education, but he was an avid reader. He left school at the age of ten to be apprenticed to a Stamford, Lincolnshire, draper for four years. He also worked in London drapery shops in his teens. At about the age of 18, Owen moved to Manchester, where he spent the next twelve years of his life, employed initially at Satterfield's Drapery in Saint Ann's Square. While in Manchester, Owen borrowed £100 from his brother William, so as to enter into a partnership to make spinning mules, a new invention for spinning cotton thread, but exchanged his business share within a few months for six spinning mules that he worked in rented factory space. In 1792, when Owen was about 21 years old, mill-owner Peter Drinkwater made him manager of the Piccadilly Mill at Manchester. However, after two years with Drinkwater, Owen voluntarily gave up a contracted promise of partnership, left the company, and went into partnership with other entrepreneurs to establish and later manage the Chorlton Twist Mills in Chorlton-on-Medlock. By the early 1790s, Owen's entrepreneurial spirit, management skills and progressive moral views were emerging. In 1793, he was elected a member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, where the ideas of the Enlightenment were discussed. He also became a committee member of the Manchester Board of Health, instigated principally by Thomas Percival to press for improvements in the health and working conditions of factory workers. Marriage and family On a visit to Scotland, Owen met and fell in love with Ann (or Anne) Caroline Dale, daughter of David Dale, a Glasgow philanthropist and the proprietor of the large New Lanark Mills. After their marriage on 30 September 1799, the Owens set up home in New Lanark, but later moved to Braxfield, Scotland. Robert and Caroline Owen had eight children, the first of whom died in infancy. Their seven survivors were four sons and three daughters: Robert Dale (1801–1877), William (1802–1842), Ann (or Anne) Caroline (1805–1831), Jane Dale (1805–1861), David Dale (1807–1860), Richard Dale (1809–1890) and Mary (1810–1832). Owen's four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale and Richard, and his daughter Jane Dale, followed their father to the United States, becoming US citizens and permanent residents in New Harmony, Indiana. Owen's wife Caroline and two of their daughters, Anne Caroline and Mary, remained in Britain, where they died in the 1830s. New Lanark mill In July 1799 Owen and his partners bought the New Lanark mill from David Dale, and Owen became its manager in January 1800. Encouraged by his management success in Manchester, Owen hoped to conduct the New Lanark mill on higher principles than purely commercial ones. It had been established in 1785 by David Dale and Richard Arkwright. Its water power provided by the falls of the River Clyde turned its cotton-spinning operation into one of Britain's largest. About 2,000 individuals were involved, 500 of them children brought to the mill at the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dale, known for his benevolence, treated the children well, but the general condition of New Lanark residents was unsatisfactory, despite efforts by Dale and his son-in-law Owen to improve their workers' lives. Many of the workers were from the lowest social levels: theft, drunkenness and other vices were common and education and sanitation neglected. Most families lived in one room. More respected people rejected the long hours and demoralising drudgery of the mills. Until a series of Truck Acts (1831–1887) required employers to pay their employees in common currency, many operated a truck system, paying workers wholly or in part with tokens that had no monetary value outside the mill owner's "truck shop", which charged high prices for shoddy goods. Unlike others, Owen's truck store offered goods at prices only slightly above their wholesale cost, passing on the savings from bulk purchases to his customers and placing alcohol sales under strict supervision. These principles became the basis for Britain's Co-operative shops, some of which continue trading in altered forms to this day. Philosophy and influence Owen tested his social and economic ideas at New Lanark, where he won his workers' confidence and continued to have success through the improved efficiency at the mill. The community also earned an international reputation. Social reformers, statesmen and royalty, including the future Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, visited New Lanark to study its methods. The opinions of many such visitors were favourable. Owen's biggest success was in support of youth education and early child care. As a pioneer in Britain, notably Scotland, Owen provided an alternative to the "normal authoritarian approach to child education". The manners of children brought up under his system were more graceful, genial and unconstrained; health, plenty and contentment prevailed; drunkenness was almost unknown and illegitimacy extremely rare. Owen's relations with his workers remained excellent and operations at the mill proceeded in a smooth, regular and commercially successful way. However, some of Owen's schemes displeased his partners, forcing him to arrange for other investors to buy his share of the business in 1813, for the equivalent of US$800,000. The new investors, who included Jeremy Bentham and the well-known Quaker William Allen, were content to accept a £5,000 return on their capital. The ownership change also provided Owen with a chance to broaden his philanthropy, advocating improvements in workers' rights and child labour laws, and free education for children. In 1813 Owen authored and published A New View of Society, or Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character, the first of four essays he wrote to explain the principles behind his philosophy of socialistic reform. In this he writes: Owen had originally been a follower of the classical liberal, utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, who believed that free markets, in particular the right of workers to move and choose their employers, would release workers from the excessive power of capitalists. However, Owen developed his own, pro-socialist outlook. In addition, Owen as a deist, criticised organised religion, including the Church of England, and developed a belief system of his own. Owen felt that human character is formed by conditions over which individuals have no control. Thus individuals could not be praised or blamed for their behaviour or situation in life. This principle led Owen to conclude that the correct formation of people's characters called for placing them under proper environmental influences – physical, moral and social – from their earliest years. These notions of inherent irresponsibility in humans and the effect of early influences on an individual's character formed the basis of Owen's system of education and social reform. Relying on his own observations, experiences and thoughts, Owen saw his view of human nature as original and "the most basic and necessary constituent in an evolving science of society". His philosophy was influenced by Sir Isaac Newton's views on natural law, and his views resembled those of Plato, Denis Diderot, Claude Adrien Helvétius, William Godwin, John Locke, James Mill, and Jeremy Bentham, among others. Owen did not have the direct influence of Enlightenment philosophers. Owen's work at New Lanark continued to have significance in Britain and continental Europe. He was a "pioneer in factory reform, the father of distributive cooperation, and the founder of nursery schools." His schemes for educating his workers included opening an Institute for the Formation of Character at New Lanark in 1818. This and other programmes at New Lanark provided free education from infancy to adulthood. In addition, he zealously supported factory legislation that culminated in the Cotton Mills and Factories Act of 1819. Owen also had interviews and communications with leading members of the British government, including its premier, Robert Banks Jenkinson, Lord Liverpool. He also met many of the rulers and leading statesmen of Europe. Owen adopted new principles to raise the standard of goods his workers produced. A cube with faces painted in different colours was installed above each machinist's workplace. The colour of the face showed to all who saw it the quality and quantity of goods the worker completed. The intention was to encourage workers to do their best. Although it was no great incentive in itself, conditions at New Lanark for workers and their families were idyllic for the time. Eight-hour day Owen raised the demand for an eight-hour day in 1810 and set about instituting the policy at New Lanark. By 1817 he had formulated the goal of an eight-hour working day with the slogan "eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest". Models for socialism (1817) Owen embraced socialism in 1817, a turning point in his life, in which he pursued a "New View of Society". He outlined his position in a report to the committee of the House of Commons on the country's Poor Laws. As misery and trade stagnation after the Napoleonic Wars drew national attention, the government called on Owen for advice on how to alleviate the industrial concerns. Although he ascribed the immediate misery to the wars, he saw as the underlying cause competition of human labour with machinery, and recommended setting up self-sufficient communities. Owen proposed that communities of some 1,200 people should settle on land from , all living in one building with a public kitchen and dining halls. (The proposed size may have been influenced by the size of the village of New Lanark.) Owen also proposed that each family have its own private apartments and the responsibility for the care of its children up to the age of three. Thereafter children would be raised by the community, but their parents would have access to them at mealtimes and on other occasions. Owen further suggested that such communities be established by individuals, parishes, counties, or other governmental units. In each case there would be effective supervision by qualified persons. Work and enjoyment of its results should be experienced communally. Owen believed his idea would be the best way to reorganise society in general, and called his vision the "New Moral World". Owen's utopian model changed little in his lifetime. His developed model envisaged an association of 500–3,000 people as the optimum for a working community. While mainly agricultural, it would possess the best machinery, offer varied employment, and as far as possible be self-contained. Owen went on to explain that as such communities proliferated, "unions of them federatively united shall be formed in circle of tens, hundreds and thousands", linked by common interest. Arguments against Owen and his answers Owen always tried to spread his ideas to wider communities. First, he started publishing his ideas in newspapers. Owen then sent such newspapers widely to parliamentarians, politicians and other important people. These articles spurred the first negative reactions to his ideas. Opponents thought that Owen's plans would result in an uncontrollable increase in population and poverty. The other main criticism was that Owen's plan and the common use of everything would essentially make the country one large workshop. William Hone claimed that Owen saw people as unravelled plants from their roots, and that he wanted to plant them in rectangles. Another commentator accused Owen of wanting to imprison people in workshops like barracks and eradicate their personal independence. Owen's opponents had begun to regard him as an enemy of religion. His influence in ruling circles, which he had hoped would help him to accomplish his "plan", started diminishing and rumours of his lack of religious conviction spread. Owen believed that without a change in the character of individuals and the environment in which they live, they would remain hostile to those around them. As long as such a social order continued, the positive aspects of Christianity could never be put into practice. Owen also considered it necessary to give people more freedom in order to improve the situation of the poor and working classes. Unless people were better educated, unless they gained more useful information and had permanent employment, they were a danger to the security of the state when given more freedom than the British Constitution did at the time. Without making any changes in the national institutions, he believed that even reorganizing the working classes would bring great benefits. So he opposed the views of radicals seeking to change in the public mentality by expanding voting rights. Other notable critics of Owen include Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who viewed his work as a precursor to their own. They recognized in Owen the important understanding, developed by Marx in Capital, that it is the working class that are responsible for creating the unparalleled wealth in capitalist societies. Similarly, Owen also recognized that under the existing economic system, the working class did not automatically receive the benefits of that newly created wealth. Marx and Engels, differentiated, however, their own scientific conception of socialism from Owen's societies. They argued that Owen's plan, to create a model socialist utopia to coexist with contemporary society and prove its superiority over time, was insufficient to create a new society. In their view, Owen's "socialism" was utopian, since to Owen and the other utopian socialists "[s]ocialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own power." Marx and Engels believed that the overthrow of the capitalist system could only occur once the working class was organized into a revolutionary socialist political party of the working class that was completely independent of all capitalist class influence whereas the utopians sought the assistance and the co-operation of the capitalists in order to achieve the transition to socialism. Community experiments To test the viability of his ideas for self-sufficient working communities, Owen began experimenting in communal living in America in 1825. Among the most famous efforts was the one set up at New Harmony, Indiana. Of the 130 identifiable communitarian experiments in America before the American Civil War, at least 16 were Owenite or Owenite-influenced. New Harmony was Owen's earliest and most ambitious of these. Owen and his son William sailed to America in October 1824 to establish an experimental community in Indiana. In January 1825 Owen used a portion of his own funds to purchase an existing town of 180 buildings and several thousand acres of land along the Wabash River in Indiana. George Rapp's Harmony Society, the religious group that owned the property and had founded the communal village of Harmony (or Harmonie) on the site in 1814, decided in 1824 to relocate to Pennsylvania. Owen renamed it New Harmony and made the village his preliminary model for a Utopian community. Owen sought support for his socialist vision among American thinkers, reformers, intellectuals and public statesmen. On 25 February and 7 March 1825, Owen gave addresses in the U.S. House of Representatives to the U.S. Congress and others in the US government, outlining his vision for the Utopian community at New Harmony, and his socialist beliefs. The audience for his ideas included three former U.S. presidents – John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison) – the outgoing US President James Monroe, and the President-elect, John Quincy Adams. His meetings were perhaps the first discussions of socialism in the Americas; they were certainly a big step towards discussion of it in the United States. Owenism, among the first socialist ideologies active in the United States, can be seen as an instigator of the later socialist movement. Owen convinced William Maclure, a wealthy Scottish scientist and philanthropist living in Philadelphia to join him at New Harmony and become his financial partner. Maclure's involvement went on to attract scientists, educators and artists such as Thomas Say, Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, and Madame Marie Duclos Fretageot. These helped to turn the New Harmony community into a centre for educational reform, scientific research and artistic expression. Although Owen sought to build a "Village of Unity and Mutual Cooperation" south of the town, his grand plan was never fully realised and he returned to Britain to continue his work. During his long absences from New Harmony, Owen left the experiment under the day-to-day management of his sons, Robert Dale Owen and William Owen, and his business partner, Maclure. However, New Harmony proved to be an economic failure, lasting about two years, although it had attracted over a thousand residents by the end of its first year. The socialistic society was dissolved in 1827, but many of its scientists, educators, artists and other inhabitants, including Owen's four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale, and Richard Dale Owen, and his daughter Jane Dale Owen Fauntleroy, remained at New Harmony after the experiment ended. Other experiments in the United States included communal settlements at Blue Spring, near Bloomington, Indiana, at Yellow Springs, Ohio, and at Forestville Commonwealth at Earlton, New York, as well as other projects in New York, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. Nearly all of these had ended before New Harmony was dissolved in April 1827. Owen's Utopian communities attracted a mix of people, many with the highest aims. They included vagrants, adventurers and other reform-minded enthusiasts. In the words of Owen's son David Dale Owen, they attracted "a heterogeneous collection of Radicals", "enthusiastic devotees to principle," and "honest latitudinarians, and lazy theorists," with "a sprinkling of unprincipled sharpers thrown in." Josiah Warren, a participant at New Harmony, asserted that it was doomed to failure for lack of individual sovereignty and personal property. In describing the community, Warren explained: "We had a world in miniature – we had enacted the French revolution over again with despairing hearts instead of corpses as a result.... It appeared that it was nature's own inherent law of diversity that had conquered us... our 'united interests' were directly at war with the individualities of persons and circumstances and the instinct of self-preservation...." Warren's observations on the reasons for the community's failure led to the development of American individualist anarchism, of which he was its original theorist. Some historians have traced the demise of New Harmony to serial disagreements among its members. Social experiments also began in Scotland in 1825, when Abram Combe, an Owenite, attempted a utopian experiment at Orbiston, near Glasgow, but this failed after about two years. In the 1830s, additional experiments in socialistic cooperatives were made in Ireland and Britain, the most important being at Ralahine, established in 1831 in County Clare, Ireland, and at Tytherley, begun in 1839 in Hampshire, England. The former proved a remarkable success for three-and-a-half years until the proprietor, having ruined himself by gambling, had to sell his interest. Tytherley, known as Harmony Hall or Queenwood College, was designed by the architect Joseph Hansom. This also failed. Another social experiment, Manea Colony in the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, launched in the late 1830s by William Hodson, likewise an Owenite, but it failed in a couple of years and Hodson emigrated to the United States. The Manea Colony site has been excavated by Cambridge Archaeology Unit (CAU) based at the University of Cambridge. Return to Britain Although Owen made further brief visits to the United States, London became his permanent home and the centre of his work in 1828. After extended friction with William Allen and some other business partners, Owen relinquished all connections with New Lanark. He is often quoted in a comment by Allen at the time, "All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer". Having invested most of his fortune in the failed New Harmony communal experiment, Owen was no longer a wealthy capitalist. However, he remained the head of a vigorous propaganda effort to promote industrial equality, free education for children and adequate living conditions in factory towns, while delivering lectures in Europe and publishing a weekly newspaper to gain support for his ideas. In 1832 Owen opened the National Equitable Labour Exchange system, a time-based currency in which the exchange of goods was effected by means of labour notes; this system superseded the usual means of exchange and middlemen. The London exchange continued until 1833, a Birmingham branch operating for just a few months until July 1833. Owen also became involved in trade unionism, briefly leading the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union (GNCTU) before its collapse in 1834. Socialism first became current in British terminology in discussions of the Association of all Classes of all Nations, which Owen formed in 1835 and served as its initial leader. Owen's secular views also gained enough influence among the working classes to cause the Westminster Review to comment in 1839 that his principles were the creed of many of them. However, by 1846, the only lasting result of Owen's agitation for social change, carried on through public meetings, pamphlets, periodicals, and occasional treatises, remained the Co-operative movement, and for a time even that seemed to have collapsed. Role in spiritualism In 1817, Owen publicly claimed that all religions were false. In 1854, aged 83, Owen converted to spiritualism after a series of sittings with Maria B. Hayden, an American medium credited with introducing spiritualism to England. He made a public profession of his new faith in his publication The Rational Quarterly Review and in a pamphlet titled The future of the Human race; or great glorious and future revolution to be effected through the agency of departed spirits of good and superior men and women. Owen claimed to have had medium contact with spirits of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and others. He explained that the purpose of these was to change "the present, false, disunited and miserable state of human existence, for a true, united and happy state... to prepare the world for universal peace, and to infuse into all the spirit of charity, forbearance and love." Spiritualists claimed after Owen's death that his spirit had dictated to the medium Emma Hardinge Britten in 1871 the "Seven Principles of Spiritualism", used by their National Union as "the basis of its religious philosophy". Death and legacy As Owen grew older and more radical in his views, his influence began to decline. Owen published his memoirs, The Life of Robert Owen, in 1857, a year before his death. Although he had spent most of his life in England and Scotland, Owen returned to his native town of Newtown at the end of his life. He died there on 17 November 1858 and was buried there on 21 November. He died penniless apart from an annual income drawn from a trust established by his sons in 1844. Owen was a reformer, philanthropist, community builder, and spiritualist who spent his life seeking to improve the lives of others. An advocate of the working class, he improved working conditions for factory workers, which he demonstrated at New Lanark, Scotland, became a leader in trade unionism, promoted social equality through his experimental Utopian communities, and supported the passage of child labour laws and free education for children. In these reforms he was ahead of his time. He envisioned a communal society that others could consider and apply as they wished. In Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race (1849), he went on to say that character is formed by a combination of Nature or God and the circumstances of the individual's experience. Citing beneficial results at New Lanark, Scotland, during 30 years of work there, Owen concluded that a person's "character is not made by, but for the individual," and that nature and society are responsible for each person's character and conduct. Owen's agitation for social change, along with the work of the Owenites and of his own children, helped to bring lasting social reforms in women's and workers' rights, establish free public libraries and museums, child care and public, co-educational schools, and pre-Marxian communism, and develop the Co-operative and trade union movements. New Harmony, Indiana, and New Lanark, Scotland, two towns with which he is closely associated, remain as reminders of his efforts. Owen's legacy of public service continued with his four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale, and Richard Dale, and his daughter, Jane, who followed him to America to live at New Harmony, Indiana: Robert Dale Owen (1801–1877), an able exponent of his father's doctrines, managed the New Harmony community after his father returned to Britain in 1825. He wrote articles and co-edited with Frances Wright the New-Harmony Gazette in the late 1820s in Indiana and the Free Enquirer in the 1830s in New York City. Owen returned to New Harmony in 1833 and became active in Indiana politics. He was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives (1836–1839 and 1851–1853) and U.S. House of Representatives (1843–1847), and was appointed chargé d'affaires in Naples in 1853–1858. While serving as a member of Congress, he drafted and helped to secure passage of a bill founding the Smithsonian Institution in 1846. He was elected a delegate to the Indiana Constitutional Convention in 1850, and argued in support of widows and married women's property and divorce rights. He also favoured legislation for Indiana's tax-supported public school system. Like his father, he believed in spiritualism, authoring two books on the subject: Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World (1859) and The Debatable Land Between this World and the Next (1872). William Owen (1802–1842) moved to the United States with his father in 1824. His business skill, notably his knowledge of cotton-goods manufacturing, allowed him to remain at New Harmony after his father returned to Scotland, and serve as adviser to the community. He organised New Harmony's Thespian Society in 1827, but died of unknown causes at the age of 40. Jane Dale Owen Fauntleroy (1805–1861) arrived in the United States in 1833 and settled in New Harmony. She was a musician and educator who set up a school in her home. In 1835 she married Robert Henry Fauntleroy, a civil engineer from Virginia living at New Harmony. David Dale Owen (1807–1860) moved to the United States in 1827 and resided at New Harmony for several years. He trained as a geologist and natural scientist and earned a medical degree. He was appointed a United States geologist in 1839. His work included geological surveys in the Midwest, more specifically the states of Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas, as well as Minnesota Territory. His brother Richard succeeded him as state geologist of Indiana. Richard Dale Owen (1810–1890) emigrated to the United States in 1827 and joined his siblings at New Harmony. He fought in the Mexican–American War in 1847, taught natural science at Western Military Institute in Tennessee in 1849–1859, and earned a medical degree in 1858. During the American Civil War he was a colonel in the Union army and served as a commandant of Camp Morton, a prisoner-of-war camp for Confederate soldiers at Indianapolis, Indiana. After the war, Owen served as Indiana's second state geologist. In addition, he was a professor at Indiana University and chaired its natural science department in 1864–1879. He helped plan Purdue University and was appointed its first president in 1872–1874, but resigned before its classes began and resumed teaching at Indiana University. He spent his retirement years on research and writing. Honours and tributes The Co-operative Movement erected a monument to Robert Owen in 1902 at his burial site in Newtown, Montgomeryshire. The Welsh people donated a bust of Owen by Welsh sculptor Sir William Goscombe John to the International Labour Office library in Geneva, Switzerland. Selected published works A New View of Society: Or, Essays on the Formation of Human Character, and the Application of the Principle to Practice (London, 1813). Retitled, A New View of Society: Or, Essays on the Formation of Human Character Preparatory to the Development of a Plan for Gradually Ameliorating the Condition of Mankind, for second edition, 1816 Observations on the Effect of the Manufacturing System. London, 1815 Report to the Committee of the Association for the Relief of the Manufacturing and Labouring Poor (1817) Two Memorials on Behalf of the Working Classes (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 181 An Address to the Master Manufacturers of Great Britain: On the Present Existing Evils in the Manufacturing System (Bolton, 1819) Report to the County of Lanark of a Plan for relieving Public Distress (Glasgow: Glasgow University Press, 1821) An Explanation of the Cause of Distress which pervades the civilised parts of the world (London and Paris, 1823) An Address to All Classes in the State. London, 1832 The Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race. London, 1849 Collected works: A New View of Society and Other Writings, introduction by G. D. H. Cole. London and New York: J. M. Dent & Sons, E. P. Dutton and Co., 1927 A New View of Society and Other Writings, G. Claeys, ed. London and New York: Penguin Books, 1991 The Selected Works of Robert Owen, G. Claeys, ed., 4 vols. London: Pickering and Chatto, 1993 Archival collections: Robert Owen Collection, National Co-operative Archive, United Kingdom. New Harmony, Indiana, Collection, 1814–1884, 1920, 1964, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, Indiana, United States New Harmony Series III Collection, Workingmen's Institute, New Harmony, Indiana, United States Owen family collection, 1826–1967, bulk 1830–1890, Indiana University Archives, Bloomington, Indiana, United States See also Cincinnati Time Store José María Arizmendiarrieta Labour voucher List of Owenite communities in the United States Owenstown Owenism William King References Bibliography (online version) Further reading Biographies of Owen A. J. Booth, Robert Owen, the Founder of Socialism in England (London, 1869) G. D. H. Cole, Life of Robert Owen. London, Ernest Benn Ltd., 1925; second edition Macmillan, 1930 Lloyd Jones. The Life, Times, and Labours of Robert Owen. London, 1889 A. L. Morton, The Life and Ideas of Robert Owen. New York, International Publishers, 1969 W. H. Oliver, "Robert Owen and the English Working-Class Movements", History Today (November 1958) 8–11, pp. 787–796 F. A. Packard, Life of Robert Owen. Philadelphia: Ashmead & Evans, 1866 Frank Podmore, Robert Owen: A Biography. London: Hutchinson and Company, 1906 David Santilli, Life of the Mill Man. London, B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1987 William Lucas Sargant, Robert Owen and his social philosophy . London, 1860 Richard Tames, Radicals, Railways & Reform. London, B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1986 Other works about Owen Arthur Bestor, Backwoods Utopias. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950, 2nd edition, 1970 John Butt (ed). Robert Owen: Aspects of his Life and Work. Humanities Press, 1971 Gregory Claeys, Citizens and Saints. Politics and Anti-Politics in Early British Socialism. Cambridge University Press, 1989 Gregory Claeys, Machinery, Money and the Millennium: From Moral Economy to Socialism 1815–1860. Princeton University Press, 1987 R. E. Davies, The Life of Robert Owen, Philanthropist and Social Reformer, An Appreciation. Robert Sutton, 1907 R. E. Davis and F. J. O'Hagan, Robert Owen. London: Continuum Press, 2010 E. Dolleans, Robert Owen. Paris, 1905 I. Donnachie, Robert Owen. Owen of New Lanark and New Harmony. 2000 Auguste Marie Fabre, Un Socialiste Pratique, Robert Owen. Nìmes, Bureaux de l'Émancipation, 1896 John F. C. Harrison, Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America: Quest for the New Moral World. New York, 1969 Alexander Herzen, My Past and Thoughts (University of California Press, 1982). (One chapter is devoted to Owen.) G. J. Holyoake, The History of Co-operation in England: Its Literature and Its Advocates V. 1. London, 1906 G. J. Holyoake, The History of Co-operation in England: Its Literature and Its Advocates V. 2. London, 1906 The National Library of Wales, A Bibliography of Robert Owen, The Socialist. 1914 H. Simon, Robert Owen: Sein Leben und Seine Bedeutung für die Gegenwart. Jena, 1905 O. Siméon, Robert Owen's Experiment at New Lanark. From Paternalism to Socialism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017 External links Essays by Owen at the Marxists Internet Archive Brief biography at the New Lanark World Heritage Site The Robert Owen Museum, Newtown, Wales Video of Owen's wool mill Brief biography at Cotton Times "Robert Owen (1771-1858) social reformer, founder of New Harmony", University of Evansville, Indiana "Robert Owen and the Co-operative movement" Brief biography at The History Guide Brief biography at age-of-the-sage.org Heaven On Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism at PBS {dead link 2021-02-22} 1771 births 1858 deaths Cooperative organizers Founders of utopian communities People from Newtown, Powys Owenites Utopian socialists Welsh agnostics Welsh humanists 19th-century Welsh businesspeople 18th-century Welsh businesspeople Welsh business theorists Welsh philanthropists Welsh socialists British reformers British social reformers Socialist economists

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Robert Owen

In July 1799 Owen and his partners bought the New Lanark mill from David Dale, and Owen became the New Lanark mill's manager in January 1800. Encouraged by his success in the management of cotton mills in Manchester, Owen hoped to conduct the New Lanark mill on higher principles than purely commercial ones. David Dale and Richard Arkwright had established the substantial mill at New Lanark in 1785. With its water power provided by the falls of the River Clyde, the cotton-spinning operation became one of Britain's largest. About 2,000 individuals were associations with the mill; 500 of them were children who were brought to the mill at the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dale, who was known for his benevolence, treated the children well, but the general condition of New Lanark's residents was unsatisfactory. Over the years, Dale and his son-in-law, Owen, worked to improve the factory workers' lives. Many of the workers were in the lowest levels of the population; theft, drunkenness, and other vices were common; education and sanitation were neglected; and most families lived in one room. The respectable country people refused to submit to the long hours and demoralising drudgery of the mills. Until a series of Truck Acts (1831-1887) required employees to be paid in common currency, many employers operated the truck system that paid workers in total or in part with tokens. The tokens had no monetary value outside the mill owner's "truck shop," where the owners could supply shoddy goods and charge top prices. In contrast to other employers, Owen's store offered goods at prices slightly above their wholesale cost. He also passed on the savings from the bulk purchase of goods to his workers, and placed the sale of alcohol under strict supervision. These principles became the basis for the cooperative shops in Britain, which continue in an altered form to trade today. CANNOTANSWER

New Lanark's residents was unsatisfactory.

Robert Owen (; 14 May 1771 – 17 November 1858) was a Welsh textile manufacturer, philanthropist and social reformer, and a founder of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement. He strove to improve factory working conditions, promoted experimental socialistic communities, and sought a more collective approach to child rearing, including government control of education. He gained wealth in the early 1800s from a textile mill at New Lanark, Scotland. Having trained as a draper in Stamford, Lincolnshire he worked in London before relocating aged 18 to Manchester and textile manufacturing. In 1824, he moved to America and put most of his fortune in an experimental socialistic community at New Harmony, Indiana, as a preliminary for his Utopian society. It lasted about two years. Other Owenite communities also failed, and in 1828 Owen returned to London, where he continued to champion the working class, lead in developing cooperatives and the trade union movement, and support child labour legislation and free co-educational schools. Early life and education Robert Owen was born in Newtown, a small market town in Montgomeryshire, Wales, on 14 May 1771, to Anne (Williams) and Robert Owen. His father was a saddler, ironmonger and local postmaster; his mother was the daughter of a Newtown farming family. Young Robert was the sixth of the family's seven children, two of whom died at a young age. His surviving siblings were William, Anne, John and Richard. Owen received little formal education, but he was an avid reader. He left school at the age of ten to be apprenticed to a Stamford, Lincolnshire, draper for four years. He also worked in London drapery shops in his teens. At about the age of 18, Owen moved to Manchester, where he spent the next twelve years of his life, employed initially at Satterfield's Drapery in Saint Ann's Square. While in Manchester, Owen borrowed £100 from his brother William, so as to enter into a partnership to make spinning mules, a new invention for spinning cotton thread, but exchanged his business share within a few months for six spinning mules that he worked in rented factory space. In 1792, when Owen was about 21 years old, mill-owner Peter Drinkwater made him manager of the Piccadilly Mill at Manchester. However, after two years with Drinkwater, Owen voluntarily gave up a contracted promise of partnership, left the company, and went into partnership with other entrepreneurs to establish and later manage the Chorlton Twist Mills in Chorlton-on-Medlock. By the early 1790s, Owen's entrepreneurial spirit, management skills and progressive moral views were emerging. In 1793, he was elected a member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, where the ideas of the Enlightenment were discussed. He also became a committee member of the Manchester Board of Health, instigated principally by Thomas Percival to press for improvements in the health and working conditions of factory workers. Marriage and family On a visit to Scotland, Owen met and fell in love with Ann (or Anne) Caroline Dale, daughter of David Dale, a Glasgow philanthropist and the proprietor of the large New Lanark Mills. After their marriage on 30 September 1799, the Owens set up home in New Lanark, but later moved to Braxfield, Scotland. Robert and Caroline Owen had eight children, the first of whom died in infancy. Their seven survivors were four sons and three daughters: Robert Dale (1801–1877), William (1802–1842), Ann (or Anne) Caroline (1805–1831), Jane Dale (1805–1861), David Dale (1807–1860), Richard Dale (1809–1890) and Mary (1810–1832). Owen's four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale and Richard, and his daughter Jane Dale, followed their father to the United States, becoming US citizens and permanent residents in New Harmony, Indiana. Owen's wife Caroline and two of their daughters, Anne Caroline and Mary, remained in Britain, where they died in the 1830s. New Lanark mill In July 1799 Owen and his partners bought the New Lanark mill from David Dale, and Owen became its manager in January 1800. Encouraged by his management success in Manchester, Owen hoped to conduct the New Lanark mill on higher principles than purely commercial ones. It had been established in 1785 by David Dale and Richard Arkwright. Its water power provided by the falls of the River Clyde turned its cotton-spinning operation into one of Britain's largest. About 2,000 individuals were involved, 500 of them children brought to the mill at the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dale, known for his benevolence, treated the children well, but the general condition of New Lanark residents was unsatisfactory, despite efforts by Dale and his son-in-law Owen to improve their workers' lives. Many of the workers were from the lowest social levels: theft, drunkenness and other vices were common and education and sanitation neglected. Most families lived in one room. More respected people rejected the long hours and demoralising drudgery of the mills. Until a series of Truck Acts (1831–1887) required employers to pay their employees in common currency, many operated a truck system, paying workers wholly or in part with tokens that had no monetary value outside the mill owner's "truck shop", which charged high prices for shoddy goods. Unlike others, Owen's truck store offered goods at prices only slightly above their wholesale cost, passing on the savings from bulk purchases to his customers and placing alcohol sales under strict supervision. These principles became the basis for Britain's Co-operative shops, some of which continue trading in altered forms to this day. Philosophy and influence Owen tested his social and economic ideas at New Lanark, where he won his workers' confidence and continued to have success through the improved efficiency at the mill. The community also earned an international reputation. Social reformers, statesmen and royalty, including the future Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, visited New Lanark to study its methods. The opinions of many such visitors were favourable. Owen's biggest success was in support of youth education and early child care. As a pioneer in Britain, notably Scotland, Owen provided an alternative to the "normal authoritarian approach to child education". The manners of children brought up under his system were more graceful, genial and unconstrained; health, plenty and contentment prevailed; drunkenness was almost unknown and illegitimacy extremely rare. Owen's relations with his workers remained excellent and operations at the mill proceeded in a smooth, regular and commercially successful way. However, some of Owen's schemes displeased his partners, forcing him to arrange for other investors to buy his share of the business in 1813, for the equivalent of US$800,000. The new investors, who included Jeremy Bentham and the well-known Quaker William Allen, were content to accept a £5,000 return on their capital. The ownership change also provided Owen with a chance to broaden his philanthropy, advocating improvements in workers' rights and child labour laws, and free education for children. In 1813 Owen authored and published A New View of Society, or Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character, the first of four essays he wrote to explain the principles behind his philosophy of socialistic reform. In this he writes: Owen had originally been a follower of the classical liberal, utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, who believed that free markets, in particular the right of workers to move and choose their employers, would release workers from the excessive power of capitalists. However, Owen developed his own, pro-socialist outlook. In addition, Owen as a deist, criticised organised religion, including the Church of England, and developed a belief system of his own. Owen felt that human character is formed by conditions over which individuals have no control. Thus individuals could not be praised or blamed for their behaviour or situation in life. This principle led Owen to conclude that the correct formation of people's characters called for placing them under proper environmental influences – physical, moral and social – from their earliest years. These notions of inherent irresponsibility in humans and the effect of early influences on an individual's character formed the basis of Owen's system of education and social reform. Relying on his own observations, experiences and thoughts, Owen saw his view of human nature as original and "the most basic and necessary constituent in an evolving science of society". His philosophy was influenced by Sir Isaac Newton's views on natural law, and his views resembled those of Plato, Denis Diderot, Claude Adrien Helvétius, William Godwin, John Locke, James Mill, and Jeremy Bentham, among others. Owen did not have the direct influence of Enlightenment philosophers. Owen's work at New Lanark continued to have significance in Britain and continental Europe. He was a "pioneer in factory reform, the father of distributive cooperation, and the founder of nursery schools." His schemes for educating his workers included opening an Institute for the Formation of Character at New Lanark in 1818. This and other programmes at New Lanark provided free education from infancy to adulthood. In addition, he zealously supported factory legislation that culminated in the Cotton Mills and Factories Act of 1819. Owen also had interviews and communications with leading members of the British government, including its premier, Robert Banks Jenkinson, Lord Liverpool. He also met many of the rulers and leading statesmen of Europe. Owen adopted new principles to raise the standard of goods his workers produced. A cube with faces painted in different colours was installed above each machinist's workplace. The colour of the face showed to all who saw it the quality and quantity of goods the worker completed. The intention was to encourage workers to do their best. Although it was no great incentive in itself, conditions at New Lanark for workers and their families were idyllic for the time. Eight-hour day Owen raised the demand for an eight-hour day in 1810 and set about instituting the policy at New Lanark. By 1817 he had formulated the goal of an eight-hour working day with the slogan "eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest". Models for socialism (1817) Owen embraced socialism in 1817, a turning point in his life, in which he pursued a "New View of Society". He outlined his position in a report to the committee of the House of Commons on the country's Poor Laws. As misery and trade stagnation after the Napoleonic Wars drew national attention, the government called on Owen for advice on how to alleviate the industrial concerns. Although he ascribed the immediate misery to the wars, he saw as the underlying cause competition of human labour with machinery, and recommended setting up self-sufficient communities. Owen proposed that communities of some 1,200 people should settle on land from , all living in one building with a public kitchen and dining halls. (The proposed size may have been influenced by the size of the village of New Lanark.) Owen also proposed that each family have its own private apartments and the responsibility for the care of its children up to the age of three. Thereafter children would be raised by the community, but their parents would have access to them at mealtimes and on other occasions. Owen further suggested that such communities be established by individuals, parishes, counties, or other governmental units. In each case there would be effective supervision by qualified persons. Work and enjoyment of its results should be experienced communally. Owen believed his idea would be the best way to reorganise society in general, and called his vision the "New Moral World". Owen's utopian model changed little in his lifetime. His developed model envisaged an association of 500–3,000 people as the optimum for a working community. While mainly agricultural, it would possess the best machinery, offer varied employment, and as far as possible be self-contained. Owen went on to explain that as such communities proliferated, "unions of them federatively united shall be formed in circle of tens, hundreds and thousands", linked by common interest. Arguments against Owen and his answers Owen always tried to spread his ideas to wider communities. First, he started publishing his ideas in newspapers. Owen then sent such newspapers widely to parliamentarians, politicians and other important people. These articles spurred the first negative reactions to his ideas. Opponents thought that Owen's plans would result in an uncontrollable increase in population and poverty. The other main criticism was that Owen's plan and the common use of everything would essentially make the country one large workshop. William Hone claimed that Owen saw people as unravelled plants from their roots, and that he wanted to plant them in rectangles. Another commentator accused Owen of wanting to imprison people in workshops like barracks and eradicate their personal independence. Owen's opponents had begun to regard him as an enemy of religion. His influence in ruling circles, which he had hoped would help him to accomplish his "plan", started diminishing and rumours of his lack of religious conviction spread. Owen believed that without a change in the character of individuals and the environment in which they live, they would remain hostile to those around them. As long as such a social order continued, the positive aspects of Christianity could never be put into practice. Owen also considered it necessary to give people more freedom in order to improve the situation of the poor and working classes. Unless people were better educated, unless they gained more useful information and had permanent employment, they were a danger to the security of the state when given more freedom than the British Constitution did at the time. Without making any changes in the national institutions, he believed that even reorganizing the working classes would bring great benefits. So he opposed the views of radicals seeking to change in the public mentality by expanding voting rights. Other notable critics of Owen include Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who viewed his work as a precursor to their own. They recognized in Owen the important understanding, developed by Marx in Capital, that it is the working class that are responsible for creating the unparalleled wealth in capitalist societies. Similarly, Owen also recognized that under the existing economic system, the working class did not automatically receive the benefits of that newly created wealth. Marx and Engels, differentiated, however, their own scientific conception of socialism from Owen's societies. They argued that Owen's plan, to create a model socialist utopia to coexist with contemporary society and prove its superiority over time, was insufficient to create a new society. In their view, Owen's "socialism" was utopian, since to Owen and the other utopian socialists "[s]ocialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own power." Marx and Engels believed that the overthrow of the capitalist system could only occur once the working class was organized into a revolutionary socialist political party of the working class that was completely independent of all capitalist class influence whereas the utopians sought the assistance and the co-operation of the capitalists in order to achieve the transition to socialism. Community experiments To test the viability of his ideas for self-sufficient working communities, Owen began experimenting in communal living in America in 1825. Among the most famous efforts was the one set up at New Harmony, Indiana. Of the 130 identifiable communitarian experiments in America before the American Civil War, at least 16 were Owenite or Owenite-influenced. New Harmony was Owen's earliest and most ambitious of these. Owen and his son William sailed to America in October 1824 to establish an experimental community in Indiana. In January 1825 Owen used a portion of his own funds to purchase an existing town of 180 buildings and several thousand acres of land along the Wabash River in Indiana. George Rapp's Harmony Society, the religious group that owned the property and had founded the communal village of Harmony (or Harmonie) on the site in 1814, decided in 1824 to relocate to Pennsylvania. Owen renamed it New Harmony and made the village his preliminary model for a Utopian community. Owen sought support for his socialist vision among American thinkers, reformers, intellectuals and public statesmen. On 25 February and 7 March 1825, Owen gave addresses in the U.S. House of Representatives to the U.S. Congress and others in the US government, outlining his vision for the Utopian community at New Harmony, and his socialist beliefs. The audience for his ideas included three former U.S. presidents – John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison) – the outgoing US President James Monroe, and the President-elect, John Quincy Adams. His meetings were perhaps the first discussions of socialism in the Americas; they were certainly a big step towards discussion of it in the United States. Owenism, among the first socialist ideologies active in the United States, can be seen as an instigator of the later socialist movement. Owen convinced William Maclure, a wealthy Scottish scientist and philanthropist living in Philadelphia to join him at New Harmony and become his financial partner. Maclure's involvement went on to attract scientists, educators and artists such as Thomas Say, Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, and Madame Marie Duclos Fretageot. These helped to turn the New Harmony community into a centre for educational reform, scientific research and artistic expression. Although Owen sought to build a "Village of Unity and Mutual Cooperation" south of the town, his grand plan was never fully realised and he returned to Britain to continue his work. During his long absences from New Harmony, Owen left the experiment under the day-to-day management of his sons, Robert Dale Owen and William Owen, and his business partner, Maclure. However, New Harmony proved to be an economic failure, lasting about two years, although it had attracted over a thousand residents by the end of its first year. The socialistic society was dissolved in 1827, but many of its scientists, educators, artists and other inhabitants, including Owen's four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale, and Richard Dale Owen, and his daughter Jane Dale Owen Fauntleroy, remained at New Harmony after the experiment ended. Other experiments in the United States included communal settlements at Blue Spring, near Bloomington, Indiana, at Yellow Springs, Ohio, and at Forestville Commonwealth at Earlton, New York, as well as other projects in New York, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. Nearly all of these had ended before New Harmony was dissolved in April 1827. Owen's Utopian communities attracted a mix of people, many with the highest aims. They included vagrants, adventurers and other reform-minded enthusiasts. In the words of Owen's son David Dale Owen, they attracted "a heterogeneous collection of Radicals", "enthusiastic devotees to principle," and "honest latitudinarians, and lazy theorists," with "a sprinkling of unprincipled sharpers thrown in." Josiah Warren, a participant at New Harmony, asserted that it was doomed to failure for lack of individual sovereignty and personal property. In describing the community, Warren explained: "We had a world in miniature – we had enacted the French revolution over again with despairing hearts instead of corpses as a result.... It appeared that it was nature's own inherent law of diversity that had conquered us... our 'united interests' were directly at war with the individualities of persons and circumstances and the instinct of self-preservation...." Warren's observations on the reasons for the community's failure led to the development of American individualist anarchism, of which he was its original theorist. Some historians have traced the demise of New Harmony to serial disagreements among its members. Social experiments also began in Scotland in 1825, when Abram Combe, an Owenite, attempted a utopian experiment at Orbiston, near Glasgow, but this failed after about two years. In the 1830s, additional experiments in socialistic cooperatives were made in Ireland and Britain, the most important being at Ralahine, established in 1831 in County Clare, Ireland, and at Tytherley, begun in 1839 in Hampshire, England. The former proved a remarkable success for three-and-a-half years until the proprietor, having ruined himself by gambling, had to sell his interest. Tytherley, known as Harmony Hall or Queenwood College, was designed by the architect Joseph Hansom. This also failed. Another social experiment, Manea Colony in the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, launched in the late 1830s by William Hodson, likewise an Owenite, but it failed in a couple of years and Hodson emigrated to the United States. The Manea Colony site has been excavated by Cambridge Archaeology Unit (CAU) based at the University of Cambridge. Return to Britain Although Owen made further brief visits to the United States, London became his permanent home and the centre of his work in 1828. After extended friction with William Allen and some other business partners, Owen relinquished all connections with New Lanark. He is often quoted in a comment by Allen at the time, "All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer". Having invested most of his fortune in the failed New Harmony communal experiment, Owen was no longer a wealthy capitalist. However, he remained the head of a vigorous propaganda effort to promote industrial equality, free education for children and adequate living conditions in factory towns, while delivering lectures in Europe and publishing a weekly newspaper to gain support for his ideas. In 1832 Owen opened the National Equitable Labour Exchange system, a time-based currency in which the exchange of goods was effected by means of labour notes; this system superseded the usual means of exchange and middlemen. The London exchange continued until 1833, a Birmingham branch operating for just a few months until July 1833. Owen also became involved in trade unionism, briefly leading the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union (GNCTU) before its collapse in 1834. Socialism first became current in British terminology in discussions of the Association of all Classes of all Nations, which Owen formed in 1835 and served as its initial leader. Owen's secular views also gained enough influence among the working classes to cause the Westminster Review to comment in 1839 that his principles were the creed of many of them. However, by 1846, the only lasting result of Owen's agitation for social change, carried on through public meetings, pamphlets, periodicals, and occasional treatises, remained the Co-operative movement, and for a time even that seemed to have collapsed. Role in spiritualism In 1817, Owen publicly claimed that all religions were false. In 1854, aged 83, Owen converted to spiritualism after a series of sittings with Maria B. Hayden, an American medium credited with introducing spiritualism to England. He made a public profession of his new faith in his publication The Rational Quarterly Review and in a pamphlet titled The future of the Human race; or great glorious and future revolution to be effected through the agency of departed spirits of good and superior men and women. Owen claimed to have had medium contact with spirits of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and others. He explained that the purpose of these was to change "the present, false, disunited and miserable state of human existence, for a true, united and happy state... to prepare the world for universal peace, and to infuse into all the spirit of charity, forbearance and love." Spiritualists claimed after Owen's death that his spirit had dictated to the medium Emma Hardinge Britten in 1871 the "Seven Principles of Spiritualism", used by their National Union as "the basis of its religious philosophy". Death and legacy As Owen grew older and more radical in his views, his influence began to decline. Owen published his memoirs, The Life of Robert Owen, in 1857, a year before his death. Although he had spent most of his life in England and Scotland, Owen returned to his native town of Newtown at the end of his life. He died there on 17 November 1858 and was buried there on 21 November. He died penniless apart from an annual income drawn from a trust established by his sons in 1844. Owen was a reformer, philanthropist, community builder, and spiritualist who spent his life seeking to improve the lives of others. An advocate of the working class, he improved working conditions for factory workers, which he demonstrated at New Lanark, Scotland, became a leader in trade unionism, promoted social equality through his experimental Utopian communities, and supported the passage of child labour laws and free education for children. In these reforms he was ahead of his time. He envisioned a communal society that others could consider and apply as they wished. In Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race (1849), he went on to say that character is formed by a combination of Nature or God and the circumstances of the individual's experience. Citing beneficial results at New Lanark, Scotland, during 30 years of work there, Owen concluded that a person's "character is not made by, but for the individual," and that nature and society are responsible for each person's character and conduct. Owen's agitation for social change, along with the work of the Owenites and of his own children, helped to bring lasting social reforms in women's and workers' rights, establish free public libraries and museums, child care and public, co-educational schools, and pre-Marxian communism, and develop the Co-operative and trade union movements. New Harmony, Indiana, and New Lanark, Scotland, two towns with which he is closely associated, remain as reminders of his efforts. Owen's legacy of public service continued with his four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale, and Richard Dale, and his daughter, Jane, who followed him to America to live at New Harmony, Indiana: Robert Dale Owen (1801–1877), an able exponent of his father's doctrines, managed the New Harmony community after his father returned to Britain in 1825. He wrote articles and co-edited with Frances Wright the New-Harmony Gazette in the late 1820s in Indiana and the Free Enquirer in the 1830s in New York City. Owen returned to New Harmony in 1833 and became active in Indiana politics. He was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives (1836–1839 and 1851–1853) and U.S. House of Representatives (1843–1847), and was appointed chargé d'affaires in Naples in 1853–1858. While serving as a member of Congress, he drafted and helped to secure passage of a bill founding the Smithsonian Institution in 1846. He was elected a delegate to the Indiana Constitutional Convention in 1850, and argued in support of widows and married women's property and divorce rights. He also favoured legislation for Indiana's tax-supported public school system. Like his father, he believed in spiritualism, authoring two books on the subject: Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World (1859) and The Debatable Land Between this World and the Next (1872). William Owen (1802–1842) moved to the United States with his father in 1824. His business skill, notably his knowledge of cotton-goods manufacturing, allowed him to remain at New Harmony after his father returned to Scotland, and serve as adviser to the community. He organised New Harmony's Thespian Society in 1827, but died of unknown causes at the age of 40. Jane Dale Owen Fauntleroy (1805–1861) arrived in the United States in 1833 and settled in New Harmony. She was a musician and educator who set up a school in her home. In 1835 she married Robert Henry Fauntleroy, a civil engineer from Virginia living at New Harmony. David Dale Owen (1807–1860) moved to the United States in 1827 and resided at New Harmony for several years. He trained as a geologist and natural scientist and earned a medical degree. He was appointed a United States geologist in 1839. His work included geological surveys in the Midwest, more specifically the states of Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas, as well as Minnesota Territory. His brother Richard succeeded him as state geologist of Indiana. Richard Dale Owen (1810–1890) emigrated to the United States in 1827 and joined his siblings at New Harmony. He fought in the Mexican–American War in 1847, taught natural science at Western Military Institute in Tennessee in 1849–1859, and earned a medical degree in 1858. During the American Civil War he was a colonel in the Union army and served as a commandant of Camp Morton, a prisoner-of-war camp for Confederate soldiers at Indianapolis, Indiana. After the war, Owen served as Indiana's second state geologist. In addition, he was a professor at Indiana University and chaired its natural science department in 1864–1879. He helped plan Purdue University and was appointed its first president in 1872–1874, but resigned before its classes began and resumed teaching at Indiana University. He spent his retirement years on research and writing. Honours and tributes The Co-operative Movement erected a monument to Robert Owen in 1902 at his burial site in Newtown, Montgomeryshire. The Welsh people donated a bust of Owen by Welsh sculptor Sir William Goscombe John to the International Labour Office library in Geneva, Switzerland. Selected published works A New View of Society: Or, Essays on the Formation of Human Character, and the Application of the Principle to Practice (London, 1813). Retitled, A New View of Society: Or, Essays on the Formation of Human Character Preparatory to the Development of a Plan for Gradually Ameliorating the Condition of Mankind, for second edition, 1816 Observations on the Effect of the Manufacturing System. London, 1815 Report to the Committee of the Association for the Relief of the Manufacturing and Labouring Poor (1817) Two Memorials on Behalf of the Working Classes (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 181 An Address to the Master Manufacturers of Great Britain: On the Present Existing Evils in the Manufacturing System (Bolton, 1819) Report to the County of Lanark of a Plan for relieving Public Distress (Glasgow: Glasgow University Press, 1821) An Explanation of the Cause of Distress which pervades the civilised parts of the world (London and Paris, 1823) An Address to All Classes in the State. London, 1832 The Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race. London, 1849 Collected works: A New View of Society and Other Writings, introduction by G. D. H. Cole. London and New York: J. M. Dent & Sons, E. P. Dutton and Co., 1927 A New View of Society and Other Writings, G. Claeys, ed. London and New York: Penguin Books, 1991 The Selected Works of Robert Owen, G. Claeys, ed., 4 vols. London: Pickering and Chatto, 1993 Archival collections: Robert Owen Collection, National Co-operative Archive, United Kingdom. New Harmony, Indiana, Collection, 1814–1884, 1920, 1964, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, Indiana, United States New Harmony Series III Collection, Workingmen's Institute, New Harmony, Indiana, United States Owen family collection, 1826–1967, bulk 1830–1890, Indiana University Archives, Bloomington, Indiana, United States See also Cincinnati Time Store José María Arizmendiarrieta Labour voucher List of Owenite communities in the United States Owenstown Owenism William King References Bibliography (online version) Further reading Biographies of Owen A. J. Booth, Robert Owen, the Founder of Socialism in England (London, 1869) G. D. H. Cole, Life of Robert Owen. London, Ernest Benn Ltd., 1925; second edition Macmillan, 1930 Lloyd Jones. The Life, Times, and Labours of Robert Owen. London, 1889 A. L. Morton, The Life and Ideas of Robert Owen. New York, International Publishers, 1969 W. H. Oliver, "Robert Owen and the English Working-Class Movements", History Today (November 1958) 8–11, pp. 787–796 F. A. Packard, Life of Robert Owen. Philadelphia: Ashmead & Evans, 1866 Frank Podmore, Robert Owen: A Biography. London: Hutchinson and Company, 1906 David Santilli, Life of the Mill Man. London, B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1987 William Lucas Sargant, Robert Owen and his social philosophy . London, 1860 Richard Tames, Radicals, Railways & Reform. London, B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1986 Other works about Owen Arthur Bestor, Backwoods Utopias. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950, 2nd edition, 1970 John Butt (ed). Robert Owen: Aspects of his Life and Work. Humanities Press, 1971 Gregory Claeys, Citizens and Saints. Politics and Anti-Politics in Early British Socialism. Cambridge University Press, 1989 Gregory Claeys, Machinery, Money and the Millennium: From Moral Economy to Socialism 1815–1860. Princeton University Press, 1987 R. E. Davies, The Life of Robert Owen, Philanthropist and Social Reformer, An Appreciation. Robert Sutton, 1907 R. E. Davis and F. J. O'Hagan, Robert Owen. London: Continuum Press, 2010 E. Dolleans, Robert Owen. Paris, 1905 I. Donnachie, Robert Owen. Owen of New Lanark and New Harmony. 2000 Auguste Marie Fabre, Un Socialiste Pratique, Robert Owen. Nìmes, Bureaux de l'Émancipation, 1896 John F. C. Harrison, Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America: Quest for the New Moral World. New York, 1969 Alexander Herzen, My Past and Thoughts (University of California Press, 1982). (One chapter is devoted to Owen.) G. J. Holyoake, The History of Co-operation in England: Its Literature and Its Advocates V. 1. London, 1906 G. J. Holyoake, The History of Co-operation in England: Its Literature and Its Advocates V. 2. London, 1906 The National Library of Wales, A Bibliography of Robert Owen, The Socialist. 1914 H. Simon, Robert Owen: Sein Leben und Seine Bedeutung für die Gegenwart. Jena, 1905 O. Siméon, Robert Owen's Experiment at New Lanark. From Paternalism to Socialism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017 External links Essays by Owen at the Marxists Internet Archive Brief biography at the New Lanark World Heritage Site The Robert Owen Museum, Newtown, Wales Video of Owen's wool mill Brief biography at Cotton Times "Robert Owen (1771-1858) social reformer, founder of New Harmony", University of Evansville, Indiana "Robert Owen and the Co-operative movement" Brief biography at The History Guide Brief biography at age-of-the-sage.org Heaven On Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism at PBS {dead link 2021-02-22} 1771 births 1858 deaths Cooperative organizers Founders of utopian communities People from Newtown, Powys Owenites Utopian socialists Welsh agnostics Welsh humanists 19th-century Welsh businesspeople 18th-century Welsh businesspeople Welsh business theorists Welsh philanthropists Welsh socialists British reformers British social reformers Socialist economists

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What did New Lanark's residents do about the textile mill?

What did New Lanark's residents do about the Lanark Textile Mill?

Robert Owen

In July 1799 Owen and his partners bought the New Lanark mill from David Dale, and Owen became the New Lanark mill's manager in January 1800. Encouraged by his success in the management of cotton mills in Manchester, Owen hoped to conduct the New Lanark mill on higher principles than purely commercial ones. David Dale and Richard Arkwright had established the substantial mill at New Lanark in 1785. With its water power provided by the falls of the River Clyde, the cotton-spinning operation became one of Britain's largest. About 2,000 individuals were associations with the mill; 500 of them were children who were brought to the mill at the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dale, who was known for his benevolence, treated the children well, but the general condition of New Lanark's residents was unsatisfactory. Over the years, Dale and his son-in-law, Owen, worked to improve the factory workers' lives. Many of the workers were in the lowest levels of the population; theft, drunkenness, and other vices were common; education and sanitation were neglected; and most families lived in one room. The respectable country people refused to submit to the long hours and demoralising drudgery of the mills. Until a series of Truck Acts (1831-1887) required employees to be paid in common currency, many employers operated the truck system that paid workers in total or in part with tokens. The tokens had no monetary value outside the mill owner's "truck shop," where the owners could supply shoddy goods and charge top prices. In contrast to other employers, Owen's store offered goods at prices slightly above their wholesale cost. He also passed on the savings from the bulk purchase of goods to his workers, and placed the sale of alcohol under strict supervision. These principles became the basis for the cooperative shops in Britain, which continue in an altered form to trade today. CANNOTANSWER

theft, drunkenness, and other vices were common;

Robert Owen (; 14 May 1771 – 17 November 1858) was a Welsh textile manufacturer, philanthropist and social reformer, and a founder of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement. He strove to improve factory working conditions, promoted experimental socialistic communities, and sought a more collective approach to child rearing, including government control of education. He gained wealth in the early 1800s from a textile mill at New Lanark, Scotland. Having trained as a draper in Stamford, Lincolnshire he worked in London before relocating aged 18 to Manchester and textile manufacturing. In 1824, he moved to America and put most of his fortune in an experimental socialistic community at New Harmony, Indiana, as a preliminary for his Utopian society. It lasted about two years. Other Owenite communities also failed, and in 1828 Owen returned to London, where he continued to champion the working class, lead in developing cooperatives and the trade union movement, and support child labour legislation and free co-educational schools. Early life and education Robert Owen was born in Newtown, a small market town in Montgomeryshire, Wales, on 14 May 1771, to Anne (Williams) and Robert Owen. His father was a saddler, ironmonger and local postmaster; his mother was the daughter of a Newtown farming family. Young Robert was the sixth of the family's seven children, two of whom died at a young age. His surviving siblings were William, Anne, John and Richard. Owen received little formal education, but he was an avid reader. He left school at the age of ten to be apprenticed to a Stamford, Lincolnshire, draper for four years. He also worked in London drapery shops in his teens. At about the age of 18, Owen moved to Manchester, where he spent the next twelve years of his life, employed initially at Satterfield's Drapery in Saint Ann's Square. While in Manchester, Owen borrowed £100 from his brother William, so as to enter into a partnership to make spinning mules, a new invention for spinning cotton thread, but exchanged his business share within a few months for six spinning mules that he worked in rented factory space. In 1792, when Owen was about 21 years old, mill-owner Peter Drinkwater made him manager of the Piccadilly Mill at Manchester. However, after two years with Drinkwater, Owen voluntarily gave up a contracted promise of partnership, left the company, and went into partnership with other entrepreneurs to establish and later manage the Chorlton Twist Mills in Chorlton-on-Medlock. By the early 1790s, Owen's entrepreneurial spirit, management skills and progressive moral views were emerging. In 1793, he was elected a member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, where the ideas of the Enlightenment were discussed. He also became a committee member of the Manchester Board of Health, instigated principally by Thomas Percival to press for improvements in the health and working conditions of factory workers. Marriage and family On a visit to Scotland, Owen met and fell in love with Ann (or Anne) Caroline Dale, daughter of David Dale, a Glasgow philanthropist and the proprietor of the large New Lanark Mills. After their marriage on 30 September 1799, the Owens set up home in New Lanark, but later moved to Braxfield, Scotland. Robert and Caroline Owen had eight children, the first of whom died in infancy. Their seven survivors were four sons and three daughters: Robert Dale (1801–1877), William (1802–1842), Ann (or Anne) Caroline (1805–1831), Jane Dale (1805–1861), David Dale (1807–1860), Richard Dale (1809–1890) and Mary (1810–1832). Owen's four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale and Richard, and his daughter Jane Dale, followed their father to the United States, becoming US citizens and permanent residents in New Harmony, Indiana. Owen's wife Caroline and two of their daughters, Anne Caroline and Mary, remained in Britain, where they died in the 1830s. New Lanark mill In July 1799 Owen and his partners bought the New Lanark mill from David Dale, and Owen became its manager in January 1800. Encouraged by his management success in Manchester, Owen hoped to conduct the New Lanark mill on higher principles than purely commercial ones. It had been established in 1785 by David Dale and Richard Arkwright. Its water power provided by the falls of the River Clyde turned its cotton-spinning operation into one of Britain's largest. About 2,000 individuals were involved, 500 of them children brought to the mill at the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dale, known for his benevolence, treated the children well, but the general condition of New Lanark residents was unsatisfactory, despite efforts by Dale and his son-in-law Owen to improve their workers' lives. Many of the workers were from the lowest social levels: theft, drunkenness and other vices were common and education and sanitation neglected. Most families lived in one room. More respected people rejected the long hours and demoralising drudgery of the mills. Until a series of Truck Acts (1831–1887) required employers to pay their employees in common currency, many operated a truck system, paying workers wholly or in part with tokens that had no monetary value outside the mill owner's "truck shop", which charged high prices for shoddy goods. Unlike others, Owen's truck store offered goods at prices only slightly above their wholesale cost, passing on the savings from bulk purchases to his customers and placing alcohol sales under strict supervision. These principles became the basis for Britain's Co-operative shops, some of which continue trading in altered forms to this day. Philosophy and influence Owen tested his social and economic ideas at New Lanark, where he won his workers' confidence and continued to have success through the improved efficiency at the mill. The community also earned an international reputation. Social reformers, statesmen and royalty, including the future Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, visited New Lanark to study its methods. The opinions of many such visitors were favourable. Owen's biggest success was in support of youth education and early child care. As a pioneer in Britain, notably Scotland, Owen provided an alternative to the "normal authoritarian approach to child education". The manners of children brought up under his system were more graceful, genial and unconstrained; health, plenty and contentment prevailed; drunkenness was almost unknown and illegitimacy extremely rare. Owen's relations with his workers remained excellent and operations at the mill proceeded in a smooth, regular and commercially successful way. However, some of Owen's schemes displeased his partners, forcing him to arrange for other investors to buy his share of the business in 1813, for the equivalent of US$800,000. The new investors, who included Jeremy Bentham and the well-known Quaker William Allen, were content to accept a £5,000 return on their capital. The ownership change also provided Owen with a chance to broaden his philanthropy, advocating improvements in workers' rights and child labour laws, and free education for children. In 1813 Owen authored and published A New View of Society, or Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character, the first of four essays he wrote to explain the principles behind his philosophy of socialistic reform. In this he writes: Owen had originally been a follower of the classical liberal, utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, who believed that free markets, in particular the right of workers to move and choose their employers, would release workers from the excessive power of capitalists. However, Owen developed his own, pro-socialist outlook. In addition, Owen as a deist, criticised organised religion, including the Church of England, and developed a belief system of his own. Owen felt that human character is formed by conditions over which individuals have no control. Thus individuals could not be praised or blamed for their behaviour or situation in life. This principle led Owen to conclude that the correct formation of people's characters called for placing them under proper environmental influences – physical, moral and social – from their earliest years. These notions of inherent irresponsibility in humans and the effect of early influences on an individual's character formed the basis of Owen's system of education and social reform. Relying on his own observations, experiences and thoughts, Owen saw his view of human nature as original and "the most basic and necessary constituent in an evolving science of society". His philosophy was influenced by Sir Isaac Newton's views on natural law, and his views resembled those of Plato, Denis Diderot, Claude Adrien Helvétius, William Godwin, John Locke, James Mill, and Jeremy Bentham, among others. Owen did not have the direct influence of Enlightenment philosophers. Owen's work at New Lanark continued to have significance in Britain and continental Europe. He was a "pioneer in factory reform, the father of distributive cooperation, and the founder of nursery schools." His schemes for educating his workers included opening an Institute for the Formation of Character at New Lanark in 1818. This and other programmes at New Lanark provided free education from infancy to adulthood. In addition, he zealously supported factory legislation that culminated in the Cotton Mills and Factories Act of 1819. Owen also had interviews and communications with leading members of the British government, including its premier, Robert Banks Jenkinson, Lord Liverpool. He also met many of the rulers and leading statesmen of Europe. Owen adopted new principles to raise the standard of goods his workers produced. A cube with faces painted in different colours was installed above each machinist's workplace. The colour of the face showed to all who saw it the quality and quantity of goods the worker completed. The intention was to encourage workers to do their best. Although it was no great incentive in itself, conditions at New Lanark for workers and their families were idyllic for the time. Eight-hour day Owen raised the demand for an eight-hour day in 1810 and set about instituting the policy at New Lanark. By 1817 he had formulated the goal of an eight-hour working day with the slogan "eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest". Models for socialism (1817) Owen embraced socialism in 1817, a turning point in his life, in which he pursued a "New View of Society". He outlined his position in a report to the committee of the House of Commons on the country's Poor Laws. As misery and trade stagnation after the Napoleonic Wars drew national attention, the government called on Owen for advice on how to alleviate the industrial concerns. Although he ascribed the immediate misery to the wars, he saw as the underlying cause competition of human labour with machinery, and recommended setting up self-sufficient communities. Owen proposed that communities of some 1,200 people should settle on land from , all living in one building with a public kitchen and dining halls. (The proposed size may have been influenced by the size of the village of New Lanark.) Owen also proposed that each family have its own private apartments and the responsibility for the care of its children up to the age of three. Thereafter children would be raised by the community, but their parents would have access to them at mealtimes and on other occasions. Owen further suggested that such communities be established by individuals, parishes, counties, or other governmental units. In each case there would be effective supervision by qualified persons. Work and enjoyment of its results should be experienced communally. Owen believed his idea would be the best way to reorganise society in general, and called his vision the "New Moral World". Owen's utopian model changed little in his lifetime. His developed model envisaged an association of 500–3,000 people as the optimum for a working community. While mainly agricultural, it would possess the best machinery, offer varied employment, and as far as possible be self-contained. Owen went on to explain that as such communities proliferated, "unions of them federatively united shall be formed in circle of tens, hundreds and thousands", linked by common interest. Arguments against Owen and his answers Owen always tried to spread his ideas to wider communities. First, he started publishing his ideas in newspapers. Owen then sent such newspapers widely to parliamentarians, politicians and other important people. These articles spurred the first negative reactions to his ideas. Opponents thought that Owen's plans would result in an uncontrollable increase in population and poverty. The other main criticism was that Owen's plan and the common use of everything would essentially make the country one large workshop. William Hone claimed that Owen saw people as unravelled plants from their roots, and that he wanted to plant them in rectangles. Another commentator accused Owen of wanting to imprison people in workshops like barracks and eradicate their personal independence. Owen's opponents had begun to regard him as an enemy of religion. His influence in ruling circles, which he had hoped would help him to accomplish his "plan", started diminishing and rumours of his lack of religious conviction spread. Owen believed that without a change in the character of individuals and the environment in which they live, they would remain hostile to those around them. As long as such a social order continued, the positive aspects of Christianity could never be put into practice. Owen also considered it necessary to give people more freedom in order to improve the situation of the poor and working classes. Unless people were better educated, unless they gained more useful information and had permanent employment, they were a danger to the security of the state when given more freedom than the British Constitution did at the time. Without making any changes in the national institutions, he believed that even reorganizing the working classes would bring great benefits. So he opposed the views of radicals seeking to change in the public mentality by expanding voting rights. Other notable critics of Owen include Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who viewed his work as a precursor to their own. They recognized in Owen the important understanding, developed by Marx in Capital, that it is the working class that are responsible for creating the unparalleled wealth in capitalist societies. Similarly, Owen also recognized that under the existing economic system, the working class did not automatically receive the benefits of that newly created wealth. Marx and Engels, differentiated, however, their own scientific conception of socialism from Owen's societies. They argued that Owen's plan, to create a model socialist utopia to coexist with contemporary society and prove its superiority over time, was insufficient to create a new society. In their view, Owen's "socialism" was utopian, since to Owen and the other utopian socialists "[s]ocialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own power." Marx and Engels believed that the overthrow of the capitalist system could only occur once the working class was organized into a revolutionary socialist political party of the working class that was completely independent of all capitalist class influence whereas the utopians sought the assistance and the co-operation of the capitalists in order to achieve the transition to socialism. Community experiments To test the viability of his ideas for self-sufficient working communities, Owen began experimenting in communal living in America in 1825. Among the most famous efforts was the one set up at New Harmony, Indiana. Of the 130 identifiable communitarian experiments in America before the American Civil War, at least 16 were Owenite or Owenite-influenced. New Harmony was Owen's earliest and most ambitious of these. Owen and his son William sailed to America in October 1824 to establish an experimental community in Indiana. In January 1825 Owen used a portion of his own funds to purchase an existing town of 180 buildings and several thousand acres of land along the Wabash River in Indiana. George Rapp's Harmony Society, the religious group that owned the property and had founded the communal village of Harmony (or Harmonie) on the site in 1814, decided in 1824 to relocate to Pennsylvania. Owen renamed it New Harmony and made the village his preliminary model for a Utopian community. Owen sought support for his socialist vision among American thinkers, reformers, intellectuals and public statesmen. On 25 February and 7 March 1825, Owen gave addresses in the U.S. House of Representatives to the U.S. Congress and others in the US government, outlining his vision for the Utopian community at New Harmony, and his socialist beliefs. The audience for his ideas included three former U.S. presidents – John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison) – the outgoing US President James Monroe, and the President-elect, John Quincy Adams. His meetings were perhaps the first discussions of socialism in the Americas; they were certainly a big step towards discussion of it in the United States. Owenism, among the first socialist ideologies active in the United States, can be seen as an instigator of the later socialist movement. Owen convinced William Maclure, a wealthy Scottish scientist and philanthropist living in Philadelphia to join him at New Harmony and become his financial partner. Maclure's involvement went on to attract scientists, educators and artists such as Thomas Say, Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, and Madame Marie Duclos Fretageot. These helped to turn the New Harmony community into a centre for educational reform, scientific research and artistic expression. Although Owen sought to build a "Village of Unity and Mutual Cooperation" south of the town, his grand plan was never fully realised and he returned to Britain to continue his work. During his long absences from New Harmony, Owen left the experiment under the day-to-day management of his sons, Robert Dale Owen and William Owen, and his business partner, Maclure. However, New Harmony proved to be an economic failure, lasting about two years, although it had attracted over a thousand residents by the end of its first year. The socialistic society was dissolved in 1827, but many of its scientists, educators, artists and other inhabitants, including Owen's four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale, and Richard Dale Owen, and his daughter Jane Dale Owen Fauntleroy, remained at New Harmony after the experiment ended. Other experiments in the United States included communal settlements at Blue Spring, near Bloomington, Indiana, at Yellow Springs, Ohio, and at Forestville Commonwealth at Earlton, New York, as well as other projects in New York, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. Nearly all of these had ended before New Harmony was dissolved in April 1827. Owen's Utopian communities attracted a mix of people, many with the highest aims. They included vagrants, adventurers and other reform-minded enthusiasts. In the words of Owen's son David Dale Owen, they attracted "a heterogeneous collection of Radicals", "enthusiastic devotees to principle," and "honest latitudinarians, and lazy theorists," with "a sprinkling of unprincipled sharpers thrown in." Josiah Warren, a participant at New Harmony, asserted that it was doomed to failure for lack of individual sovereignty and personal property. In describing the community, Warren explained: "We had a world in miniature – we had enacted the French revolution over again with despairing hearts instead of corpses as a result.... It appeared that it was nature's own inherent law of diversity that had conquered us... our 'united interests' were directly at war with the individualities of persons and circumstances and the instinct of self-preservation...." Warren's observations on the reasons for the community's failure led to the development of American individualist anarchism, of which he was its original theorist. Some historians have traced the demise of New Harmony to serial disagreements among its members. Social experiments also began in Scotland in 1825, when Abram Combe, an Owenite, attempted a utopian experiment at Orbiston, near Glasgow, but this failed after about two years. In the 1830s, additional experiments in socialistic cooperatives were made in Ireland and Britain, the most important being at Ralahine, established in 1831 in County Clare, Ireland, and at Tytherley, begun in 1839 in Hampshire, England. The former proved a remarkable success for three-and-a-half years until the proprietor, having ruined himself by gambling, had to sell his interest. Tytherley, known as Harmony Hall or Queenwood College, was designed by the architect Joseph Hansom. This also failed. Another social experiment, Manea Colony in the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, launched in the late 1830s by William Hodson, likewise an Owenite, but it failed in a couple of years and Hodson emigrated to the United States. The Manea Colony site has been excavated by Cambridge Archaeology Unit (CAU) based at the University of Cambridge. Return to Britain Although Owen made further brief visits to the United States, London became his permanent home and the centre of his work in 1828. After extended friction with William Allen and some other business partners, Owen relinquished all connections with New Lanark. He is often quoted in a comment by Allen at the time, "All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer". Having invested most of his fortune in the failed New Harmony communal experiment, Owen was no longer a wealthy capitalist. However, he remained the head of a vigorous propaganda effort to promote industrial equality, free education for children and adequate living conditions in factory towns, while delivering lectures in Europe and publishing a weekly newspaper to gain support for his ideas. In 1832 Owen opened the National Equitable Labour Exchange system, a time-based currency in which the exchange of goods was effected by means of labour notes; this system superseded the usual means of exchange and middlemen. The London exchange continued until 1833, a Birmingham branch operating for just a few months until July 1833. Owen also became involved in trade unionism, briefly leading the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union (GNCTU) before its collapse in 1834. Socialism first became current in British terminology in discussions of the Association of all Classes of all Nations, which Owen formed in 1835 and served as its initial leader. Owen's secular views also gained enough influence among the working classes to cause the Westminster Review to comment in 1839 that his principles were the creed of many of them. However, by 1846, the only lasting result of Owen's agitation for social change, carried on through public meetings, pamphlets, periodicals, and occasional treatises, remained the Co-operative movement, and for a time even that seemed to have collapsed. Role in spiritualism In 1817, Owen publicly claimed that all religions were false. In 1854, aged 83, Owen converted to spiritualism after a series of sittings with Maria B. Hayden, an American medium credited with introducing spiritualism to England. He made a public profession of his new faith in his publication The Rational Quarterly Review and in a pamphlet titled The future of the Human race; or great glorious and future revolution to be effected through the agency of departed spirits of good and superior men and women. Owen claimed to have had medium contact with spirits of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and others. He explained that the purpose of these was to change "the present, false, disunited and miserable state of human existence, for a true, united and happy state... to prepare the world for universal peace, and to infuse into all the spirit of charity, forbearance and love." Spiritualists claimed after Owen's death that his spirit had dictated to the medium Emma Hardinge Britten in 1871 the "Seven Principles of Spiritualism", used by their National Union as "the basis of its religious philosophy". Death and legacy As Owen grew older and more radical in his views, his influence began to decline. Owen published his memoirs, The Life of Robert Owen, in 1857, a year before his death. Although he had spent most of his life in England and Scotland, Owen returned to his native town of Newtown at the end of his life. He died there on 17 November 1858 and was buried there on 21 November. He died penniless apart from an annual income drawn from a trust established by his sons in 1844. Owen was a reformer, philanthropist, community builder, and spiritualist who spent his life seeking to improve the lives of others. An advocate of the working class, he improved working conditions for factory workers, which he demonstrated at New Lanark, Scotland, became a leader in trade unionism, promoted social equality through his experimental Utopian communities, and supported the passage of child labour laws and free education for children. In these reforms he was ahead of his time. He envisioned a communal society that others could consider and apply as they wished. In Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race (1849), he went on to say that character is formed by a combination of Nature or God and the circumstances of the individual's experience. Citing beneficial results at New Lanark, Scotland, during 30 years of work there, Owen concluded that a person's "character is not made by, but for the individual," and that nature and society are responsible for each person's character and conduct. Owen's agitation for social change, along with the work of the Owenites and of his own children, helped to bring lasting social reforms in women's and workers' rights, establish free public libraries and museums, child care and public, co-educational schools, and pre-Marxian communism, and develop the Co-operative and trade union movements. New Harmony, Indiana, and New Lanark, Scotland, two towns with which he is closely associated, remain as reminders of his efforts. Owen's legacy of public service continued with his four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale, and Richard Dale, and his daughter, Jane, who followed him to America to live at New Harmony, Indiana: Robert Dale Owen (1801–1877), an able exponent of his father's doctrines, managed the New Harmony community after his father returned to Britain in 1825. He wrote articles and co-edited with Frances Wright the New-Harmony Gazette in the late 1820s in Indiana and the Free Enquirer in the 1830s in New York City. Owen returned to New Harmony in 1833 and became active in Indiana politics. He was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives (1836–1839 and 1851–1853) and U.S. House of Representatives (1843–1847), and was appointed chargé d'affaires in Naples in 1853–1858. While serving as a member of Congress, he drafted and helped to secure passage of a bill founding the Smithsonian Institution in 1846. He was elected a delegate to the Indiana Constitutional Convention in 1850, and argued in support of widows and married women's property and divorce rights. He also favoured legislation for Indiana's tax-supported public school system. Like his father, he believed in spiritualism, authoring two books on the subject: Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World (1859) and The Debatable Land Between this World and the Next (1872). William Owen (1802–1842) moved to the United States with his father in 1824. His business skill, notably his knowledge of cotton-goods manufacturing, allowed him to remain at New Harmony after his father returned to Scotland, and serve as adviser to the community. He organised New Harmony's Thespian Society in 1827, but died of unknown causes at the age of 40. Jane Dale Owen Fauntleroy (1805–1861) arrived in the United States in 1833 and settled in New Harmony. She was a musician and educator who set up a school in her home. In 1835 she married Robert Henry Fauntleroy, a civil engineer from Virginia living at New Harmony. David Dale Owen (1807–1860) moved to the United States in 1827 and resided at New Harmony for several years. He trained as a geologist and natural scientist and earned a medical degree. He was appointed a United States geologist in 1839. His work included geological surveys in the Midwest, more specifically the states of Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas, as well as Minnesota Territory. His brother Richard succeeded him as state geologist of Indiana. Richard Dale Owen (1810–1890) emigrated to the United States in 1827 and joined his siblings at New Harmony. He fought in the Mexican–American War in 1847, taught natural science at Western Military Institute in Tennessee in 1849–1859, and earned a medical degree in 1858. During the American Civil War he was a colonel in the Union army and served as a commandant of Camp Morton, a prisoner-of-war camp for Confederate soldiers at Indianapolis, Indiana. After the war, Owen served as Indiana's second state geologist. In addition, he was a professor at Indiana University and chaired its natural science department in 1864–1879. He helped plan Purdue University and was appointed its first president in 1872–1874, but resigned before its classes began and resumed teaching at Indiana University. He spent his retirement years on research and writing. Honours and tributes The Co-operative Movement erected a monument to Robert Owen in 1902 at his burial site in Newtown, Montgomeryshire. The Welsh people donated a bust of Owen by Welsh sculptor Sir William Goscombe John to the International Labour Office library in Geneva, Switzerland. Selected published works A New View of Society: Or, Essays on the Formation of Human Character, and the Application of the Principle to Practice (London, 1813). Retitled, A New View of Society: Or, Essays on the Formation of Human Character Preparatory to the Development of a Plan for Gradually Ameliorating the Condition of Mankind, for second edition, 1816 Observations on the Effect of the Manufacturing System. London, 1815 Report to the Committee of the Association for the Relief of the Manufacturing and Labouring Poor (1817) Two Memorials on Behalf of the Working Classes (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 181 An Address to the Master Manufacturers of Great Britain: On the Present Existing Evils in the Manufacturing System (Bolton, 1819) Report to the County of Lanark of a Plan for relieving Public Distress (Glasgow: Glasgow University Press, 1821) An Explanation of the Cause of Distress which pervades the civilised parts of the world (London and Paris, 1823) An Address to All Classes in the State. London, 1832 The Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race. London, 1849 Collected works: A New View of Society and Other Writings, introduction by G. D. H. Cole. London and New York: J. M. Dent & Sons, E. P. Dutton and Co., 1927 A New View of Society and Other Writings, G. Claeys, ed. London and New York: Penguin Books, 1991 The Selected Works of Robert Owen, G. Claeys, ed., 4 vols. London: Pickering and Chatto, 1993 Archival collections: Robert Owen Collection, National Co-operative Archive, United Kingdom. New Harmony, Indiana, Collection, 1814–1884, 1920, 1964, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, Indiana, United States New Harmony Series III Collection, Workingmen's Institute, New Harmony, Indiana, United States Owen family collection, 1826–1967, bulk 1830–1890, Indiana University Archives, Bloomington, Indiana, United States See also Cincinnati Time Store José María Arizmendiarrieta Labour voucher List of Owenite communities in the United States Owenstown Owenism William King References Bibliography (online version) Further reading Biographies of Owen A. J. Booth, Robert Owen, the Founder of Socialism in England (London, 1869) G. D. H. Cole, Life of Robert Owen. London, Ernest Benn Ltd., 1925; second edition Macmillan, 1930 Lloyd Jones. The Life, Times, and Labours of Robert Owen. London, 1889 A. L. Morton, The Life and Ideas of Robert Owen. New York, International Publishers, 1969 W. H. Oliver, "Robert Owen and the English Working-Class Movements", History Today (November 1958) 8–11, pp. 787–796 F. A. Packard, Life of Robert Owen. Philadelphia: Ashmead & Evans, 1866 Frank Podmore, Robert Owen: A Biography. London: Hutchinson and Company, 1906 David Santilli, Life of the Mill Man. London, B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1987 William Lucas Sargant, Robert Owen and his social philosophy . London, 1860 Richard Tames, Radicals, Railways & Reform. London, B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1986 Other works about Owen Arthur Bestor, Backwoods Utopias. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950, 2nd edition, 1970 John Butt (ed). Robert Owen: Aspects of his Life and Work. Humanities Press, 1971 Gregory Claeys, Citizens and Saints. Politics and Anti-Politics in Early British Socialism. Cambridge University Press, 1989 Gregory Claeys, Machinery, Money and the Millennium: From Moral Economy to Socialism 1815–1860. Princeton University Press, 1987 R. E. Davies, The Life of Robert Owen, Philanthropist and Social Reformer, An Appreciation. Robert Sutton, 1907 R. E. Davis and F. J. O'Hagan, Robert Owen. London: Continuum Press, 2010 E. Dolleans, Robert Owen. Paris, 1905 I. Donnachie, Robert Owen. Owen of New Lanark and New Harmony. 2000 Auguste Marie Fabre, Un Socialiste Pratique, Robert Owen. Nìmes, Bureaux de l'Émancipation, 1896 John F. C. Harrison, Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America: Quest for the New Moral World. New York, 1969 Alexander Herzen, My Past and Thoughts (University of California Press, 1982). (One chapter is devoted to Owen.) G. J. Holyoake, The History of Co-operation in England: Its Literature and Its Advocates V. 1. London, 1906 G. J. Holyoake, The History of Co-operation in England: Its Literature and Its Advocates V. 2. London, 1906 The National Library of Wales, A Bibliography of Robert Owen, The Socialist. 1914 H. Simon, Robert Owen: Sein Leben und Seine Bedeutung für die Gegenwart. Jena, 1905 O. Siméon, Robert Owen's Experiment at New Lanark. From Paternalism to Socialism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017 External links Essays by Owen at the Marxists Internet Archive Brief biography at the New Lanark World Heritage Site The Robert Owen Museum, Newtown, Wales Video of Owen's wool mill Brief biography at Cotton Times "Robert Owen (1771-1858) social reformer, founder of New Harmony", University of Evansville, Indiana "Robert Owen and the Co-operative movement" Brief biography at The History Guide Brief biography at age-of-the-sage.org Heaven On Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism at PBS {dead link 2021-02-22} 1771 births 1858 deaths Cooperative organizers Founders of utopian communities People from Newtown, Powys Owenites Utopian socialists Welsh agnostics Welsh humanists 19th-century Welsh businesspeople 18th-century Welsh businesspeople Welsh business theorists Welsh philanthropists Welsh socialists British reformers British social reformers Socialist economists

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What did Robert Owen feel about the residents behavior?

What did Robert Owen feel about the residents behavior toward the Lanark Textile Mill?

Robert Owen

In July 1799 Owen and his partners bought the New Lanark mill from David Dale, and Owen became the New Lanark mill's manager in January 1800. Encouraged by his success in the management of cotton mills in Manchester, Owen hoped to conduct the New Lanark mill on higher principles than purely commercial ones. David Dale and Richard Arkwright had established the substantial mill at New Lanark in 1785. With its water power provided by the falls of the River Clyde, the cotton-spinning operation became one of Britain's largest. About 2,000 individuals were associations with the mill; 500 of them were children who were brought to the mill at the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dale, who was known for his benevolence, treated the children well, but the general condition of New Lanark's residents was unsatisfactory. Over the years, Dale and his son-in-law, Owen, worked to improve the factory workers' lives. Many of the workers were in the lowest levels of the population; theft, drunkenness, and other vices were common; education and sanitation were neglected; and most families lived in one room. The respectable country people refused to submit to the long hours and demoralising drudgery of the mills. Until a series of Truck Acts (1831-1887) required employees to be paid in common currency, many employers operated the truck system that paid workers in total or in part with tokens. The tokens had no monetary value outside the mill owner's "truck shop," where the owners could supply shoddy goods and charge top prices. In contrast to other employers, Owen's store offered goods at prices slightly above their wholesale cost. He also passed on the savings from the bulk purchase of goods to his workers, and placed the sale of alcohol under strict supervision. These principles became the basis for the cooperative shops in Britain, which continue in an altered form to trade today. CANNOTANSWER

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Robert Owen (; 14 May 1771 – 17 November 1858) was a Welsh textile manufacturer, philanthropist and social reformer, and a founder of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement. He strove to improve factory working conditions, promoted experimental socialistic communities, and sought a more collective approach to child rearing, including government control of education. He gained wealth in the early 1800s from a textile mill at New Lanark, Scotland. Having trained as a draper in Stamford, Lincolnshire he worked in London before relocating aged 18 to Manchester and textile manufacturing. In 1824, he moved to America and put most of his fortune in an experimental socialistic community at New Harmony, Indiana, as a preliminary for his Utopian society. It lasted about two years. Other Owenite communities also failed, and in 1828 Owen returned to London, where he continued to champion the working class, lead in developing cooperatives and the trade union movement, and support child labour legislation and free co-educational schools. Early life and education Robert Owen was born in Newtown, a small market town in Montgomeryshire, Wales, on 14 May 1771, to Anne (Williams) and Robert Owen. His father was a saddler, ironmonger and local postmaster; his mother was the daughter of a Newtown farming family. Young Robert was the sixth of the family's seven children, two of whom died at a young age. His surviving siblings were William, Anne, John and Richard. Owen received little formal education, but he was an avid reader. He left school at the age of ten to be apprenticed to a Stamford, Lincolnshire, draper for four years. He also worked in London drapery shops in his teens. At about the age of 18, Owen moved to Manchester, where he spent the next twelve years of his life, employed initially at Satterfield's Drapery in Saint Ann's Square. While in Manchester, Owen borrowed £100 from his brother William, so as to enter into a partnership to make spinning mules, a new invention for spinning cotton thread, but exchanged his business share within a few months for six spinning mules that he worked in rented factory space. In 1792, when Owen was about 21 years old, mill-owner Peter Drinkwater made him manager of the Piccadilly Mill at Manchester. However, after two years with Drinkwater, Owen voluntarily gave up a contracted promise of partnership, left the company, and went into partnership with other entrepreneurs to establish and later manage the Chorlton Twist Mills in Chorlton-on-Medlock. By the early 1790s, Owen's entrepreneurial spirit, management skills and progressive moral views were emerging. In 1793, he was elected a member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, where the ideas of the Enlightenment were discussed. He also became a committee member of the Manchester Board of Health, instigated principally by Thomas Percival to press for improvements in the health and working conditions of factory workers. Marriage and family On a visit to Scotland, Owen met and fell in love with Ann (or Anne) Caroline Dale, daughter of David Dale, a Glasgow philanthropist and the proprietor of the large New Lanark Mills. After their marriage on 30 September 1799, the Owens set up home in New Lanark, but later moved to Braxfield, Scotland. Robert and Caroline Owen had eight children, the first of whom died in infancy. Their seven survivors were four sons and three daughters: Robert Dale (1801–1877), William (1802–1842), Ann (or Anne) Caroline (1805–1831), Jane Dale (1805–1861), David Dale (1807–1860), Richard Dale (1809–1890) and Mary (1810–1832). Owen's four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale and Richard, and his daughter Jane Dale, followed their father to the United States, becoming US citizens and permanent residents in New Harmony, Indiana. Owen's wife Caroline and two of their daughters, Anne Caroline and Mary, remained in Britain, where they died in the 1830s. New Lanark mill In July 1799 Owen and his partners bought the New Lanark mill from David Dale, and Owen became its manager in January 1800. Encouraged by his management success in Manchester, Owen hoped to conduct the New Lanark mill on higher principles than purely commercial ones. It had been established in 1785 by David Dale and Richard Arkwright. Its water power provided by the falls of the River Clyde turned its cotton-spinning operation into one of Britain's largest. About 2,000 individuals were involved, 500 of them children brought to the mill at the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dale, known for his benevolence, treated the children well, but the general condition of New Lanark residents was unsatisfactory, despite efforts by Dale and his son-in-law Owen to improve their workers' lives. Many of the workers were from the lowest social levels: theft, drunkenness and other vices were common and education and sanitation neglected. Most families lived in one room. More respected people rejected the long hours and demoralising drudgery of the mills. Until a series of Truck Acts (1831–1887) required employers to pay their employees in common currency, many operated a truck system, paying workers wholly or in part with tokens that had no monetary value outside the mill owner's "truck shop", which charged high prices for shoddy goods. Unlike others, Owen's truck store offered goods at prices only slightly above their wholesale cost, passing on the savings from bulk purchases to his customers and placing alcohol sales under strict supervision. These principles became the basis for Britain's Co-operative shops, some of which continue trading in altered forms to this day. Philosophy and influence Owen tested his social and economic ideas at New Lanark, where he won his workers' confidence and continued to have success through the improved efficiency at the mill. The community also earned an international reputation. Social reformers, statesmen and royalty, including the future Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, visited New Lanark to study its methods. The opinions of many such visitors were favourable. Owen's biggest success was in support of youth education and early child care. As a pioneer in Britain, notably Scotland, Owen provided an alternative to the "normal authoritarian approach to child education". The manners of children brought up under his system were more graceful, genial and unconstrained; health, plenty and contentment prevailed; drunkenness was almost unknown and illegitimacy extremely rare. Owen's relations with his workers remained excellent and operations at the mill proceeded in a smooth, regular and commercially successful way. However, some of Owen's schemes displeased his partners, forcing him to arrange for other investors to buy his share of the business in 1813, for the equivalent of US$800,000. The new investors, who included Jeremy Bentham and the well-known Quaker William Allen, were content to accept a £5,000 return on their capital. The ownership change also provided Owen with a chance to broaden his philanthropy, advocating improvements in workers' rights and child labour laws, and free education for children. In 1813 Owen authored and published A New View of Society, or Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character, the first of four essays he wrote to explain the principles behind his philosophy of socialistic reform. In this he writes: Owen had originally been a follower of the classical liberal, utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, who believed that free markets, in particular the right of workers to move and choose their employers, would release workers from the excessive power of capitalists. However, Owen developed his own, pro-socialist outlook. In addition, Owen as a deist, criticised organised religion, including the Church of England, and developed a belief system of his own. Owen felt that human character is formed by conditions over which individuals have no control. Thus individuals could not be praised or blamed for their behaviour or situation in life. This principle led Owen to conclude that the correct formation of people's characters called for placing them under proper environmental influences – physical, moral and social – from their earliest years. These notions of inherent irresponsibility in humans and the effect of early influences on an individual's character formed the basis of Owen's system of education and social reform. Relying on his own observations, experiences and thoughts, Owen saw his view of human nature as original and "the most basic and necessary constituent in an evolving science of society". His philosophy was influenced by Sir Isaac Newton's views on natural law, and his views resembled those of Plato, Denis Diderot, Claude Adrien Helvétius, William Godwin, John Locke, James Mill, and Jeremy Bentham, among others. Owen did not have the direct influence of Enlightenment philosophers. Owen's work at New Lanark continued to have significance in Britain and continental Europe. He was a "pioneer in factory reform, the father of distributive cooperation, and the founder of nursery schools." His schemes for educating his workers included opening an Institute for the Formation of Character at New Lanark in 1818. This and other programmes at New Lanark provided free education from infancy to adulthood. In addition, he zealously supported factory legislation that culminated in the Cotton Mills and Factories Act of 1819. Owen also had interviews and communications with leading members of the British government, including its premier, Robert Banks Jenkinson, Lord Liverpool. He also met many of the rulers and leading statesmen of Europe. Owen adopted new principles to raise the standard of goods his workers produced. A cube with faces painted in different colours was installed above each machinist's workplace. The colour of the face showed to all who saw it the quality and quantity of goods the worker completed. The intention was to encourage workers to do their best. Although it was no great incentive in itself, conditions at New Lanark for workers and their families were idyllic for the time. Eight-hour day Owen raised the demand for an eight-hour day in 1810 and set about instituting the policy at New Lanark. By 1817 he had formulated the goal of an eight-hour working day with the slogan "eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest". Models for socialism (1817) Owen embraced socialism in 1817, a turning point in his life, in which he pursued a "New View of Society". He outlined his position in a report to the committee of the House of Commons on the country's Poor Laws. As misery and trade stagnation after the Napoleonic Wars drew national attention, the government called on Owen for advice on how to alleviate the industrial concerns. Although he ascribed the immediate misery to the wars, he saw as the underlying cause competition of human labour with machinery, and recommended setting up self-sufficient communities. Owen proposed that communities of some 1,200 people should settle on land from , all living in one building with a public kitchen and dining halls. (The proposed size may have been influenced by the size of the village of New Lanark.) Owen also proposed that each family have its own private apartments and the responsibility for the care of its children up to the age of three. Thereafter children would be raised by the community, but their parents would have access to them at mealtimes and on other occasions. Owen further suggested that such communities be established by individuals, parishes, counties, or other governmental units. In each case there would be effective supervision by qualified persons. Work and enjoyment of its results should be experienced communally. Owen believed his idea would be the best way to reorganise society in general, and called his vision the "New Moral World". Owen's utopian model changed little in his lifetime. His developed model envisaged an association of 500–3,000 people as the optimum for a working community. While mainly agricultural, it would possess the best machinery, offer varied employment, and as far as possible be self-contained. Owen went on to explain that as such communities proliferated, "unions of them federatively united shall be formed in circle of tens, hundreds and thousands", linked by common interest. Arguments against Owen and his answers Owen always tried to spread his ideas to wider communities. First, he started publishing his ideas in newspapers. Owen then sent such newspapers widely to parliamentarians, politicians and other important people. These articles spurred the first negative reactions to his ideas. Opponents thought that Owen's plans would result in an uncontrollable increase in population and poverty. The other main criticism was that Owen's plan and the common use of everything would essentially make the country one large workshop. William Hone claimed that Owen saw people as unravelled plants from their roots, and that he wanted to plant them in rectangles. Another commentator accused Owen of wanting to imprison people in workshops like barracks and eradicate their personal independence. Owen's opponents had begun to regard him as an enemy of religion. His influence in ruling circles, which he had hoped would help him to accomplish his "plan", started diminishing and rumours of his lack of religious conviction spread. Owen believed that without a change in the character of individuals and the environment in which they live, they would remain hostile to those around them. As long as such a social order continued, the positive aspects of Christianity could never be put into practice. Owen also considered it necessary to give people more freedom in order to improve the situation of the poor and working classes. Unless people were better educated, unless they gained more useful information and had permanent employment, they were a danger to the security of the state when given more freedom than the British Constitution did at the time. Without making any changes in the national institutions, he believed that even reorganizing the working classes would bring great benefits. So he opposed the views of radicals seeking to change in the public mentality by expanding voting rights. Other notable critics of Owen include Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who viewed his work as a precursor to their own. They recognized in Owen the important understanding, developed by Marx in Capital, that it is the working class that are responsible for creating the unparalleled wealth in capitalist societies. Similarly, Owen also recognized that under the existing economic system, the working class did not automatically receive the benefits of that newly created wealth. Marx and Engels, differentiated, however, their own scientific conception of socialism from Owen's societies. They argued that Owen's plan, to create a model socialist utopia to coexist with contemporary society and prove its superiority over time, was insufficient to create a new society. In their view, Owen's "socialism" was utopian, since to Owen and the other utopian socialists "[s]ocialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own power." Marx and Engels believed that the overthrow of the capitalist system could only occur once the working class was organized into a revolutionary socialist political party of the working class that was completely independent of all capitalist class influence whereas the utopians sought the assistance and the co-operation of the capitalists in order to achieve the transition to socialism. Community experiments To test the viability of his ideas for self-sufficient working communities, Owen began experimenting in communal living in America in 1825. Among the most famous efforts was the one set up at New Harmony, Indiana. Of the 130 identifiable communitarian experiments in America before the American Civil War, at least 16 were Owenite or Owenite-influenced. New Harmony was Owen's earliest and most ambitious of these. Owen and his son William sailed to America in October 1824 to establish an experimental community in Indiana. In January 1825 Owen used a portion of his own funds to purchase an existing town of 180 buildings and several thousand acres of land along the Wabash River in Indiana. George Rapp's Harmony Society, the religious group that owned the property and had founded the communal village of Harmony (or Harmonie) on the site in 1814, decided in 1824 to relocate to Pennsylvania. Owen renamed it New Harmony and made the village his preliminary model for a Utopian community. Owen sought support for his socialist vision among American thinkers, reformers, intellectuals and public statesmen. On 25 February and 7 March 1825, Owen gave addresses in the U.S. House of Representatives to the U.S. Congress and others in the US government, outlining his vision for the Utopian community at New Harmony, and his socialist beliefs. The audience for his ideas included three former U.S. presidents – John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison) – the outgoing US President James Monroe, and the President-elect, John Quincy Adams. His meetings were perhaps the first discussions of socialism in the Americas; they were certainly a big step towards discussion of it in the United States. Owenism, among the first socialist ideologies active in the United States, can be seen as an instigator of the later socialist movement. Owen convinced William Maclure, a wealthy Scottish scientist and philanthropist living in Philadelphia to join him at New Harmony and become his financial partner. Maclure's involvement went on to attract scientists, educators and artists such as Thomas Say, Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, and Madame Marie Duclos Fretageot. These helped to turn the New Harmony community into a centre for educational reform, scientific research and artistic expression. Although Owen sought to build a "Village of Unity and Mutual Cooperation" south of the town, his grand plan was never fully realised and he returned to Britain to continue his work. During his long absences from New Harmony, Owen left the experiment under the day-to-day management of his sons, Robert Dale Owen and William Owen, and his business partner, Maclure. However, New Harmony proved to be an economic failure, lasting about two years, although it had attracted over a thousand residents by the end of its first year. The socialistic society was dissolved in 1827, but many of its scientists, educators, artists and other inhabitants, including Owen's four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale, and Richard Dale Owen, and his daughter Jane Dale Owen Fauntleroy, remained at New Harmony after the experiment ended. Other experiments in the United States included communal settlements at Blue Spring, near Bloomington, Indiana, at Yellow Springs, Ohio, and at Forestville Commonwealth at Earlton, New York, as well as other projects in New York, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. Nearly all of these had ended before New Harmony was dissolved in April 1827. Owen's Utopian communities attracted a mix of people, many with the highest aims. They included vagrants, adventurers and other reform-minded enthusiasts. In the words of Owen's son David Dale Owen, they attracted "a heterogeneous collection of Radicals", "enthusiastic devotees to principle," and "honest latitudinarians, and lazy theorists," with "a sprinkling of unprincipled sharpers thrown in." Josiah Warren, a participant at New Harmony, asserted that it was doomed to failure for lack of individual sovereignty and personal property. In describing the community, Warren explained: "We had a world in miniature – we had enacted the French revolution over again with despairing hearts instead of corpses as a result.... It appeared that it was nature's own inherent law of diversity that had conquered us... our 'united interests' were directly at war with the individualities of persons and circumstances and the instinct of self-preservation...." Warren's observations on the reasons for the community's failure led to the development of American individualist anarchism, of which he was its original theorist. Some historians have traced the demise of New Harmony to serial disagreements among its members. Social experiments also began in Scotland in 1825, when Abram Combe, an Owenite, attempted a utopian experiment at Orbiston, near Glasgow, but this failed after about two years. In the 1830s, additional experiments in socialistic cooperatives were made in Ireland and Britain, the most important being at Ralahine, established in 1831 in County Clare, Ireland, and at Tytherley, begun in 1839 in Hampshire, England. The former proved a remarkable success for three-and-a-half years until the proprietor, having ruined himself by gambling, had to sell his interest. Tytherley, known as Harmony Hall or Queenwood College, was designed by the architect Joseph Hansom. This also failed. Another social experiment, Manea Colony in the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, launched in the late 1830s by William Hodson, likewise an Owenite, but it failed in a couple of years and Hodson emigrated to the United States. The Manea Colony site has been excavated by Cambridge Archaeology Unit (CAU) based at the University of Cambridge. Return to Britain Although Owen made further brief visits to the United States, London became his permanent home and the centre of his work in 1828. After extended friction with William Allen and some other business partners, Owen relinquished all connections with New Lanark. He is often quoted in a comment by Allen at the time, "All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer". Having invested most of his fortune in the failed New Harmony communal experiment, Owen was no longer a wealthy capitalist. However, he remained the head of a vigorous propaganda effort to promote industrial equality, free education for children and adequate living conditions in factory towns, while delivering lectures in Europe and publishing a weekly newspaper to gain support for his ideas. In 1832 Owen opened the National Equitable Labour Exchange system, a time-based currency in which the exchange of goods was effected by means of labour notes; this system superseded the usual means of exchange and middlemen. The London exchange continued until 1833, a Birmingham branch operating for just a few months until July 1833. Owen also became involved in trade unionism, briefly leading the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union (GNCTU) before its collapse in 1834. Socialism first became current in British terminology in discussions of the Association of all Classes of all Nations, which Owen formed in 1835 and served as its initial leader. Owen's secular views also gained enough influence among the working classes to cause the Westminster Review to comment in 1839 that his principles were the creed of many of them. However, by 1846, the only lasting result of Owen's agitation for social change, carried on through public meetings, pamphlets, periodicals, and occasional treatises, remained the Co-operative movement, and for a time even that seemed to have collapsed. Role in spiritualism In 1817, Owen publicly claimed that all religions were false. In 1854, aged 83, Owen converted to spiritualism after a series of sittings with Maria B. Hayden, an American medium credited with introducing spiritualism to England. He made a public profession of his new faith in his publication The Rational Quarterly Review and in a pamphlet titled The future of the Human race; or great glorious and future revolution to be effected through the agency of departed spirits of good and superior men and women. Owen claimed to have had medium contact with spirits of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and others. He explained that the purpose of these was to change "the present, false, disunited and miserable state of human existence, for a true, united and happy state... to prepare the world for universal peace, and to infuse into all the spirit of charity, forbearance and love." Spiritualists claimed after Owen's death that his spirit had dictated to the medium Emma Hardinge Britten in 1871 the "Seven Principles of Spiritualism", used by their National Union as "the basis of its religious philosophy". Death and legacy As Owen grew older and more radical in his views, his influence began to decline. Owen published his memoirs, The Life of Robert Owen, in 1857, a year before his death. Although he had spent most of his life in England and Scotland, Owen returned to his native town of Newtown at the end of his life. He died there on 17 November 1858 and was buried there on 21 November. He died penniless apart from an annual income drawn from a trust established by his sons in 1844. Owen was a reformer, philanthropist, community builder, and spiritualist who spent his life seeking to improve the lives of others. An advocate of the working class, he improved working conditions for factory workers, which he demonstrated at New Lanark, Scotland, became a leader in trade unionism, promoted social equality through his experimental Utopian communities, and supported the passage of child labour laws and free education for children. In these reforms he was ahead of his time. He envisioned a communal society that others could consider and apply as they wished. In Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race (1849), he went on to say that character is formed by a combination of Nature or God and the circumstances of the individual's experience. Citing beneficial results at New Lanark, Scotland, during 30 years of work there, Owen concluded that a person's "character is not made by, but for the individual," and that nature and society are responsible for each person's character and conduct. Owen's agitation for social change, along with the work of the Owenites and of his own children, helped to bring lasting social reforms in women's and workers' rights, establish free public libraries and museums, child care and public, co-educational schools, and pre-Marxian communism, and develop the Co-operative and trade union movements. New Harmony, Indiana, and New Lanark, Scotland, two towns with which he is closely associated, remain as reminders of his efforts. Owen's legacy of public service continued with his four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale, and Richard Dale, and his daughter, Jane, who followed him to America to live at New Harmony, Indiana: Robert Dale Owen (1801–1877), an able exponent of his father's doctrines, managed the New Harmony community after his father returned to Britain in 1825. He wrote articles and co-edited with Frances Wright the New-Harmony Gazette in the late 1820s in Indiana and the Free Enquirer in the 1830s in New York City. Owen returned to New Harmony in 1833 and became active in Indiana politics. He was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives (1836–1839 and 1851–1853) and U.S. House of Representatives (1843–1847), and was appointed chargé d'affaires in Naples in 1853–1858. While serving as a member of Congress, he drafted and helped to secure passage of a bill founding the Smithsonian Institution in 1846. He was elected a delegate to the Indiana Constitutional Convention in 1850, and argued in support of widows and married women's property and divorce rights. He also favoured legislation for Indiana's tax-supported public school system. Like his father, he believed in spiritualism, authoring two books on the subject: Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World (1859) and The Debatable Land Between this World and the Next (1872). William Owen (1802–1842) moved to the United States with his father in 1824. His business skill, notably his knowledge of cotton-goods manufacturing, allowed him to remain at New Harmony after his father returned to Scotland, and serve as adviser to the community. He organised New Harmony's Thespian Society in 1827, but died of unknown causes at the age of 40. Jane Dale Owen Fauntleroy (1805–1861) arrived in the United States in 1833 and settled in New Harmony. She was a musician and educator who set up a school in her home. In 1835 she married Robert Henry Fauntleroy, a civil engineer from Virginia living at New Harmony. David Dale Owen (1807–1860) moved to the United States in 1827 and resided at New Harmony for several years. He trained as a geologist and natural scientist and earned a medical degree. He was appointed a United States geologist in 1839. His work included geological surveys in the Midwest, more specifically the states of Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas, as well as Minnesota Territory. His brother Richard succeeded him as state geologist of Indiana. Richard Dale Owen (1810–1890) emigrated to the United States in 1827 and joined his siblings at New Harmony. He fought in the Mexican–American War in 1847, taught natural science at Western Military Institute in Tennessee in 1849–1859, and earned a medical degree in 1858. During the American Civil War he was a colonel in the Union army and served as a commandant of Camp Morton, a prisoner-of-war camp for Confederate soldiers at Indianapolis, Indiana. After the war, Owen served as Indiana's second state geologist. In addition, he was a professor at Indiana University and chaired its natural science department in 1864–1879. He helped plan Purdue University and was appointed its first president in 1872–1874, but resigned before its classes began and resumed teaching at Indiana University. He spent his retirement years on research and writing. Honours and tributes The Co-operative Movement erected a monument to Robert Owen in 1902 at his burial site in Newtown, Montgomeryshire. The Welsh people donated a bust of Owen by Welsh sculptor Sir William Goscombe John to the International Labour Office library in Geneva, Switzerland. Selected published works A New View of Society: Or, Essays on the Formation of Human Character, and the Application of the Principle to Practice (London, 1813). Retitled, A New View of Society: Or, Essays on the Formation of Human Character Preparatory to the Development of a Plan for Gradually Ameliorating the Condition of Mankind, for second edition, 1816 Observations on the Effect of the Manufacturing System. London, 1815 Report to the Committee of the Association for the Relief of the Manufacturing and Labouring Poor (1817) Two Memorials on Behalf of the Working Classes (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 181 An Address to the Master Manufacturers of Great Britain: On the Present Existing Evils in the Manufacturing System (Bolton, 1819) Report to the County of Lanark of a Plan for relieving Public Distress (Glasgow: Glasgow University Press, 1821) An Explanation of the Cause of Distress which pervades the civilised parts of the world (London and Paris, 1823) An Address to All Classes in the State. London, 1832 The Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race. London, 1849 Collected works: A New View of Society and Other Writings, introduction by G. D. H. Cole. London and New York: J. M. Dent & Sons, E. P. Dutton and Co., 1927 A New View of Society and Other Writings, G. Claeys, ed. London and New York: Penguin Books, 1991 The Selected Works of Robert Owen, G. Claeys, ed., 4 vols. London: Pickering and Chatto, 1993 Archival collections: Robert Owen Collection, National Co-operative Archive, United Kingdom. New Harmony, Indiana, Collection, 1814–1884, 1920, 1964, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, Indiana, United States New Harmony Series III Collection, Workingmen's Institute, New Harmony, Indiana, United States Owen family collection, 1826–1967, bulk 1830–1890, Indiana University Archives, Bloomington, Indiana, United States See also Cincinnati Time Store José María Arizmendiarrieta Labour voucher List of Owenite communities in the United States Owenstown Owenism William King References Bibliography (online version) Further reading Biographies of Owen A. J. Booth, Robert Owen, the Founder of Socialism in England (London, 1869) G. D. H. Cole, Life of Robert Owen. London, Ernest Benn Ltd., 1925; second edition Macmillan, 1930 Lloyd Jones. The Life, Times, and Labours of Robert Owen. London, 1889 A. L. Morton, The Life and Ideas of Robert Owen. New York, International Publishers, 1969 W. H. Oliver, "Robert Owen and the English Working-Class Movements", History Today (November 1958) 8–11, pp. 787–796 F. A. Packard, Life of Robert Owen. Philadelphia: Ashmead & Evans, 1866 Frank Podmore, Robert Owen: A Biography. London: Hutchinson and Company, 1906 David Santilli, Life of the Mill Man. London, B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1987 William Lucas Sargant, Robert Owen and his social philosophy . London, 1860 Richard Tames, Radicals, Railways & Reform. London, B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1986 Other works about Owen Arthur Bestor, Backwoods Utopias. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950, 2nd edition, 1970 John Butt (ed). Robert Owen: Aspects of his Life and Work. Humanities Press, 1971 Gregory Claeys, Citizens and Saints. Politics and Anti-Politics in Early British Socialism. Cambridge University Press, 1989 Gregory Claeys, Machinery, Money and the Millennium: From Moral Economy to Socialism 1815–1860. Princeton University Press, 1987 R. E. Davies, The Life of Robert Owen, Philanthropist and Social Reformer, An Appreciation. Robert Sutton, 1907 R. E. Davis and F. J. O'Hagan, Robert Owen. London: Continuum Press, 2010 E. Dolleans, Robert Owen. Paris, 1905 I. Donnachie, Robert Owen. Owen of New Lanark and New Harmony. 2000 Auguste Marie Fabre, Un Socialiste Pratique, Robert Owen. Nìmes, Bureaux de l'Émancipation, 1896 John F. C. Harrison, Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America: Quest for the New Moral World. New York, 1969 Alexander Herzen, My Past and Thoughts (University of California Press, 1982). (One chapter is devoted to Owen.) G. J. Holyoake, The History of Co-operation in England: Its Literature and Its Advocates V. 1. London, 1906 G. J. Holyoake, The History of Co-operation in England: Its Literature and Its Advocates V. 2. London, 1906 The National Library of Wales, A Bibliography of Robert Owen, The Socialist. 1914 H. Simon, Robert Owen: Sein Leben und Seine Bedeutung für die Gegenwart. Jena, 1905 O. Siméon, Robert Owen's Experiment at New Lanark. From Paternalism to Socialism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017 External links Essays by Owen at the Marxists Internet Archive Brief biography at the New Lanark World Heritage Site The Robert Owen Museum, Newtown, Wales Video of Owen's wool mill Brief biography at Cotton Times "Robert Owen (1771-1858) social reformer, founder of New Harmony", University of Evansville, Indiana "Robert Owen and the Co-operative movement" Brief biography at The History Guide Brief biography at age-of-the-sage.org Heaven On Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism at PBS {dead link 2021-02-22} 1771 births 1858 deaths Cooperative organizers Founders of utopian communities People from Newtown, Powys Owenites Utopian socialists Welsh agnostics Welsh humanists 19th-century Welsh businesspeople 18th-century Welsh businesspeople Welsh business theorists Welsh philanthropists Welsh socialists British reformers British social reformers Socialist economists

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What did Wilkins do at Paris?

What did Ray Wilkins do at Paris?

Ray Wilkins

Wilkins signed with A.C. Milan in the summer of 1984. He later remarked that the most difficult part of adapting to the Italian game was the focus on fitness - the coaching staff made him work to reduce his body fat levels and Wilkins described the result as being in the best shape of his career. The Italian team was struggling during this period, having suffered relegation in the 1981-82 Serie A, and Wilkins was joined by fellow Englishman Mark Hateley (himself replacing another compatriot - Luther Blissett). The only foreign players in the squad, the pair helped the team to victory over rivals Inter in the Milan Derby that October, winning plaudits from Italian press and the club's fans. In his first year there, Wilkins played 28 Serie A games to bring the team to fifth in the league and also won a runner-up medal in the Coppa Italia (having eliminated Inter in the semis). The following season he remained a key player in Milan's midfield, appearing in 29 league games and scoring two goals - one late goal to salvage a draw at Avellino and another goal the following game against Sampdoria. These were the only Serie A goals of his career. Overall, the team struggled for goals, with Pietro Paolo Virdis's total of 13 making him the club's only goalscorer in double figures that year. The club also suffered off the pitch, with owner Giuseppe Farina absconding to South Africa following accusations of bribery and theft. In Wilkin's final season there (1986-87), he fell out of the first team structure, following the signing of Roberto Donadoni and the continued presence of both Agostino Di Bartolomei and Alberigo Evani. The team finished fifth in the league, beating Inter twice, in Silvio Berlusconi's first year as owner. Wilkins played 105 games (74 in Serie A) for Milan between 1984 and 1987. Corriere della Sera eulogised him as a "serious and meticulous professional who was immediately appreciated for his long and precise passes". Wilkins signed for Paris Saint-Germain in the middle of 1987, but this proved to be short-lived: he failed to break into the team ahead of Gabriel Calderon and Safet Susic so he eagerly took the option to signed for Rangers for PS250,000 that November. At the Scottish club he won two league titles and one Scottish League Cup under Graeme Souness. He achieved cult status for his volley in the Old Firm game against reigning champions Celtic in August 1988, giving Rangers the lead in a 5-1 win against their rivals. Despite only playing two seasons for the Glasgow club, he was inducted into their Hall of Fame. CANNOTANSWER

Wilkins signed for Paris Saint-Germain

Raymond Colin Wilkins, (14 September 1956 – 4 April 2018) was an English football player and coach. Born into a footballing family with his father and three brothers involved in the game, Wilkins played as a midfielder. He began his career at Chelsea, where he was appointed captain at the age of 18, and later played for clubs including Manchester United, A.C. Milan, Queens Park Rangers and Rangers. He won 84 caps for the England national football team from 1976 to 1986, playing at UEFA Euro 1980 and the 1982 and 1986 FIFA World Cups. After his playing career ended, he worked as a television pundit, and as a coach and manager with Queens Park Rangers, Fulham and Chelsea. He managed Jordan at the 2015 AFC Asian Cup and his last coaching job was as the assistant manager of Aston Villa later that year. Club career Early career Born in Hillingdon, Middlesex, Wilkins started his career with the Sunday League team Senrab that play in Wanstead Flats, East London. Chelsea Wilkins made his name in the 1970s with boyhood club Chelsea, which he joined as an apprentice, progressing to his first team debut against Norwich City at the age of 17 on 26 October 1973 as a substitute in a 3–0 home league win. In 1975, following the club's relegation and the departure of many established players, an 18-year-old Wilkins was handed the captaincy of Chelsea by new manager Eddie McCreadie, taking it from long-time Blues captain John Hollins. He took to the role well, keeping it for four years. He emerged as Chelsea's key player of that period, leading a team of mainly young players to promotion again in 1976–1977 and, in the next season, consolidation of their place in the First Division. His rapid success, along with his "dark good looks", also saw Wilkins becoming a regular pin-up feature in British teenybopper magazines. His elder brother, Graham Wilkins also played for Chelsea. Manchester United In 1979, after Chelsea were relegated, Wilkins signed for Manchester United for a fee of £825,000, the highest fee received for a Chelsea player at the time. He scored ten goals in his five years with the Red Devils, including a long-range strike in the 2–2 draw with Brighton & Hove Albion in the 1983 FA Cup Final (United won the replay). He was voted player of the year by the team's supporters at the end of the 1983–1984 season. His midfield performances drew the attention of A.C. Milan, who made United a £1.5 million offer for the player. Milan, Paris and Rangers Wilkins signed with A.C. Milan in summer 1984. He later remarked that the most difficult part of adapting to the Italian game was the focus on fitness – the coaching staff made him work to reduce his body fat levels and Wilkins described the result as being in the best shape of his career. The Italian team was struggling during this period, having suffered relegation in the 1981–82 Serie A season, and Wilkins was joined by fellow Englishman Mark Hateley (himself replacing another compatriot — Luther Blissett). The only foreign players in the squad, the pair helped the team to victory over rivals Inter Milan in the Milan Derby that October, winning plaudits from Italian press and the club's fans. In his first year there, Wilkins played 28 Serie A games to bring the team to fifth in the league and also won a runner-up medal in the Coppa Italia (having eliminated Inter in the semis). The following season he remained a key player in A.C. Milan's midfield, appearing in 29 league games and scoring two goals – one late goal to salvage a draw at Avellino and another goal the following game against Sampdoria. These were the only Serie A goals of his career. Overall, the team struggled for goals, with Pietro Paolo Virdis's total of 13 making him the club's only goalscorer in double figures that year. The club also suffered off the pitch, with owner Giuseppe Farina absconding to South Africa following accusations of bribery and theft. In Wilkins' final season there (1986–1987), he fell out of the first team structure, following the signing of Roberto Donadoni and the continued presence of both Agostino Di Bartolomei and Alberigo Evani. The team finished fifth in the league, beating Inter twice, in Silvio Berlusconi's first year as owner. Wilkins played 105 games (74 in Serie A) for Milan between 1984 and 1987. Corriere della Sera eulogised him as a "serious and meticulous professional who was immediately appreciated for his long and precise passes". Wilkins signed for Paris Saint-Germain in the middle of 1987, but this proved to be short-lived: he failed to break into the team ahead of Gabriel Calderón and Safet Sušić so he eagerly took the option to move to Scotland to sign for Rangers for £250,000 that November. He made his debut for Rangers on 28 November 1987 in a 3–2 win over Hearts at Ibrox. He became an integral part of the team for the rest of the season, making twenty-nine appearances, which included both legs of the European Cup quarter-final against Steaua Bucharest. However, it would be the following season he would truly make his mark at Rangers. Reigning Scottish champions, and Old Firm rivals, Celtic played Rangers on 27 August 1988. With the score tied at 1–1, Wilkins scored a "thunderous volley" from the edge of the penalty box to put Rangers ahead, and his side eventually recorded an emphatic 5–1 win that day over their rivals. Rangers went on to win the league title that season, the first of their eventual nine-in-a-row. Wilkins also played in Rangers' win over Aberdeen in the 1988 Scottish League Cup Final. He remained an important team member into season 1988–89, playing in almost every game for the first half of the season, but his family wished to return to London. As such, he left Rangers in December 1989 to sign for Queens Park Rangers. Following his last appearance for Rangers, Wilkins received a standing ovation from the 40,000 crowd. Despite only playing two seasons for the Glasgow club, he was later inducted into their Hall of Fame. Later career The longest stint of his late career was at Queens Park Rangers, for whom he was a regular first team player from November 1989 to 1994, including the team's first two Premier League seasons. He made his debut in the 3–0 away win versus Crystal Palace. Wilkins left QPR in the summer of 1994 on a free transfer to join Crystal Palace as a player-coach under manager Alan Smith, but only made one appearance due to breaking his left foot on his debut. Wilkins re-joined QPR as player-manager on 15 November 1994, following the exit of Gerry Francis. The rest of that season was a success with the team finishing eighth in the Premiership. However the close season of 1995 saw the departure of Les Ferdinand to Newcastle and the following season the team struggled and were relegated. As player-manager, he appeared in a further 21 games for the club from 1994 to 1996. Wilkins left QPR by mutual agreement in September 1996 after the club was bought by media tycoon Chris Wright following their relegation from the FA Premier League. Wilkins played for four clubs in the 1996–1997 season. He played one game at Wycombe Wanderers before moving to Hibernian for a 16-game stint. Toward the end of the season he played three times for Millwall in the Second Division and, finally, three Third Division games for Leyton Orient before retiring. International career Wilkins scored three goals in 84 games for England, captained the team on ten occasions, and played at the 1982 and 1986 World Cups. Wilkins was called up to play for England for the first time in 1976 by coach Don Revie, then made his debut on 28 May in a 3–2 win over Italy at the U.S.A. Bicentennial Cup Tournament in New York. He achieved one of his career highs after helping England qualify for the 1980 European Championships in Italy — the first tournament England had reached for a decade. During a group game against Belgium, Wilkins scored a memorable goal when he lobbed the whole Belgian defence (thereby breaching the Belgians' obvious offside trap) and delivered a second lob, this time over the head of the goalkeeper and into the net to put England ahead. The Belgians swiftly equalised, however, and England failed to progress beyond the group stage. Wilkins was a fixture in the England squad through a successful campaign to qualify for the 1982 World Cup in Spain, which England exited at the second group stage. Over the season 1983/84, Wilkins continued to play for England under new coach Bobby Robson but the team failed to qualify for the 1984 European Championships. Wilkins remained an England regular during his spell at A.C. Milan and he was chosen for the squad which qualified for the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. He played in the opening defeat against Portugal. Wilkins became the first Englishman to be sent off at the World Cup in a goalless draw with Morocco in 1986, for throwing the ball at Gabriel González. The ball hit the referee having been thrown in protest at being deemed offside. He was suspended for the next two games and was not reinstated by the time the quarter final against Argentina came round, a game which England lost 2–1. Wilkins made his 84th and final England appearance in November 1986, against Yugoslavia. Coaching career Early coaching career Wilkins was QPR manager from 1994 to 1996, and managed fellow West London club Fulham in 1997–1998. In March 1999, Wilkins was appointed Chelsea's first-team coach after Graham Rix was jailed for child sex offences. Wilkins and Rix were Chelsea's interim managers after the sacking of Gianluca Vialli at the start of the 2000–01 FA Premier League season, but both were sacked from the club on the orders of new manager Claudio Ranieri in November 2000. When Vialli was hired by First Division club Watford, Wilkins again assisted him until their dismissal in June 2002. From 2003 to 2005, Wilkins assisted former Chelsea player Dennis Wise in his managing of Millwall, but announced his exit when he took exception at Dave Bassett being hired in the coaching staff. England U-21 From 2004 on Wilkins was assistant coach to Peter Taylor with the England under-21s until Taylor left in early 2007. Wilkins was not retained by incoming head coach Stuart Pearce. Return to Chelsea In September 2008, Wilkins was appointed assistant first team coach to Luiz Felipe Scolari at Chelsea, following Steve Clarke's departure to West Ham United. In February 2009, following Scolari's shock sacking, Wilkins was appointed as Chelsea's caretaker manager for the Fifth round FA Cup tie with Watford. Chelsea won the game 3–1, through a Nicolas Anelka hat-trick, with the club's new manager Guus Hiddink watching from the stands. On 11 November 2010, it was announced that Wilkins' contract with Chelsea "would not be renewed" and that he was to leave the club "with immediate effect". On 1 December 2010, Wilkins reached what he described as a "harmonious conclusion" with Chelsea following his unexpected departure from Stamford Bridge. While appearing as a guest on Sky Sports Champions League coverage on 7 December 2010, Wilkins said that Chelsea still had not given him a reason for his sacking. Chelsea manager Carlo Ancelotti, who was himself sacked at the end of the 2010–2011 season, wrote about Wilkins, in his autobiographical book The Beautiful Games of an Ordinary Genius: "Ray is one of those select few, always present, noble in spirit, a real blue-blood, Chelsea flows in his veins ... without him we wouldn't have won a thing." Later coaching career On 30 December 2013, Wilkins was appointed assistant head coach of Fulham. He and technical director Alan Curbishley were sacked on 17 February 2014 and the season ended with relegation. On 3 September 2014, Wilkins was appointed as the new head coach of Jordan. He led Jordan at the 2015 AFC Asian Cup, where they were eliminated in the group-stages for the first time after two losses against Iraq and Japan and a win over Palestine. On 25 June 2015, Aston Villa manager Tim Sherwood appointed Wilkins as his assistant manager. On 26 October 2015, Wilkins was sacked along with Tim Sherwood and the rest of the coaching team. Media In the 1990s Wilkins was part of the team that contributed to the Football Italia show that aired on Channel 4. Wilkins later appeared as a commentator for Sky Sports, particularly on their Champions League coverage. He also worked for Talksport. Wilkins was also featured as a commentator on the 1990s Tango soft drink commercials, 'You know when you've been Tango'd'. Personal life The son of professional footballer George Wilkins, he had two sisters and three footballer brothers: Graham Wilkins (born 28 June 1955 in Hillingdon), a former professional, who played in the Football League as a full-back for Chelsea, Brentford, and Southend United; former Brighton & Hove Albion manager and player, Dean Wilkins; and Stephen Wilkins, who was signed by Chelsea and later made one appearance for Brentford, before playing for a number of non-League teams, including Dagenham and Hayes. Throughout his life, Wilkins was known by his childhood nickname of "Butch". Wilkins married Jackie (née Bygraves) in 1978. The couple had a son and a daughter. Wilkins was a patron for the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young. In 1993, he was made an MBE. In March 2013, he was stopped whilst driving and found to be "nearly four times" over the legal alcohol limit. In February 2014 he said that he had ulcerative colitis. In July 2016, Wilkins was given a four-year ban for drink driving. In August 2016, Wilkins admitted he was an alcoholic. Death On 28 March 2018, Wilkins had a cardiac arrest resulting in a fall and was placed into an induced coma at St George's Hospital in Tooting. He died at the age of 61 on 4 April 2018. Hours after his death, Milan played rivals Inter Milan in the Derby della Madonnina at the San Siro. His former captain Franco Baresi laid a bouquet of flowers next to Wilkins' shirt by the side of the pitch. A section of Milan fans held aloft a banner which read "Ciao Ray: Leggenda Rossonera" (English: "Goodbye Ray: Legend of the Red and Blacks"). During Chelsea's home game against West Ham United on 8 April, fans at Stamford Bridge gave a minute's applause in the eighth minute to pay tribute to Wilkins. They also held a banner which read "Ray was one those select few, he knew what it meant to be one of us a real blue blood. Chelsea flowed through his veins, may you rest in peace Ray." A memorial service was held for Wilkins on 1 May at St Luke's Church, Chelsea, attended by many figures who knew him from the world of football. His son made a speech about Wilkins' struggles with depression and alcoholism. Career statistics Club International Scores and results list England's goal tally first, score column indicates score after each Wilkins goal. Managerial statistics Honours Player Manchester United FA Cup: 1982–83 FA Charity Shield: 1983 Rangers Scottish Premier Division: 1988–89, 1989–90 Scottish League Cup: 1988–89 England Rous Cup: 1986 British Home Championship: 1977–78, 1981–82, 1982–83 Individual Chelsea Player of the Year: 1976, 1977 English Football Hall of Fame: 2013 Assistant manager Chelsea Premier League: 2009–10 FA Cup: 1999–2000, 2008–09, 2009–10 FA Community Shield: 2009 References External links England Record 1956 births 2018 deaths Footballers from Hillingdon England under-23 international footballers England under-21 international footballers England international footballers English football managers English footballers English expatriate footballers English Football Hall of Fame inductees Expatriate footballers in France Expatriate footballers in Italy Paris Saint-Germain F.C. players A.C. Milan players Chelsea F.C. players Crystal Palace F.C. players Premier League players English Football League players Ligue 1 players Scottish Football League players Serie A players UEFA Euro 1980 players 1982 FIFA World Cup players 1986 FIFA World Cup players Fulham F.C. managers Hibernian F.C. players Leyton Orient F.C. players Manchester United F.C. players Members of the Order of the British Empire Millwall F.C. players Queens Park Rangers F.C. players Rangers F.C. players Wycombe Wanderers F.C. players Chelsea F.C. non-playing staff Watford F.C. non-playing staff Queens Park Rangers F.C. managers Premier League managers English association football commentators Senrab F.C. players Fulham F.C. non-playing staff English Football League representative players Jordan national football team managers Expatriate football managers in Jordan English expatriate football managers 2015 AFC Asian Cup managers Aston Villa F.C. non-playing staff Association football midfielders Ray FA Cup Final players English expatriate sportspeople in Jordan English expatriate sportspeople in Italy English expatriate sportspeople in France

C_20de567609ed49768d60d5241074d1bd_1

How long was his contract at Paris Saint-Germain?

How long was Ray Wilkins contract at Paris Saint-Germain?

Ray Wilkins

Wilkins signed with A.C. Milan in the summer of 1984. He later remarked that the most difficult part of adapting to the Italian game was the focus on fitness - the coaching staff made him work to reduce his body fat levels and Wilkins described the result as being in the best shape of his career. The Italian team was struggling during this period, having suffered relegation in the 1981-82 Serie A, and Wilkins was joined by fellow Englishman Mark Hateley (himself replacing another compatriot - Luther Blissett). The only foreign players in the squad, the pair helped the team to victory over rivals Inter in the Milan Derby that October, winning plaudits from Italian press and the club's fans. In his first year there, Wilkins played 28 Serie A games to bring the team to fifth in the league and also won a runner-up medal in the Coppa Italia (having eliminated Inter in the semis). The following season he remained a key player in Milan's midfield, appearing in 29 league games and scoring two goals - one late goal to salvage a draw at Avellino and another goal the following game against Sampdoria. These were the only Serie A goals of his career. Overall, the team struggled for goals, with Pietro Paolo Virdis's total of 13 making him the club's only goalscorer in double figures that year. The club also suffered off the pitch, with owner Giuseppe Farina absconding to South Africa following accusations of bribery and theft. In Wilkin's final season there (1986-87), he fell out of the first team structure, following the signing of Roberto Donadoni and the continued presence of both Agostino Di Bartolomei and Alberigo Evani. The team finished fifth in the league, beating Inter twice, in Silvio Berlusconi's first year as owner. Wilkins played 105 games (74 in Serie A) for Milan between 1984 and 1987. Corriere della Sera eulogised him as a "serious and meticulous professional who was immediately appreciated for his long and precise passes". Wilkins signed for Paris Saint-Germain in the middle of 1987, but this proved to be short-lived: he failed to break into the team ahead of Gabriel Calderon and Safet Susic so he eagerly took the option to signed for Rangers for PS250,000 that November. At the Scottish club he won two league titles and one Scottish League Cup under Graeme Souness. He achieved cult status for his volley in the Old Firm game against reigning champions Celtic in August 1988, giving Rangers the lead in a 5-1 win against their rivals. Despite only playing two seasons for the Glasgow club, he was inducted into their Hall of Fame. CANNOTANSWER

CANNOTANSWER

Raymond Colin Wilkins, (14 September 1956 – 4 April 2018) was an English football player and coach. Born into a footballing family with his father and three brothers involved in the game, Wilkins played as a midfielder. He began his career at Chelsea, where he was appointed captain at the age of 18, and later played for clubs including Manchester United, A.C. Milan, Queens Park Rangers and Rangers. He won 84 caps for the England national football team from 1976 to 1986, playing at UEFA Euro 1980 and the 1982 and 1986 FIFA World Cups. After his playing career ended, he worked as a television pundit, and as a coach and manager with Queens Park Rangers, Fulham and Chelsea. He managed Jordan at the 2015 AFC Asian Cup and his last coaching job was as the assistant manager of Aston Villa later that year. Club career Early career Born in Hillingdon, Middlesex, Wilkins started his career with the Sunday League team Senrab that play in Wanstead Flats, East London. Chelsea Wilkins made his name in the 1970s with boyhood club Chelsea, which he joined as an apprentice, progressing to his first team debut against Norwich City at the age of 17 on 26 October 1973 as a substitute in a 3–0 home league win. In 1975, following the club's relegation and the departure of many established players, an 18-year-old Wilkins was handed the captaincy of Chelsea by new manager Eddie McCreadie, taking it from long-time Blues captain John Hollins. He took to the role well, keeping it for four years. He emerged as Chelsea's key player of that period, leading a team of mainly young players to promotion again in 1976–1977 and, in the next season, consolidation of their place in the First Division. His rapid success, along with his "dark good looks", also saw Wilkins becoming a regular pin-up feature in British teenybopper magazines. His elder brother, Graham Wilkins also played for Chelsea. Manchester United In 1979, after Chelsea were relegated, Wilkins signed for Manchester United for a fee of £825,000, the highest fee received for a Chelsea player at the time. He scored ten goals in his five years with the Red Devils, including a long-range strike in the 2–2 draw with Brighton & Hove Albion in the 1983 FA Cup Final (United won the replay). He was voted player of the year by the team's supporters at the end of the 1983–1984 season. His midfield performances drew the attention of A.C. Milan, who made United a £1.5 million offer for the player. Milan, Paris and Rangers Wilkins signed with A.C. Milan in summer 1984. He later remarked that the most difficult part of adapting to the Italian game was the focus on fitness – the coaching staff made him work to reduce his body fat levels and Wilkins described the result as being in the best shape of his career. The Italian team was struggling during this period, having suffered relegation in the 1981–82 Serie A season, and Wilkins was joined by fellow Englishman Mark Hateley (himself replacing another compatriot — Luther Blissett). The only foreign players in the squad, the pair helped the team to victory over rivals Inter Milan in the Milan Derby that October, winning plaudits from Italian press and the club's fans. In his first year there, Wilkins played 28 Serie A games to bring the team to fifth in the league and also won a runner-up medal in the Coppa Italia (having eliminated Inter in the semis). The following season he remained a key player in A.C. Milan's midfield, appearing in 29 league games and scoring two goals – one late goal to salvage a draw at Avellino and another goal the following game against Sampdoria. These were the only Serie A goals of his career. Overall, the team struggled for goals, with Pietro Paolo Virdis's total of 13 making him the club's only goalscorer in double figures that year. The club also suffered off the pitch, with owner Giuseppe Farina absconding to South Africa following accusations of bribery and theft. In Wilkins' final season there (1986–1987), he fell out of the first team structure, following the signing of Roberto Donadoni and the continued presence of both Agostino Di Bartolomei and Alberigo Evani. The team finished fifth in the league, beating Inter twice, in Silvio Berlusconi's first year as owner. Wilkins played 105 games (74 in Serie A) for Milan between 1984 and 1987. Corriere della Sera eulogised him as a "serious and meticulous professional who was immediately appreciated for his long and precise passes". Wilkins signed for Paris Saint-Germain in the middle of 1987, but this proved to be short-lived: he failed to break into the team ahead of Gabriel Calderón and Safet Sušić so he eagerly took the option to move to Scotland to sign for Rangers for £250,000 that November. He made his debut for Rangers on 28 November 1987 in a 3–2 win over Hearts at Ibrox. He became an integral part of the team for the rest of the season, making twenty-nine appearances, which included both legs of the European Cup quarter-final against Steaua Bucharest. However, it would be the following season he would truly make his mark at Rangers. Reigning Scottish champions, and Old Firm rivals, Celtic played Rangers on 27 August 1988. With the score tied at 1–1, Wilkins scored a "thunderous volley" from the edge of the penalty box to put Rangers ahead, and his side eventually recorded an emphatic 5–1 win that day over their rivals. Rangers went on to win the league title that season, the first of their eventual nine-in-a-row. Wilkins also played in Rangers' win over Aberdeen in the 1988 Scottish League Cup Final. He remained an important team member into season 1988–89, playing in almost every game for the first half of the season, but his family wished to return to London. As such, he left Rangers in December 1989 to sign for Queens Park Rangers. Following his last appearance for Rangers, Wilkins received a standing ovation from the 40,000 crowd. Despite only playing two seasons for the Glasgow club, he was later inducted into their Hall of Fame. Later career The longest stint of his late career was at Queens Park Rangers, for whom he was a regular first team player from November 1989 to 1994, including the team's first two Premier League seasons. He made his debut in the 3–0 away win versus Crystal Palace. Wilkins left QPR in the summer of 1994 on a free transfer to join Crystal Palace as a player-coach under manager Alan Smith, but only made one appearance due to breaking his left foot on his debut. Wilkins re-joined QPR as player-manager on 15 November 1994, following the exit of Gerry Francis. The rest of that season was a success with the team finishing eighth in the Premiership. However the close season of 1995 saw the departure of Les Ferdinand to Newcastle and the following season the team struggled and were relegated. As player-manager, he appeared in a further 21 games for the club from 1994 to 1996. Wilkins left QPR by mutual agreement in September 1996 after the club was bought by media tycoon Chris Wright following their relegation from the FA Premier League. Wilkins played for four clubs in the 1996–1997 season. He played one game at Wycombe Wanderers before moving to Hibernian for a 16-game stint. Toward the end of the season he played three times for Millwall in the Second Division and, finally, three Third Division games for Leyton Orient before retiring. International career Wilkins scored three goals in 84 games for England, captained the team on ten occasions, and played at the 1982 and 1986 World Cups. Wilkins was called up to play for England for the first time in 1976 by coach Don Revie, then made his debut on 28 May in a 3–2 win over Italy at the U.S.A. Bicentennial Cup Tournament in New York. He achieved one of his career highs after helping England qualify for the 1980 European Championships in Italy — the first tournament England had reached for a decade. During a group game against Belgium, Wilkins scored a memorable goal when he lobbed the whole Belgian defence (thereby breaching the Belgians' obvious offside trap) and delivered a second lob, this time over the head of the goalkeeper and into the net to put England ahead. The Belgians swiftly equalised, however, and England failed to progress beyond the group stage. Wilkins was a fixture in the England squad through a successful campaign to qualify for the 1982 World Cup in Spain, which England exited at the second group stage. Over the season 1983/84, Wilkins continued to play for England under new coach Bobby Robson but the team failed to qualify for the 1984 European Championships. Wilkins remained an England regular during his spell at A.C. Milan and he was chosen for the squad which qualified for the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. He played in the opening defeat against Portugal. Wilkins became the first Englishman to be sent off at the World Cup in a goalless draw with Morocco in 1986, for throwing the ball at Gabriel González. The ball hit the referee having been thrown in protest at being deemed offside. He was suspended for the next two games and was not reinstated by the time the quarter final against Argentina came round, a game which England lost 2–1. Wilkins made his 84th and final England appearance in November 1986, against Yugoslavia. Coaching career Early coaching career Wilkins was QPR manager from 1994 to 1996, and managed fellow West London club Fulham in 1997–1998. In March 1999, Wilkins was appointed Chelsea's first-team coach after Graham Rix was jailed for child sex offences. Wilkins and Rix were Chelsea's interim managers after the sacking of Gianluca Vialli at the start of the 2000–01 FA Premier League season, but both were sacked from the club on the orders of new manager Claudio Ranieri in November 2000. When Vialli was hired by First Division club Watford, Wilkins again assisted him until their dismissal in June 2002. From 2003 to 2005, Wilkins assisted former Chelsea player Dennis Wise in his managing of Millwall, but announced his exit when he took exception at Dave Bassett being hired in the coaching staff. England U-21 From 2004 on Wilkins was assistant coach to Peter Taylor with the England under-21s until Taylor left in early 2007. Wilkins was not retained by incoming head coach Stuart Pearce. Return to Chelsea In September 2008, Wilkins was appointed assistant first team coach to Luiz Felipe Scolari at Chelsea, following Steve Clarke's departure to West Ham United. In February 2009, following Scolari's shock sacking, Wilkins was appointed as Chelsea's caretaker manager for the Fifth round FA Cup tie with Watford. Chelsea won the game 3–1, through a Nicolas Anelka hat-trick, with the club's new manager Guus Hiddink watching from the stands. On 11 November 2010, it was announced that Wilkins' contract with Chelsea "would not be renewed" and that he was to leave the club "with immediate effect". On 1 December 2010, Wilkins reached what he described as a "harmonious conclusion" with Chelsea following his unexpected departure from Stamford Bridge. While appearing as a guest on Sky Sports Champions League coverage on 7 December 2010, Wilkins said that Chelsea still had not given him a reason for his sacking. Chelsea manager Carlo Ancelotti, who was himself sacked at the end of the 2010–2011 season, wrote about Wilkins, in his autobiographical book The Beautiful Games of an Ordinary Genius: "Ray is one of those select few, always present, noble in spirit, a real blue-blood, Chelsea flows in his veins ... without him we wouldn't have won a thing." Later coaching career On 30 December 2013, Wilkins was appointed assistant head coach of Fulham. He and technical director Alan Curbishley were sacked on 17 February 2014 and the season ended with relegation. On 3 September 2014, Wilkins was appointed as the new head coach of Jordan. He led Jordan at the 2015 AFC Asian Cup, where they were eliminated in the group-stages for the first time after two losses against Iraq and Japan and a win over Palestine. On 25 June 2015, Aston Villa manager Tim Sherwood appointed Wilkins as his assistant manager. On 26 October 2015, Wilkins was sacked along with Tim Sherwood and the rest of the coaching team. Media In the 1990s Wilkins was part of the team that contributed to the Football Italia show that aired on Channel 4. Wilkins later appeared as a commentator for Sky Sports, particularly on their Champions League coverage. He also worked for Talksport. Wilkins was also featured as a commentator on the 1990s Tango soft drink commercials, 'You know when you've been Tango'd'. Personal life The son of professional footballer George Wilkins, he had two sisters and three footballer brothers: Graham Wilkins (born 28 June 1955 in Hillingdon), a former professional, who played in the Football League as a full-back for Chelsea, Brentford, and Southend United; former Brighton & Hove Albion manager and player, Dean Wilkins; and Stephen Wilkins, who was signed by Chelsea and later made one appearance for Brentford, before playing for a number of non-League teams, including Dagenham and Hayes. Throughout his life, Wilkins was known by his childhood nickname of "Butch". Wilkins married Jackie (née Bygraves) in 1978. The couple had a son and a daughter. Wilkins was a patron for the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young. In 1993, he was made an MBE. In March 2013, he was stopped whilst driving and found to be "nearly four times" over the legal alcohol limit. In February 2014 he said that he had ulcerative colitis. In July 2016, Wilkins was given a four-year ban for drink driving. In August 2016, Wilkins admitted he was an alcoholic. Death On 28 March 2018, Wilkins had a cardiac arrest resulting in a fall and was placed into an induced coma at St George's Hospital in Tooting. He died at the age of 61 on 4 April 2018. Hours after his death, Milan played rivals Inter Milan in the Derby della Madonnina at the San Siro. His former captain Franco Baresi laid a bouquet of flowers next to Wilkins' shirt by the side of the pitch. A section of Milan fans held aloft a banner which read "Ciao Ray: Leggenda Rossonera" (English: "Goodbye Ray: Legend of the Red and Blacks"). During Chelsea's home game against West Ham United on 8 April, fans at Stamford Bridge gave a minute's applause in the eighth minute to pay tribute to Wilkins. They also held a banner which read "Ray was one those select few, he knew what it meant to be one of us a real blue blood. Chelsea flowed through his veins, may you rest in peace Ray." A memorial service was held for Wilkins on 1 May at St Luke's Church, Chelsea, attended by many figures who knew him from the world of football. His son made a speech about Wilkins' struggles with depression and alcoholism. Career statistics Club International Scores and results list England's goal tally first, score column indicates score after each Wilkins goal. Managerial statistics Honours Player Manchester United FA Cup: 1982–83 FA Charity Shield: 1983 Rangers Scottish Premier Division: 1988–89, 1989–90 Scottish League Cup: 1988–89 England Rous Cup: 1986 British Home Championship: 1977–78, 1981–82, 1982–83 Individual Chelsea Player of the Year: 1976, 1977 English Football Hall of Fame: 2013 Assistant manager Chelsea Premier League: 2009–10 FA Cup: 1999–2000, 2008–09, 2009–10 FA Community Shield: 2009 References External links England Record 1956 births 2018 deaths Footballers from Hillingdon England under-23 international footballers England under-21 international footballers England international footballers English football managers English footballers English expatriate footballers English Football Hall of Fame inductees Expatriate footballers in France Expatriate footballers in Italy Paris Saint-Germain F.C. players A.C. Milan players Chelsea F.C. players Crystal Palace F.C. players Premier League players English Football League players Ligue 1 players Scottish Football League players Serie A players UEFA Euro 1980 players 1982 FIFA World Cup players 1986 FIFA World Cup players Fulham F.C. managers Hibernian F.C. players Leyton Orient F.C. players Manchester United F.C. players Members of the Order of the British Empire Millwall F.C. players Queens Park Rangers F.C. players Rangers F.C. players Wycombe Wanderers F.C. players Chelsea F.C. non-playing staff Watford F.C. non-playing staff Queens Park Rangers F.C. managers Premier League managers English association football commentators Senrab F.C. players Fulham F.C. non-playing staff English Football League representative players Jordan national football team managers Expatriate football managers in Jordan English expatriate football managers 2015 AFC Asian Cup managers Aston Villa F.C. non-playing staff Association football midfielders Ray FA Cup Final players English expatriate sportspeople in Jordan English expatriate sportspeople in Italy English expatriate sportspeople in France

C_20de567609ed49768d60d5241074d1bd_1

Did he go into any championships during this time?

Did Ray Wilkins go into any championships during his time in paris?

Ray Wilkins

Wilkins signed with A.C. Milan in the summer of 1984. He later remarked that the most difficult part of adapting to the Italian game was the focus on fitness - the coaching staff made him work to reduce his body fat levels and Wilkins described the result as being in the best shape of his career. The Italian team was struggling during this period, having suffered relegation in the 1981-82 Serie A, and Wilkins was joined by fellow Englishman Mark Hateley (himself replacing another compatriot - Luther Blissett). The only foreign players in the squad, the pair helped the team to victory over rivals Inter in the Milan Derby that October, winning plaudits from Italian press and the club's fans. In his first year there, Wilkins played 28 Serie A games to bring the team to fifth in the league and also won a runner-up medal in the Coppa Italia (having eliminated Inter in the semis). The following season he remained a key player in Milan's midfield, appearing in 29 league games and scoring two goals - one late goal to salvage a draw at Avellino and another goal the following game against Sampdoria. These were the only Serie A goals of his career. Overall, the team struggled for goals, with Pietro Paolo Virdis's total of 13 making him the club's only goalscorer in double figures that year. The club also suffered off the pitch, with owner Giuseppe Farina absconding to South Africa following accusations of bribery and theft. In Wilkin's final season there (1986-87), he fell out of the first team structure, following the signing of Roberto Donadoni and the continued presence of both Agostino Di Bartolomei and Alberigo Evani. The team finished fifth in the league, beating Inter twice, in Silvio Berlusconi's first year as owner. Wilkins played 105 games (74 in Serie A) for Milan between 1984 and 1987. Corriere della Sera eulogised him as a "serious and meticulous professional who was immediately appreciated for his long and precise passes". Wilkins signed for Paris Saint-Germain in the middle of 1987, but this proved to be short-lived: he failed to break into the team ahead of Gabriel Calderon and Safet Susic so he eagerly took the option to signed for Rangers for PS250,000 that November. At the Scottish club he won two league titles and one Scottish League Cup under Graeme Souness. He achieved cult status for his volley in the Old Firm game against reigning champions Celtic in August 1988, giving Rangers the lead in a 5-1 win against their rivals. Despite only playing two seasons for the Glasgow club, he was inducted into their Hall of Fame. CANNOTANSWER

He achieved cult status for his volley in the Old Firm game against reigning champions Celtic

Raymond Colin Wilkins, (14 September 1956 – 4 April 2018) was an English football player and coach. Born into a footballing family with his father and three brothers involved in the game, Wilkins played as a midfielder. He began his career at Chelsea, where he was appointed captain at the age of 18, and later played for clubs including Manchester United, A.C. Milan, Queens Park Rangers and Rangers. He won 84 caps for the England national football team from 1976 to 1986, playing at UEFA Euro 1980 and the 1982 and 1986 FIFA World Cups. After his playing career ended, he worked as a television pundit, and as a coach and manager with Queens Park Rangers, Fulham and Chelsea. He managed Jordan at the 2015 AFC Asian Cup and his last coaching job was as the assistant manager of Aston Villa later that year. Club career Early career Born in Hillingdon, Middlesex, Wilkins started his career with the Sunday League team Senrab that play in Wanstead Flats, East London. Chelsea Wilkins made his name in the 1970s with boyhood club Chelsea, which he joined as an apprentice, progressing to his first team debut against Norwich City at the age of 17 on 26 October 1973 as a substitute in a 3–0 home league win. In 1975, following the club's relegation and the departure of many established players, an 18-year-old Wilkins was handed the captaincy of Chelsea by new manager Eddie McCreadie, taking it from long-time Blues captain John Hollins. He took to the role well, keeping it for four years. He emerged as Chelsea's key player of that period, leading a team of mainly young players to promotion again in 1976–1977 and, in the next season, consolidation of their place in the First Division. His rapid success, along with his "dark good looks", also saw Wilkins becoming a regular pin-up feature in British teenybopper magazines. His elder brother, Graham Wilkins also played for Chelsea. Manchester United In 1979, after Chelsea were relegated, Wilkins signed for Manchester United for a fee of £825,000, the highest fee received for a Chelsea player at the time. He scored ten goals in his five years with the Red Devils, including a long-range strike in the 2–2 draw with Brighton & Hove Albion in the 1983 FA Cup Final (United won the replay). He was voted player of the year by the team's supporters at the end of the 1983–1984 season. His midfield performances drew the attention of A.C. Milan, who made United a £1.5 million offer for the player. Milan, Paris and Rangers Wilkins signed with A.C. Milan in summer 1984. He later remarked that the most difficult part of adapting to the Italian game was the focus on fitness – the coaching staff made him work to reduce his body fat levels and Wilkins described the result as being in the best shape of his career. The Italian team was struggling during this period, having suffered relegation in the 1981–82 Serie A season, and Wilkins was joined by fellow Englishman Mark Hateley (himself replacing another compatriot — Luther Blissett). The only foreign players in the squad, the pair helped the team to victory over rivals Inter Milan in the Milan Derby that October, winning plaudits from Italian press and the club's fans. In his first year there, Wilkins played 28 Serie A games to bring the team to fifth in the league and also won a runner-up medal in the Coppa Italia (having eliminated Inter in the semis). The following season he remained a key player in A.C. Milan's midfield, appearing in 29 league games and scoring two goals – one late goal to salvage a draw at Avellino and another goal the following game against Sampdoria. These were the only Serie A goals of his career. Overall, the team struggled for goals, with Pietro Paolo Virdis's total of 13 making him the club's only goalscorer in double figures that year. The club also suffered off the pitch, with owner Giuseppe Farina absconding to South Africa following accusations of bribery and theft. In Wilkins' final season there (1986–1987), he fell out of the first team structure, following the signing of Roberto Donadoni and the continued presence of both Agostino Di Bartolomei and Alberigo Evani. The team finished fifth in the league, beating Inter twice, in Silvio Berlusconi's first year as owner. Wilkins played 105 games (74 in Serie A) for Milan between 1984 and 1987. Corriere della Sera eulogised him as a "serious and meticulous professional who was immediately appreciated for his long and precise passes". Wilkins signed for Paris Saint-Germain in the middle of 1987, but this proved to be short-lived: he failed to break into the team ahead of Gabriel Calderón and Safet Sušić so he eagerly took the option to move to Scotland to sign for Rangers for £250,000 that November. He made his debut for Rangers on 28 November 1987 in a 3–2 win over Hearts at Ibrox. He became an integral part of the team for the rest of the season, making twenty-nine appearances, which included both legs of the European Cup quarter-final against Steaua Bucharest. However, it would be the following season he would truly make his mark at Rangers. Reigning Scottish champions, and Old Firm rivals, Celtic played Rangers on 27 August 1988. With the score tied at 1–1, Wilkins scored a "thunderous volley" from the edge of the penalty box to put Rangers ahead, and his side eventually recorded an emphatic 5–1 win that day over their rivals. Rangers went on to win the league title that season, the first of their eventual nine-in-a-row. Wilkins also played in Rangers' win over Aberdeen in the 1988 Scottish League Cup Final. He remained an important team member into season 1988–89, playing in almost every game for the first half of the season, but his family wished to return to London. As such, he left Rangers in December 1989 to sign for Queens Park Rangers. Following his last appearance for Rangers, Wilkins received a standing ovation from the 40,000 crowd. Despite only playing two seasons for the Glasgow club, he was later inducted into their Hall of Fame. Later career The longest stint of his late career was at Queens Park Rangers, for whom he was a regular first team player from November 1989 to 1994, including the team's first two Premier League seasons. He made his debut in the 3–0 away win versus Crystal Palace. Wilkins left QPR in the summer of 1994 on a free transfer to join Crystal Palace as a player-coach under manager Alan Smith, but only made one appearance due to breaking his left foot on his debut. Wilkins re-joined QPR as player-manager on 15 November 1994, following the exit of Gerry Francis. The rest of that season was a success with the team finishing eighth in the Premiership. However the close season of 1995 saw the departure of Les Ferdinand to Newcastle and the following season the team struggled and were relegated. As player-manager, he appeared in a further 21 games for the club from 1994 to 1996. Wilkins left QPR by mutual agreement in September 1996 after the club was bought by media tycoon Chris Wright following their relegation from the FA Premier League. Wilkins played for four clubs in the 1996–1997 season. He played one game at Wycombe Wanderers before moving to Hibernian for a 16-game stint. Toward the end of the season he played three times for Millwall in the Second Division and, finally, three Third Division games for Leyton Orient before retiring. International career Wilkins scored three goals in 84 games for England, captained the team on ten occasions, and played at the 1982 and 1986 World Cups. Wilkins was called up to play for England for the first time in 1976 by coach Don Revie, then made his debut on 28 May in a 3–2 win over Italy at the U.S.A. Bicentennial Cup Tournament in New York. He achieved one of his career highs after helping England qualify for the 1980 European Championships in Italy — the first tournament England had reached for a decade. During a group game against Belgium, Wilkins scored a memorable goal when he lobbed the whole Belgian defence (thereby breaching the Belgians' obvious offside trap) and delivered a second lob, this time over the head of the goalkeeper and into the net to put England ahead. The Belgians swiftly equalised, however, and England failed to progress beyond the group stage. Wilkins was a fixture in the England squad through a successful campaign to qualify for the 1982 World Cup in Spain, which England exited at the second group stage. Over the season 1983/84, Wilkins continued to play for England under new coach Bobby Robson but the team failed to qualify for the 1984 European Championships. Wilkins remained an England regular during his spell at A.C. Milan and he was chosen for the squad which qualified for the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. He played in the opening defeat against Portugal. Wilkins became the first Englishman to be sent off at the World Cup in a goalless draw with Morocco in 1986, for throwing the ball at Gabriel González. The ball hit the referee having been thrown in protest at being deemed offside. He was suspended for the next two games and was not reinstated by the time the quarter final against Argentina came round, a game which England lost 2–1. Wilkins made his 84th and final England appearance in November 1986, against Yugoslavia. Coaching career Early coaching career Wilkins was QPR manager from 1994 to 1996, and managed fellow West London club Fulham in 1997–1998. In March 1999, Wilkins was appointed Chelsea's first-team coach after Graham Rix was jailed for child sex offences. Wilkins and Rix were Chelsea's interim managers after the sacking of Gianluca Vialli at the start of the 2000–01 FA Premier League season, but both were sacked from the club on the orders of new manager Claudio Ranieri in November 2000. When Vialli was hired by First Division club Watford, Wilkins again assisted him until their dismissal in June 2002. From 2003 to 2005, Wilkins assisted former Chelsea player Dennis Wise in his managing of Millwall, but announced his exit when he took exception at Dave Bassett being hired in the coaching staff. England U-21 From 2004 on Wilkins was assistant coach to Peter Taylor with the England under-21s until Taylor left in early 2007. Wilkins was not retained by incoming head coach Stuart Pearce. Return to Chelsea In September 2008, Wilkins was appointed assistant first team coach to Luiz Felipe Scolari at Chelsea, following Steve Clarke's departure to West Ham United. In February 2009, following Scolari's shock sacking, Wilkins was appointed as Chelsea's caretaker manager for the Fifth round FA Cup tie with Watford. Chelsea won the game 3–1, through a Nicolas Anelka hat-trick, with the club's new manager Guus Hiddink watching from the stands. On 11 November 2010, it was announced that Wilkins' contract with Chelsea "would not be renewed" and that he was to leave the club "with immediate effect". On 1 December 2010, Wilkins reached what he described as a "harmonious conclusion" with Chelsea following his unexpected departure from Stamford Bridge. While appearing as a guest on Sky Sports Champions League coverage on 7 December 2010, Wilkins said that Chelsea still had not given him a reason for his sacking. Chelsea manager Carlo Ancelotti, who was himself sacked at the end of the 2010–2011 season, wrote about Wilkins, in his autobiographical book The Beautiful Games of an Ordinary Genius: "Ray is one of those select few, always present, noble in spirit, a real blue-blood, Chelsea flows in his veins ... without him we wouldn't have won a thing." Later coaching career On 30 December 2013, Wilkins was appointed assistant head coach of Fulham. He and technical director Alan Curbishley were sacked on 17 February 2014 and the season ended with relegation. On 3 September 2014, Wilkins was appointed as the new head coach of Jordan. He led Jordan at the 2015 AFC Asian Cup, where they were eliminated in the group-stages for the first time after two losses against Iraq and Japan and a win over Palestine. On 25 June 2015, Aston Villa manager Tim Sherwood appointed Wilkins as his assistant manager. On 26 October 2015, Wilkins was sacked along with Tim Sherwood and the rest of the coaching team. Media In the 1990s Wilkins was part of the team that contributed to the Football Italia show that aired on Channel 4. Wilkins later appeared as a commentator for Sky Sports, particularly on their Champions League coverage. He also worked for Talksport. Wilkins was also featured as a commentator on the 1990s Tango soft drink commercials, 'You know when you've been Tango'd'. Personal life The son of professional footballer George Wilkins, he had two sisters and three footballer brothers: Graham Wilkins (born 28 June 1955 in Hillingdon), a former professional, who played in the Football League as a full-back for Chelsea, Brentford, and Southend United; former Brighton & Hove Albion manager and player, Dean Wilkins; and Stephen Wilkins, who was signed by Chelsea and later made one appearance for Brentford, before playing for a number of non-League teams, including Dagenham and Hayes. Throughout his life, Wilkins was known by his childhood nickname of "Butch". Wilkins married Jackie (née Bygraves) in 1978. The couple had a son and a daughter. Wilkins was a patron for the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young. In 1993, he was made an MBE. In March 2013, he was stopped whilst driving and found to be "nearly four times" over the legal alcohol limit. In February 2014 he said that he had ulcerative colitis. In July 2016, Wilkins was given a four-year ban for drink driving. In August 2016, Wilkins admitted he was an alcoholic. Death On 28 March 2018, Wilkins had a cardiac arrest resulting in a fall and was placed into an induced coma at St George's Hospital in Tooting. He died at the age of 61 on 4 April 2018. Hours after his death, Milan played rivals Inter Milan in the Derby della Madonnina at the San Siro. His former captain Franco Baresi laid a bouquet of flowers next to Wilkins' shirt by the side of the pitch. A section of Milan fans held aloft a banner which read "Ciao Ray: Leggenda Rossonera" (English: "Goodbye Ray: Legend of the Red and Blacks"). During Chelsea's home game against West Ham United on 8 April, fans at Stamford Bridge gave a minute's applause in the eighth minute to pay tribute to Wilkins. They also held a banner which read "Ray was one those select few, he knew what it meant to be one of us a real blue blood. Chelsea flowed through his veins, may you rest in peace Ray." A memorial service was held for Wilkins on 1 May at St Luke's Church, Chelsea, attended by many figures who knew him from the world of football. His son made a speech about Wilkins' struggles with depression and alcoholism. Career statistics Club International Scores and results list England's goal tally first, score column indicates score after each Wilkins goal. Managerial statistics Honours Player Manchester United FA Cup: 1982–83 FA Charity Shield: 1983 Rangers Scottish Premier Division: 1988–89, 1989–90 Scottish League Cup: 1988–89 England Rous Cup: 1986 British Home Championship: 1977–78, 1981–82, 1982–83 Individual Chelsea Player of the Year: 1976, 1977 English Football Hall of Fame: 2013 Assistant manager Chelsea Premier League: 2009–10 FA Cup: 1999–2000, 2008–09, 2009–10 FA Community Shield: 2009 References External links England Record 1956 births 2018 deaths Footballers from Hillingdon England under-23 international footballers England under-21 international footballers England international footballers English football managers English footballers English expatriate footballers English Football Hall of Fame inductees Expatriate footballers in France Expatriate footballers in Italy Paris Saint-Germain F.C. players A.C. Milan players Chelsea F.C. players Crystal Palace F.C. players Premier League players English Football League players Ligue 1 players Scottish Football League players Serie A players UEFA Euro 1980 players 1982 FIFA World Cup players 1986 FIFA World Cup players Fulham F.C. managers Hibernian F.C. players Leyton Orient F.C. players Manchester United F.C. players Members of the Order of the British Empire Millwall F.C. players Queens Park Rangers F.C. players Rangers F.C. players Wycombe Wanderers F.C. players Chelsea F.C. non-playing staff Watford F.C. non-playing staff Queens Park Rangers F.C. managers Premier League managers English association football commentators Senrab F.C. players Fulham F.C. non-playing staff English Football League representative players Jordan national football team managers Expatriate football managers in Jordan English expatriate football managers 2015 AFC Asian Cup managers Aston Villa F.C. non-playing staff Association football midfielders Ray FA Cup Final players English expatriate sportspeople in Jordan English expatriate sportspeople in Italy English expatriate sportspeople in France

C_20de567609ed49768d60d5241074d1bd_1

What were his stats in the Old Firm game?

What were Ray Wilkins stats in the Old Firm game?

Ray Wilkins

Wilkins signed with A.C. Milan in the summer of 1984. He later remarked that the most difficult part of adapting to the Italian game was the focus on fitness - the coaching staff made him work to reduce his body fat levels and Wilkins described the result as being in the best shape of his career. The Italian team was struggling during this period, having suffered relegation in the 1981-82 Serie A, and Wilkins was joined by fellow Englishman Mark Hateley (himself replacing another compatriot - Luther Blissett). The only foreign players in the squad, the pair helped the team to victory over rivals Inter in the Milan Derby that October, winning plaudits from Italian press and the club's fans. In his first year there, Wilkins played 28 Serie A games to bring the team to fifth in the league and also won a runner-up medal in the Coppa Italia (having eliminated Inter in the semis). The following season he remained a key player in Milan's midfield, appearing in 29 league games and scoring two goals - one late goal to salvage a draw at Avellino and another goal the following game against Sampdoria. These were the only Serie A goals of his career. Overall, the team struggled for goals, with Pietro Paolo Virdis's total of 13 making him the club's only goalscorer in double figures that year. The club also suffered off the pitch, with owner Giuseppe Farina absconding to South Africa following accusations of bribery and theft. In Wilkin's final season there (1986-87), he fell out of the first team structure, following the signing of Roberto Donadoni and the continued presence of both Agostino Di Bartolomei and Alberigo Evani. The team finished fifth in the league, beating Inter twice, in Silvio Berlusconi's first year as owner. Wilkins played 105 games (74 in Serie A) for Milan between 1984 and 1987. Corriere della Sera eulogised him as a "serious and meticulous professional who was immediately appreciated for his long and precise passes". Wilkins signed for Paris Saint-Germain in the middle of 1987, but this proved to be short-lived: he failed to break into the team ahead of Gabriel Calderon and Safet Susic so he eagerly took the option to signed for Rangers for PS250,000 that November. At the Scottish club he won two league titles and one Scottish League Cup under Graeme Souness. He achieved cult status for his volley in the Old Firm game against reigning champions Celtic in August 1988, giving Rangers the lead in a 5-1 win against their rivals. Despite only playing two seasons for the Glasgow club, he was inducted into their Hall of Fame. CANNOTANSWER

giving Rangers the lead in a 5-1 win against their rivals.

Raymond Colin Wilkins, (14 September 1956 – 4 April 2018) was an English football player and coach. Born into a footballing family with his father and three brothers involved in the game, Wilkins played as a midfielder. He began his career at Chelsea, where he was appointed captain at the age of 18, and later played for clubs including Manchester United, A.C. Milan, Queens Park Rangers and Rangers. He won 84 caps for the England national football team from 1976 to 1986, playing at UEFA Euro 1980 and the 1982 and 1986 FIFA World Cups. After his playing career ended, he worked as a television pundit, and as a coach and manager with Queens Park Rangers, Fulham and Chelsea. He managed Jordan at the 2015 AFC Asian Cup and his last coaching job was as the assistant manager of Aston Villa later that year. Club career Early career Born in Hillingdon, Middlesex, Wilkins started his career with the Sunday League team Senrab that play in Wanstead Flats, East London. Chelsea Wilkins made his name in the 1970s with boyhood club Chelsea, which he joined as an apprentice, progressing to his first team debut against Norwich City at the age of 17 on 26 October 1973 as a substitute in a 3–0 home league win. In 1975, following the club's relegation and the departure of many established players, an 18-year-old Wilkins was handed the captaincy of Chelsea by new manager Eddie McCreadie, taking it from long-time Blues captain John Hollins. He took to the role well, keeping it for four years. He emerged as Chelsea's key player of that period, leading a team of mainly young players to promotion again in 1976–1977 and, in the next season, consolidation of their place in the First Division. His rapid success, along with his "dark good looks", also saw Wilkins becoming a regular pin-up feature in British teenybopper magazines. His elder brother, Graham Wilkins also played for Chelsea. Manchester United In 1979, after Chelsea were relegated, Wilkins signed for Manchester United for a fee of £825,000, the highest fee received for a Chelsea player at the time. He scored ten goals in his five years with the Red Devils, including a long-range strike in the 2–2 draw with Brighton & Hove Albion in the 1983 FA Cup Final (United won the replay). He was voted player of the year by the team's supporters at the end of the 1983–1984 season. His midfield performances drew the attention of A.C. Milan, who made United a £1.5 million offer for the player. Milan, Paris and Rangers Wilkins signed with A.C. Milan in summer 1984. He later remarked that the most difficult part of adapting to the Italian game was the focus on fitness – the coaching staff made him work to reduce his body fat levels and Wilkins described the result as being in the best shape of his career. The Italian team was struggling during this period, having suffered relegation in the 1981–82 Serie A season, and Wilkins was joined by fellow Englishman Mark Hateley (himself replacing another compatriot — Luther Blissett). The only foreign players in the squad, the pair helped the team to victory over rivals Inter Milan in the Milan Derby that October, winning plaudits from Italian press and the club's fans. In his first year there, Wilkins played 28 Serie A games to bring the team to fifth in the league and also won a runner-up medal in the Coppa Italia (having eliminated Inter in the semis). The following season he remained a key player in A.C. Milan's midfield, appearing in 29 league games and scoring two goals – one late goal to salvage a draw at Avellino and another goal the following game against Sampdoria. These were the only Serie A goals of his career. Overall, the team struggled for goals, with Pietro Paolo Virdis's total of 13 making him the club's only goalscorer in double figures that year. The club also suffered off the pitch, with owner Giuseppe Farina absconding to South Africa following accusations of bribery and theft. In Wilkins' final season there (1986–1987), he fell out of the first team structure, following the signing of Roberto Donadoni and the continued presence of both Agostino Di Bartolomei and Alberigo Evani. The team finished fifth in the league, beating Inter twice, in Silvio Berlusconi's first year as owner. Wilkins played 105 games (74 in Serie A) for Milan between 1984 and 1987. Corriere della Sera eulogised him as a "serious and meticulous professional who was immediately appreciated for his long and precise passes". Wilkins signed for Paris Saint-Germain in the middle of 1987, but this proved to be short-lived: he failed to break into the team ahead of Gabriel Calderón and Safet Sušić so he eagerly took the option to move to Scotland to sign for Rangers for £250,000 that November. He made his debut for Rangers on 28 November 1987 in a 3–2 win over Hearts at Ibrox. He became an integral part of the team for the rest of the season, making twenty-nine appearances, which included both legs of the European Cup quarter-final against Steaua Bucharest. However, it would be the following season he would truly make his mark at Rangers. Reigning Scottish champions, and Old Firm rivals, Celtic played Rangers on 27 August 1988. With the score tied at 1–1, Wilkins scored a "thunderous volley" from the edge of the penalty box to put Rangers ahead, and his side eventually recorded an emphatic 5–1 win that day over their rivals. Rangers went on to win the league title that season, the first of their eventual nine-in-a-row. Wilkins also played in Rangers' win over Aberdeen in the 1988 Scottish League Cup Final. He remained an important team member into season 1988–89, playing in almost every game for the first half of the season, but his family wished to return to London. As such, he left Rangers in December 1989 to sign for Queens Park Rangers. Following his last appearance for Rangers, Wilkins received a standing ovation from the 40,000 crowd. Despite only playing two seasons for the Glasgow club, he was later inducted into their Hall of Fame. Later career The longest stint of his late career was at Queens Park Rangers, for whom he was a regular first team player from November 1989 to 1994, including the team's first two Premier League seasons. He made his debut in the 3–0 away win versus Crystal Palace. Wilkins left QPR in the summer of 1994 on a free transfer to join Crystal Palace as a player-coach under manager Alan Smith, but only made one appearance due to breaking his left foot on his debut. Wilkins re-joined QPR as player-manager on 15 November 1994, following the exit of Gerry Francis. The rest of that season was a success with the team finishing eighth in the Premiership. However the close season of 1995 saw the departure of Les Ferdinand to Newcastle and the following season the team struggled and were relegated. As player-manager, he appeared in a further 21 games for the club from 1994 to 1996. Wilkins left QPR by mutual agreement in September 1996 after the club was bought by media tycoon Chris Wright following their relegation from the FA Premier League. Wilkins played for four clubs in the 1996–1997 season. He played one game at Wycombe Wanderers before moving to Hibernian for a 16-game stint. Toward the end of the season he played three times for Millwall in the Second Division and, finally, three Third Division games for Leyton Orient before retiring. International career Wilkins scored three goals in 84 games for England, captained the team on ten occasions, and played at the 1982 and 1986 World Cups. Wilkins was called up to play for England for the first time in 1976 by coach Don Revie, then made his debut on 28 May in a 3–2 win over Italy at the U.S.A. Bicentennial Cup Tournament in New York. He achieved one of his career highs after helping England qualify for the 1980 European Championships in Italy — the first tournament England had reached for a decade. During a group game against Belgium, Wilkins scored a memorable goal when he lobbed the whole Belgian defence (thereby breaching the Belgians' obvious offside trap) and delivered a second lob, this time over the head of the goalkeeper and into the net to put England ahead. The Belgians swiftly equalised, however, and England failed to progress beyond the group stage. Wilkins was a fixture in the England squad through a successful campaign to qualify for the 1982 World Cup in Spain, which England exited at the second group stage. Over the season 1983/84, Wilkins continued to play for England under new coach Bobby Robson but the team failed to qualify for the 1984 European Championships. Wilkins remained an England regular during his spell at A.C. Milan and he was chosen for the squad which qualified for the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. He played in the opening defeat against Portugal. Wilkins became the first Englishman to be sent off at the World Cup in a goalless draw with Morocco in 1986, for throwing the ball at Gabriel González. The ball hit the referee having been thrown in protest at being deemed offside. He was suspended for the next two games and was not reinstated by the time the quarter final against Argentina came round, a game which England lost 2–1. Wilkins made his 84th and final England appearance in November 1986, against Yugoslavia. Coaching career Early coaching career Wilkins was QPR manager from 1994 to 1996, and managed fellow West London club Fulham in 1997–1998. In March 1999, Wilkins was appointed Chelsea's first-team coach after Graham Rix was jailed for child sex offences. Wilkins and Rix were Chelsea's interim managers after the sacking of Gianluca Vialli at the start of the 2000–01 FA Premier League season, but both were sacked from the club on the orders of new manager Claudio Ranieri in November 2000. When Vialli was hired by First Division club Watford, Wilkins again assisted him until their dismissal in June 2002. From 2003 to 2005, Wilkins assisted former Chelsea player Dennis Wise in his managing of Millwall, but announced his exit when he took exception at Dave Bassett being hired in the coaching staff. England U-21 From 2004 on Wilkins was assistant coach to Peter Taylor with the England under-21s until Taylor left in early 2007. Wilkins was not retained by incoming head coach Stuart Pearce. Return to Chelsea In September 2008, Wilkins was appointed assistant first team coach to Luiz Felipe Scolari at Chelsea, following Steve Clarke's departure to West Ham United. In February 2009, following Scolari's shock sacking, Wilkins was appointed as Chelsea's caretaker manager for the Fifth round FA Cup tie with Watford. Chelsea won the game 3–1, through a Nicolas Anelka hat-trick, with the club's new manager Guus Hiddink watching from the stands. On 11 November 2010, it was announced that Wilkins' contract with Chelsea "would not be renewed" and that he was to leave the club "with immediate effect". On 1 December 2010, Wilkins reached what he described as a "harmonious conclusion" with Chelsea following his unexpected departure from Stamford Bridge. While appearing as a guest on Sky Sports Champions League coverage on 7 December 2010, Wilkins said that Chelsea still had not given him a reason for his sacking. Chelsea manager Carlo Ancelotti, who was himself sacked at the end of the 2010–2011 season, wrote about Wilkins, in his autobiographical book The Beautiful Games of an Ordinary Genius: "Ray is one of those select few, always present, noble in spirit, a real blue-blood, Chelsea flows in his veins ... without him we wouldn't have won a thing." Later coaching career On 30 December 2013, Wilkins was appointed assistant head coach of Fulham. He and technical director Alan Curbishley were sacked on 17 February 2014 and the season ended with relegation. On 3 September 2014, Wilkins was appointed as the new head coach of Jordan. He led Jordan at the 2015 AFC Asian Cup, where they were eliminated in the group-stages for the first time after two losses against Iraq and Japan and a win over Palestine. On 25 June 2015, Aston Villa manager Tim Sherwood appointed Wilkins as his assistant manager. On 26 October 2015, Wilkins was sacked along with Tim Sherwood and the rest of the coaching team. Media In the 1990s Wilkins was part of the team that contributed to the Football Italia show that aired on Channel 4. Wilkins later appeared as a commentator for Sky Sports, particularly on their Champions League coverage. He also worked for Talksport. Wilkins was also featured as a commentator on the 1990s Tango soft drink commercials, 'You know when you've been Tango'd'. Personal life The son of professional footballer George Wilkins, he had two sisters and three footballer brothers: Graham Wilkins (born 28 June 1955 in Hillingdon), a former professional, who played in the Football League as a full-back for Chelsea, Brentford, and Southend United; former Brighton & Hove Albion manager and player, Dean Wilkins; and Stephen Wilkins, who was signed by Chelsea and later made one appearance for Brentford, before playing for a number of non-League teams, including Dagenham and Hayes. Throughout his life, Wilkins was known by his childhood nickname of "Butch". Wilkins married Jackie (née Bygraves) in 1978. The couple had a son and a daughter. Wilkins was a patron for the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young. In 1993, he was made an MBE. In March 2013, he was stopped whilst driving and found to be "nearly four times" over the legal alcohol limit. In February 2014 he said that he had ulcerative colitis. In July 2016, Wilkins was given a four-year ban for drink driving. In August 2016, Wilkins admitted he was an alcoholic. Death On 28 March 2018, Wilkins had a cardiac arrest resulting in a fall and was placed into an induced coma at St George's Hospital in Tooting. He died at the age of 61 on 4 April 2018. Hours after his death, Milan played rivals Inter Milan in the Derby della Madonnina at the San Siro. His former captain Franco Baresi laid a bouquet of flowers next to Wilkins' shirt by the side of the pitch. A section of Milan fans held aloft a banner which read "Ciao Ray: Leggenda Rossonera" (English: "Goodbye Ray: Legend of the Red and Blacks"). During Chelsea's home game against West Ham United on 8 April, fans at Stamford Bridge gave a minute's applause in the eighth minute to pay tribute to Wilkins. They also held a banner which read "Ray was one those select few, he knew what it meant to be one of us a real blue blood. Chelsea flowed through his veins, may you rest in peace Ray." A memorial service was held for Wilkins on 1 May at St Luke's Church, Chelsea, attended by many figures who knew him from the world of football. His son made a speech about Wilkins' struggles with depression and alcoholism. Career statistics Club International Scores and results list England's goal tally first, score column indicates score after each Wilkins goal. Managerial statistics Honours Player Manchester United FA Cup: 1982–83 FA Charity Shield: 1983 Rangers Scottish Premier Division: 1988–89, 1989–90 Scottish League Cup: 1988–89 England Rous Cup: 1986 British Home Championship: 1977–78, 1981–82, 1982–83 Individual Chelsea Player of the Year: 1976, 1977 English Football Hall of Fame: 2013 Assistant manager Chelsea Premier League: 2009–10 FA Cup: 1999–2000, 2008–09, 2009–10 FA Community Shield: 2009 References External links England Record 1956 births 2018 deaths Footballers from Hillingdon England under-23 international footballers England under-21 international footballers England international footballers English football managers English footballers English expatriate footballers English Football Hall of Fame inductees Expatriate footballers in France Expatriate footballers in Italy Paris Saint-Germain F.C. players A.C. Milan players Chelsea F.C. players Crystal Palace F.C. players Premier League players English Football League players Ligue 1 players Scottish Football League players Serie A players UEFA Euro 1980 players 1982 FIFA World Cup players 1986 FIFA World Cup players Fulham F.C. managers Hibernian F.C. players Leyton Orient F.C. players Manchester United F.C. players Members of the Order of the British Empire Millwall F.C. players Queens Park Rangers F.C. players Rangers F.C. players Wycombe Wanderers F.C. players Chelsea F.C. non-playing staff Watford F.C. non-playing staff Queens Park Rangers F.C. managers Premier League managers English association football commentators Senrab F.C. players Fulham F.C. non-playing staff English Football League representative players Jordan national football team managers Expatriate football managers in Jordan English expatriate football managers 2015 AFC Asian Cup managers Aston Villa F.C. non-playing staff Association football midfielders Ray FA Cup Final players English expatriate sportspeople in Jordan English expatriate sportspeople in Italy English expatriate sportspeople in France

C_20de567609ed49768d60d5241074d1bd_1

Did he transfer to any other teams during this period?

Other than being in Paris, Did Ray Wilkins transfer to any other teams during the period?

Ray Wilkins

Wilkins signed with A.C. Milan in the summer of 1984. He later remarked that the most difficult part of adapting to the Italian game was the focus on fitness - the coaching staff made him work to reduce his body fat levels and Wilkins described the result as being in the best shape of his career. The Italian team was struggling during this period, having suffered relegation in the 1981-82 Serie A, and Wilkins was joined by fellow Englishman Mark Hateley (himself replacing another compatriot - Luther Blissett). The only foreign players in the squad, the pair helped the team to victory over rivals Inter in the Milan Derby that October, winning plaudits from Italian press and the club's fans. In his first year there, Wilkins played 28 Serie A games to bring the team to fifth in the league and also won a runner-up medal in the Coppa Italia (having eliminated Inter in the semis). The following season he remained a key player in Milan's midfield, appearing in 29 league games and scoring two goals - one late goal to salvage a draw at Avellino and another goal the following game against Sampdoria. These were the only Serie A goals of his career. Overall, the team struggled for goals, with Pietro Paolo Virdis's total of 13 making him the club's only goalscorer in double figures that year. The club also suffered off the pitch, with owner Giuseppe Farina absconding to South Africa following accusations of bribery and theft. In Wilkin's final season there (1986-87), he fell out of the first team structure, following the signing of Roberto Donadoni and the continued presence of both Agostino Di Bartolomei and Alberigo Evani. The team finished fifth in the league, beating Inter twice, in Silvio Berlusconi's first year as owner. Wilkins played 105 games (74 in Serie A) for Milan between 1984 and 1987. Corriere della Sera eulogised him as a "serious and meticulous professional who was immediately appreciated for his long and precise passes". Wilkins signed for Paris Saint-Germain in the middle of 1987, but this proved to be short-lived: he failed to break into the team ahead of Gabriel Calderon and Safet Susic so he eagerly took the option to signed for Rangers for PS250,000 that November. At the Scottish club he won two league titles and one Scottish League Cup under Graeme Souness. He achieved cult status for his volley in the Old Firm game against reigning champions Celtic in August 1988, giving Rangers the lead in a 5-1 win against their rivals. Despite only playing two seasons for the Glasgow club, he was inducted into their Hall of Fame. CANNOTANSWER

Despite only playing two seasons for the Glasgow club, he was inducted into their Hall of Fame.

Raymond Colin Wilkins, (14 September 1956 – 4 April 2018) was an English football player and coach. Born into a footballing family with his father and three brothers involved in the game, Wilkins played as a midfielder. He began his career at Chelsea, where he was appointed captain at the age of 18, and later played for clubs including Manchester United, A.C. Milan, Queens Park Rangers and Rangers. He won 84 caps for the England national football team from 1976 to 1986, playing at UEFA Euro 1980 and the 1982 and 1986 FIFA World Cups. After his playing career ended, he worked as a television pundit, and as a coach and manager with Queens Park Rangers, Fulham and Chelsea. He managed Jordan at the 2015 AFC Asian Cup and his last coaching job was as the assistant manager of Aston Villa later that year. Club career Early career Born in Hillingdon, Middlesex, Wilkins started his career with the Sunday League team Senrab that play in Wanstead Flats, East London. Chelsea Wilkins made his name in the 1970s with boyhood club Chelsea, which he joined as an apprentice, progressing to his first team debut against Norwich City at the age of 17 on 26 October 1973 as a substitute in a 3–0 home league win. In 1975, following the club's relegation and the departure of many established players, an 18-year-old Wilkins was handed the captaincy of Chelsea by new manager Eddie McCreadie, taking it from long-time Blues captain John Hollins. He took to the role well, keeping it for four years. He emerged as Chelsea's key player of that period, leading a team of mainly young players to promotion again in 1976–1977 and, in the next season, consolidation of their place in the First Division. His rapid success, along with his "dark good looks", also saw Wilkins becoming a regular pin-up feature in British teenybopper magazines. His elder brother, Graham Wilkins also played for Chelsea. Manchester United In 1979, after Chelsea were relegated, Wilkins signed for Manchester United for a fee of £825,000, the highest fee received for a Chelsea player at the time. He scored ten goals in his five years with the Red Devils, including a long-range strike in the 2–2 draw with Brighton & Hove Albion in the 1983 FA Cup Final (United won the replay). He was voted player of the year by the team's supporters at the end of the 1983–1984 season. His midfield performances drew the attention of A.C. Milan, who made United a £1.5 million offer for the player. Milan, Paris and Rangers Wilkins signed with A.C. Milan in summer 1984. He later remarked that the most difficult part of adapting to the Italian game was the focus on fitness – the coaching staff made him work to reduce his body fat levels and Wilkins described the result as being in the best shape of his career. The Italian team was struggling during this period, having suffered relegation in the 1981–82 Serie A season, and Wilkins was joined by fellow Englishman Mark Hateley (himself replacing another compatriot — Luther Blissett). The only foreign players in the squad, the pair helped the team to victory over rivals Inter Milan in the Milan Derby that October, winning plaudits from Italian press and the club's fans. In his first year there, Wilkins played 28 Serie A games to bring the team to fifth in the league and also won a runner-up medal in the Coppa Italia (having eliminated Inter in the semis). The following season he remained a key player in A.C. Milan's midfield, appearing in 29 league games and scoring two goals – one late goal to salvage a draw at Avellino and another goal the following game against Sampdoria. These were the only Serie A goals of his career. Overall, the team struggled for goals, with Pietro Paolo Virdis's total of 13 making him the club's only goalscorer in double figures that year. The club also suffered off the pitch, with owner Giuseppe Farina absconding to South Africa following accusations of bribery and theft. In Wilkins' final season there (1986–1987), he fell out of the first team structure, following the signing of Roberto Donadoni and the continued presence of both Agostino Di Bartolomei and Alberigo Evani. The team finished fifth in the league, beating Inter twice, in Silvio Berlusconi's first year as owner. Wilkins played 105 games (74 in Serie A) for Milan between 1984 and 1987. Corriere della Sera eulogised him as a "serious and meticulous professional who was immediately appreciated for his long and precise passes". Wilkins signed for Paris Saint-Germain in the middle of 1987, but this proved to be short-lived: he failed to break into the team ahead of Gabriel Calderón and Safet Sušić so he eagerly took the option to move to Scotland to sign for Rangers for £250,000 that November. He made his debut for Rangers on 28 November 1987 in a 3–2 win over Hearts at Ibrox. He became an integral part of the team for the rest of the season, making twenty-nine appearances, which included both legs of the European Cup quarter-final against Steaua Bucharest. However, it would be the following season he would truly make his mark at Rangers. Reigning Scottish champions, and Old Firm rivals, Celtic played Rangers on 27 August 1988. With the score tied at 1–1, Wilkins scored a "thunderous volley" from the edge of the penalty box to put Rangers ahead, and his side eventually recorded an emphatic 5–1 win that day over their rivals. Rangers went on to win the league title that season, the first of their eventual nine-in-a-row. Wilkins also played in Rangers' win over Aberdeen in the 1988 Scottish League Cup Final. He remained an important team member into season 1988–89, playing in almost every game for the first half of the season, but his family wished to return to London. As such, he left Rangers in December 1989 to sign for Queens Park Rangers. Following his last appearance for Rangers, Wilkins received a standing ovation from the 40,000 crowd. Despite only playing two seasons for the Glasgow club, he was later inducted into their Hall of Fame. Later career The longest stint of his late career was at Queens Park Rangers, for whom he was a regular first team player from November 1989 to 1994, including the team's first two Premier League seasons. He made his debut in the 3–0 away win versus Crystal Palace. Wilkins left QPR in the summer of 1994 on a free transfer to join Crystal Palace as a player-coach under manager Alan Smith, but only made one appearance due to breaking his left foot on his debut. Wilkins re-joined QPR as player-manager on 15 November 1994, following the exit of Gerry Francis. The rest of that season was a success with the team finishing eighth in the Premiership. However the close season of 1995 saw the departure of Les Ferdinand to Newcastle and the following season the team struggled and were relegated. As player-manager, he appeared in a further 21 games for the club from 1994 to 1996. Wilkins left QPR by mutual agreement in September 1996 after the club was bought by media tycoon Chris Wright following their relegation from the FA Premier League. Wilkins played for four clubs in the 1996–1997 season. He played one game at Wycombe Wanderers before moving to Hibernian for a 16-game stint. Toward the end of the season he played three times for Millwall in the Second Division and, finally, three Third Division games for Leyton Orient before retiring. International career Wilkins scored three goals in 84 games for England, captained the team on ten occasions, and played at the 1982 and 1986 World Cups. Wilkins was called up to play for England for the first time in 1976 by coach Don Revie, then made his debut on 28 May in a 3–2 win over Italy at the U.S.A. Bicentennial Cup Tournament in New York. He achieved one of his career highs after helping England qualify for the 1980 European Championships in Italy — the first tournament England had reached for a decade. During a group game against Belgium, Wilkins scored a memorable goal when he lobbed the whole Belgian defence (thereby breaching the Belgians' obvious offside trap) and delivered a second lob, this time over the head of the goalkeeper and into the net to put England ahead. The Belgians swiftly equalised, however, and England failed to progress beyond the group stage. Wilkins was a fixture in the England squad through a successful campaign to qualify for the 1982 World Cup in Spain, which England exited at the second group stage. Over the season 1983/84, Wilkins continued to play for England under new coach Bobby Robson but the team failed to qualify for the 1984 European Championships. Wilkins remained an England regular during his spell at A.C. Milan and he was chosen for the squad which qualified for the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. He played in the opening defeat against Portugal. Wilkins became the first Englishman to be sent off at the World Cup in a goalless draw with Morocco in 1986, for throwing the ball at Gabriel González. The ball hit the referee having been thrown in protest at being deemed offside. He was suspended for the next two games and was not reinstated by the time the quarter final against Argentina came round, a game which England lost 2–1. Wilkins made his 84th and final England appearance in November 1986, against Yugoslavia. Coaching career Early coaching career Wilkins was QPR manager from 1994 to 1996, and managed fellow West London club Fulham in 1997–1998. In March 1999, Wilkins was appointed Chelsea's first-team coach after Graham Rix was jailed for child sex offences. Wilkins and Rix were Chelsea's interim managers after the sacking of Gianluca Vialli at the start of the 2000–01 FA Premier League season, but both were sacked from the club on the orders of new manager Claudio Ranieri in November 2000. When Vialli was hired by First Division club Watford, Wilkins again assisted him until their dismissal in June 2002. From 2003 to 2005, Wilkins assisted former Chelsea player Dennis Wise in his managing of Millwall, but announced his exit when he took exception at Dave Bassett being hired in the coaching staff. England U-21 From 2004 on Wilkins was assistant coach to Peter Taylor with the England under-21s until Taylor left in early 2007. Wilkins was not retained by incoming head coach Stuart Pearce. Return to Chelsea In September 2008, Wilkins was appointed assistant first team coach to Luiz Felipe Scolari at Chelsea, following Steve Clarke's departure to West Ham United. In February 2009, following Scolari's shock sacking, Wilkins was appointed as Chelsea's caretaker manager for the Fifth round FA Cup tie with Watford. Chelsea won the game 3–1, through a Nicolas Anelka hat-trick, with the club's new manager Guus Hiddink watching from the stands. On 11 November 2010, it was announced that Wilkins' contract with Chelsea "would not be renewed" and that he was to leave the club "with immediate effect". On 1 December 2010, Wilkins reached what he described as a "harmonious conclusion" with Chelsea following his unexpected departure from Stamford Bridge. While appearing as a guest on Sky Sports Champions League coverage on 7 December 2010, Wilkins said that Chelsea still had not given him a reason for his sacking. Chelsea manager Carlo Ancelotti, who was himself sacked at the end of the 2010–2011 season, wrote about Wilkins, in his autobiographical book The Beautiful Games of an Ordinary Genius: "Ray is one of those select few, always present, noble in spirit, a real blue-blood, Chelsea flows in his veins ... without him we wouldn't have won a thing." Later coaching career On 30 December 2013, Wilkins was appointed assistant head coach of Fulham. He and technical director Alan Curbishley were sacked on 17 February 2014 and the season ended with relegation. On 3 September 2014, Wilkins was appointed as the new head coach of Jordan. He led Jordan at the 2015 AFC Asian Cup, where they were eliminated in the group-stages for the first time after two losses against Iraq and Japan and a win over Palestine. On 25 June 2015, Aston Villa manager Tim Sherwood appointed Wilkins as his assistant manager. On 26 October 2015, Wilkins was sacked along with Tim Sherwood and the rest of the coaching team. Media In the 1990s Wilkins was part of the team that contributed to the Football Italia show that aired on Channel 4. Wilkins later appeared as a commentator for Sky Sports, particularly on their Champions League coverage. He also worked for Talksport. Wilkins was also featured as a commentator on the 1990s Tango soft drink commercials, 'You know when you've been Tango'd'. Personal life The son of professional footballer George Wilkins, he had two sisters and three footballer brothers: Graham Wilkins (born 28 June 1955 in Hillingdon), a former professional, who played in the Football League as a full-back for Chelsea, Brentford, and Southend United; former Brighton & Hove Albion manager and player, Dean Wilkins; and Stephen Wilkins, who was signed by Chelsea and later made one appearance for Brentford, before playing for a number of non-League teams, including Dagenham and Hayes. Throughout his life, Wilkins was known by his childhood nickname of "Butch". Wilkins married Jackie (née Bygraves) in 1978. The couple had a son and a daughter. Wilkins was a patron for the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young. In 1993, he was made an MBE. In March 2013, he was stopped whilst driving and found to be "nearly four times" over the legal alcohol limit. In February 2014 he said that he had ulcerative colitis. In July 2016, Wilkins was given a four-year ban for drink driving. In August 2016, Wilkins admitted he was an alcoholic. Death On 28 March 2018, Wilkins had a cardiac arrest resulting in a fall and was placed into an induced coma at St George's Hospital in Tooting. He died at the age of 61 on 4 April 2018. Hours after his death, Milan played rivals Inter Milan in the Derby della Madonnina at the San Siro. His former captain Franco Baresi laid a bouquet of flowers next to Wilkins' shirt by the side of the pitch. A section of Milan fans held aloft a banner which read "Ciao Ray: Leggenda Rossonera" (English: "Goodbye Ray: Legend of the Red and Blacks"). During Chelsea's home game against West Ham United on 8 April, fans at Stamford Bridge gave a minute's applause in the eighth minute to pay tribute to Wilkins. They also held a banner which read "Ray was one those select few, he knew what it meant to be one of us a real blue blood. Chelsea flowed through his veins, may you rest in peace Ray." A memorial service was held for Wilkins on 1 May at St Luke's Church, Chelsea, attended by many figures who knew him from the world of football. His son made a speech about Wilkins' struggles with depression and alcoholism. Career statistics Club International Scores and results list England's goal tally first, score column indicates score after each Wilkins goal. Managerial statistics Honours Player Manchester United FA Cup: 1982–83 FA Charity Shield: 1983 Rangers Scottish Premier Division: 1988–89, 1989–90 Scottish League Cup: 1988–89 England Rous Cup: 1986 British Home Championship: 1977–78, 1981–82, 1982–83 Individual Chelsea Player of the Year: 1976, 1977 English Football Hall of Fame: 2013 Assistant manager Chelsea Premier League: 2009–10 FA Cup: 1999–2000, 2008–09, 2009–10 FA Community Shield: 2009 References External links England Record 1956 births 2018 deaths Footballers from Hillingdon England under-23 international footballers England under-21 international footballers England international footballers English football managers English footballers English expatriate footballers English Football Hall of Fame inductees Expatriate footballers in France Expatriate footballers in Italy Paris Saint-Germain F.C. players A.C. Milan players Chelsea F.C. players Crystal Palace F.C. players Premier League players English Football League players Ligue 1 players Scottish Football League players Serie A players UEFA Euro 1980 players 1982 FIFA World Cup players 1986 FIFA World Cup players Fulham F.C. managers Hibernian F.C. players Leyton Orient F.C. players Manchester United F.C. players Members of the Order of the British Empire Millwall F.C. players Queens Park Rangers F.C. players Rangers F.C. players Wycombe Wanderers F.C. players Chelsea F.C. non-playing staff Watford F.C. non-playing staff Queens Park Rangers F.C. managers Premier League managers English association football commentators Senrab F.C. players Fulham F.C. non-playing staff English Football League representative players Jordan national football team managers Expatriate football managers in Jordan English expatriate football managers 2015 AFC Asian Cup managers Aston Villa F.C. non-playing staff Association football midfielders Ray FA Cup Final players English expatriate sportspeople in Jordan English expatriate sportspeople in Italy English expatriate sportspeople in France

C_20de567609ed49768d60d5241074d1bd_1

What is something interesting I haven't asked about?

What is something interesting I haven't asked about Ray Wilkins?

Ray Wilkins

Wilkins signed with A.C. Milan in the summer of 1984. He later remarked that the most difficult part of adapting to the Italian game was the focus on fitness - the coaching staff made him work to reduce his body fat levels and Wilkins described the result as being in the best shape of his career. The Italian team was struggling during this period, having suffered relegation in the 1981-82 Serie A, and Wilkins was joined by fellow Englishman Mark Hateley (himself replacing another compatriot - Luther Blissett). The only foreign players in the squad, the pair helped the team to victory over rivals Inter in the Milan Derby that October, winning plaudits from Italian press and the club's fans. In his first year there, Wilkins played 28 Serie A games to bring the team to fifth in the league and also won a runner-up medal in the Coppa Italia (having eliminated Inter in the semis). The following season he remained a key player in Milan's midfield, appearing in 29 league games and scoring two goals - one late goal to salvage a draw at Avellino and another goal the following game against Sampdoria. These were the only Serie A goals of his career. Overall, the team struggled for goals, with Pietro Paolo Virdis's total of 13 making him the club's only goalscorer in double figures that year. The club also suffered off the pitch, with owner Giuseppe Farina absconding to South Africa following accusations of bribery and theft. In Wilkin's final season there (1986-87), he fell out of the first team structure, following the signing of Roberto Donadoni and the continued presence of both Agostino Di Bartolomei and Alberigo Evani. The team finished fifth in the league, beating Inter twice, in Silvio Berlusconi's first year as owner. Wilkins played 105 games (74 in Serie A) for Milan between 1984 and 1987. Corriere della Sera eulogised him as a "serious and meticulous professional who was immediately appreciated for his long and precise passes". Wilkins signed for Paris Saint-Germain in the middle of 1987, but this proved to be short-lived: he failed to break into the team ahead of Gabriel Calderon and Safet Susic so he eagerly took the option to signed for Rangers for PS250,000 that November. At the Scottish club he won two league titles and one Scottish League Cup under Graeme Souness. He achieved cult status for his volley in the Old Firm game against reigning champions Celtic in August 1988, giving Rangers the lead in a 5-1 win against their rivals. Despite only playing two seasons for the Glasgow club, he was inducted into their Hall of Fame. CANNOTANSWER

Wilkins signed with A.C. Milan in the summer of 1984.

Raymond Colin Wilkins, (14 September 1956 – 4 April 2018) was an English football player and coach. Born into a footballing family with his father and three brothers involved in the game, Wilkins played as a midfielder. He began his career at Chelsea, where he was appointed captain at the age of 18, and later played for clubs including Manchester United, A.C. Milan, Queens Park Rangers and Rangers. He won 84 caps for the England national football team from 1976 to 1986, playing at UEFA Euro 1980 and the 1982 and 1986 FIFA World Cups. After his playing career ended, he worked as a television pundit, and as a coach and manager with Queens Park Rangers, Fulham and Chelsea. He managed Jordan at the 2015 AFC Asian Cup and his last coaching job was as the assistant manager of Aston Villa later that year. Club career Early career Born in Hillingdon, Middlesex, Wilkins started his career with the Sunday League team Senrab that play in Wanstead Flats, East London. Chelsea Wilkins made his name in the 1970s with boyhood club Chelsea, which he joined as an apprentice, progressing to his first team debut against Norwich City at the age of 17 on 26 October 1973 as a substitute in a 3–0 home league win. In 1975, following the club's relegation and the departure of many established players, an 18-year-old Wilkins was handed the captaincy of Chelsea by new manager Eddie McCreadie, taking it from long-time Blues captain John Hollins. He took to the role well, keeping it for four years. He emerged as Chelsea's key player of that period, leading a team of mainly young players to promotion again in 1976–1977 and, in the next season, consolidation of their place in the First Division. His rapid success, along with his "dark good looks", also saw Wilkins becoming a regular pin-up feature in British teenybopper magazines. His elder brother, Graham Wilkins also played for Chelsea. Manchester United In 1979, after Chelsea were relegated, Wilkins signed for Manchester United for a fee of £825,000, the highest fee received for a Chelsea player at the time. He scored ten goals in his five years with the Red Devils, including a long-range strike in the 2–2 draw with Brighton & Hove Albion in the 1983 FA Cup Final (United won the replay). He was voted player of the year by the team's supporters at the end of the 1983–1984 season. His midfield performances drew the attention of A.C. Milan, who made United a £1.5 million offer for the player. Milan, Paris and Rangers Wilkins signed with A.C. Milan in summer 1984. He later remarked that the most difficult part of adapting to the Italian game was the focus on fitness – the coaching staff made him work to reduce his body fat levels and Wilkins described the result as being in the best shape of his career. The Italian team was struggling during this period, having suffered relegation in the 1981–82 Serie A season, and Wilkins was joined by fellow Englishman Mark Hateley (himself replacing another compatriot — Luther Blissett). The only foreign players in the squad, the pair helped the team to victory over rivals Inter Milan in the Milan Derby that October, winning plaudits from Italian press and the club's fans. In his first year there, Wilkins played 28 Serie A games to bring the team to fifth in the league and also won a runner-up medal in the Coppa Italia (having eliminated Inter in the semis). The following season he remained a key player in A.C. Milan's midfield, appearing in 29 league games and scoring two goals – one late goal to salvage a draw at Avellino and another goal the following game against Sampdoria. These were the only Serie A goals of his career. Overall, the team struggled for goals, with Pietro Paolo Virdis's total of 13 making him the club's only goalscorer in double figures that year. The club also suffered off the pitch, with owner Giuseppe Farina absconding to South Africa following accusations of bribery and theft. In Wilkins' final season there (1986–1987), he fell out of the first team structure, following the signing of Roberto Donadoni and the continued presence of both Agostino Di Bartolomei and Alberigo Evani. The team finished fifth in the league, beating Inter twice, in Silvio Berlusconi's first year as owner. Wilkins played 105 games (74 in Serie A) for Milan between 1984 and 1987. Corriere della Sera eulogised him as a "serious and meticulous professional who was immediately appreciated for his long and precise passes". Wilkins signed for Paris Saint-Germain in the middle of 1987, but this proved to be short-lived: he failed to break into the team ahead of Gabriel Calderón and Safet Sušić so he eagerly took the option to move to Scotland to sign for Rangers for £250,000 that November. He made his debut for Rangers on 28 November 1987 in a 3–2 win over Hearts at Ibrox. He became an integral part of the team for the rest of the season, making twenty-nine appearances, which included both legs of the European Cup quarter-final against Steaua Bucharest. However, it would be the following season he would truly make his mark at Rangers. Reigning Scottish champions, and Old Firm rivals, Celtic played Rangers on 27 August 1988. With the score tied at 1–1, Wilkins scored a "thunderous volley" from the edge of the penalty box to put Rangers ahead, and his side eventually recorded an emphatic 5–1 win that day over their rivals. Rangers went on to win the league title that season, the first of their eventual nine-in-a-row. Wilkins also played in Rangers' win over Aberdeen in the 1988 Scottish League Cup Final. He remained an important team member into season 1988–89, playing in almost every game for the first half of the season, but his family wished to return to London. As such, he left Rangers in December 1989 to sign for Queens Park Rangers. Following his last appearance for Rangers, Wilkins received a standing ovation from the 40,000 crowd. Despite only playing two seasons for the Glasgow club, he was later inducted into their Hall of Fame. Later career The longest stint of his late career was at Queens Park Rangers, for whom he was a regular first team player from November 1989 to 1994, including the team's first two Premier League seasons. He made his debut in the 3–0 away win versus Crystal Palace. Wilkins left QPR in the summer of 1994 on a free transfer to join Crystal Palace as a player-coach under manager Alan Smith, but only made one appearance due to breaking his left foot on his debut. Wilkins re-joined QPR as player-manager on 15 November 1994, following the exit of Gerry Francis. The rest of that season was a success with the team finishing eighth in the Premiership. However the close season of 1995 saw the departure of Les Ferdinand to Newcastle and the following season the team struggled and were relegated. As player-manager, he appeared in a further 21 games for the club from 1994 to 1996. Wilkins left QPR by mutual agreement in September 1996 after the club was bought by media tycoon Chris Wright following their relegation from the FA Premier League. Wilkins played for four clubs in the 1996–1997 season. He played one game at Wycombe Wanderers before moving to Hibernian for a 16-game stint. Toward the end of the season he played three times for Millwall in the Second Division and, finally, three Third Division games for Leyton Orient before retiring. International career Wilkins scored three goals in 84 games for England, captained the team on ten occasions, and played at the 1982 and 1986 World Cups. Wilkins was called up to play for England for the first time in 1976 by coach Don Revie, then made his debut on 28 May in a 3–2 win over Italy at the U.S.A. Bicentennial Cup Tournament in New York. He achieved one of his career highs after helping England qualify for the 1980 European Championships in Italy — the first tournament England had reached for a decade. During a group game against Belgium, Wilkins scored a memorable goal when he lobbed the whole Belgian defence (thereby breaching the Belgians' obvious offside trap) and delivered a second lob, this time over the head of the goalkeeper and into the net to put England ahead. The Belgians swiftly equalised, however, and England failed to progress beyond the group stage. Wilkins was a fixture in the England squad through a successful campaign to qualify for the 1982 World Cup in Spain, which England exited at the second group stage. Over the season 1983/84, Wilkins continued to play for England under new coach Bobby Robson but the team failed to qualify for the 1984 European Championships. Wilkins remained an England regular during his spell at A.C. Milan and he was chosen for the squad which qualified for the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. He played in the opening defeat against Portugal. Wilkins became the first Englishman to be sent off at the World Cup in a goalless draw with Morocco in 1986, for throwing the ball at Gabriel González. The ball hit the referee having been thrown in protest at being deemed offside. He was suspended for the next two games and was not reinstated by the time the quarter final against Argentina came round, a game which England lost 2–1. Wilkins made his 84th and final England appearance in November 1986, against Yugoslavia. Coaching career Early coaching career Wilkins was QPR manager from 1994 to 1996, and managed fellow West London club Fulham in 1997–1998. In March 1999, Wilkins was appointed Chelsea's first-team coach after Graham Rix was jailed for child sex offences. Wilkins and Rix were Chelsea's interim managers after the sacking of Gianluca Vialli at the start of the 2000–01 FA Premier League season, but both were sacked from the club on the orders of new manager Claudio Ranieri in November 2000. When Vialli was hired by First Division club Watford, Wilkins again assisted him until their dismissal in June 2002. From 2003 to 2005, Wilkins assisted former Chelsea player Dennis Wise in his managing of Millwall, but announced his exit when he took exception at Dave Bassett being hired in the coaching staff. England U-21 From 2004 on Wilkins was assistant coach to Peter Taylor with the England under-21s until Taylor left in early 2007. Wilkins was not retained by incoming head coach Stuart Pearce. Return to Chelsea In September 2008, Wilkins was appointed assistant first team coach to Luiz Felipe Scolari at Chelsea, following Steve Clarke's departure to West Ham United. In February 2009, following Scolari's shock sacking, Wilkins was appointed as Chelsea's caretaker manager for the Fifth round FA Cup tie with Watford. Chelsea won the game 3–1, through a Nicolas Anelka hat-trick, with the club's new manager Guus Hiddink watching from the stands. On 11 November 2010, it was announced that Wilkins' contract with Chelsea "would not be renewed" and that he was to leave the club "with immediate effect". On 1 December 2010, Wilkins reached what he described as a "harmonious conclusion" with Chelsea following his unexpected departure from Stamford Bridge. While appearing as a guest on Sky Sports Champions League coverage on 7 December 2010, Wilkins said that Chelsea still had not given him a reason for his sacking. Chelsea manager Carlo Ancelotti, who was himself sacked at the end of the 2010–2011 season, wrote about Wilkins, in his autobiographical book The Beautiful Games of an Ordinary Genius: "Ray is one of those select few, always present, noble in spirit, a real blue-blood, Chelsea flows in his veins ... without him we wouldn't have won a thing." Later coaching career On 30 December 2013, Wilkins was appointed assistant head coach of Fulham. He and technical director Alan Curbishley were sacked on 17 February 2014 and the season ended with relegation. On 3 September 2014, Wilkins was appointed as the new head coach of Jordan. He led Jordan at the 2015 AFC Asian Cup, where they were eliminated in the group-stages for the first time after two losses against Iraq and Japan and a win over Palestine. On 25 June 2015, Aston Villa manager Tim Sherwood appointed Wilkins as his assistant manager. On 26 October 2015, Wilkins was sacked along with Tim Sherwood and the rest of the coaching team. Media In the 1990s Wilkins was part of the team that contributed to the Football Italia show that aired on Channel 4. Wilkins later appeared as a commentator for Sky Sports, particularly on their Champions League coverage. He also worked for Talksport. Wilkins was also featured as a commentator on the 1990s Tango soft drink commercials, 'You know when you've been Tango'd'. Personal life The son of professional footballer George Wilkins, he had two sisters and three footballer brothers: Graham Wilkins (born 28 June 1955 in Hillingdon), a former professional, who played in the Football League as a full-back for Chelsea, Brentford, and Southend United; former Brighton & Hove Albion manager and player, Dean Wilkins; and Stephen Wilkins, who was signed by Chelsea and later made one appearance for Brentford, before playing for a number of non-League teams, including Dagenham and Hayes. Throughout his life, Wilkins was known by his childhood nickname of "Butch". Wilkins married Jackie (née Bygraves) in 1978. The couple had a son and a daughter. Wilkins was a patron for the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young. In 1993, he was made an MBE. In March 2013, he was stopped whilst driving and found to be "nearly four times" over the legal alcohol limit. In February 2014 he said that he had ulcerative colitis. In July 2016, Wilkins was given a four-year ban for drink driving. In August 2016, Wilkins admitted he was an alcoholic. Death On 28 March 2018, Wilkins had a cardiac arrest resulting in a fall and was placed into an induced coma at St George's Hospital in Tooting. He died at the age of 61 on 4 April 2018. Hours after his death, Milan played rivals Inter Milan in the Derby della Madonnina at the San Siro. His former captain Franco Baresi laid a bouquet of flowers next to Wilkins' shirt by the side of the pitch. A section of Milan fans held aloft a banner which read "Ciao Ray: Leggenda Rossonera" (English: "Goodbye Ray: Legend of the Red and Blacks"). During Chelsea's home game against West Ham United on 8 April, fans at Stamford Bridge gave a minute's applause in the eighth minute to pay tribute to Wilkins. They also held a banner which read "Ray was one those select few, he knew what it meant to be one of us a real blue blood. Chelsea flowed through his veins, may you rest in peace Ray." A memorial service was held for Wilkins on 1 May at St Luke's Church, Chelsea, attended by many figures who knew him from the world of football. His son made a speech about Wilkins' struggles with depression and alcoholism. Career statistics Club International Scores and results list England's goal tally first, score column indicates score after each Wilkins goal. Managerial statistics Honours Player Manchester United FA Cup: 1982–83 FA Charity Shield: 1983 Rangers Scottish Premier Division: 1988–89, 1989–90 Scottish League Cup: 1988–89 England Rous Cup: 1986 British Home Championship: 1977–78, 1981–82, 1982–83 Individual Chelsea Player of the Year: 1976, 1977 English Football Hall of Fame: 2013 Assistant manager Chelsea Premier League: 2009–10 FA Cup: 1999–2000, 2008–09, 2009–10 FA Community Shield: 2009 References External links England Record 1956 births 2018 deaths Footballers from Hillingdon England under-23 international footballers England under-21 international footballers England international footballers English football managers English footballers English expatriate footballers English Football Hall of Fame inductees Expatriate footballers in France Expatriate footballers in Italy Paris Saint-Germain F.C. players A.C. Milan players Chelsea F.C. players Crystal Palace F.C. players Premier League players English Football League players Ligue 1 players Scottish Football League players Serie A players UEFA Euro 1980 players 1982 FIFA World Cup players 1986 FIFA World Cup players Fulham F.C. managers Hibernian F.C. players Leyton Orient F.C. players Manchester United F.C. players Members of the Order of the British Empire Millwall F.C. players Queens Park Rangers F.C. players Rangers F.C. players Wycombe Wanderers F.C. players Chelsea F.C. non-playing staff Watford F.C. non-playing staff Queens Park Rangers F.C. managers Premier League managers English association football commentators Senrab F.C. players Fulham F.C. non-playing staff English Football League representative players Jordan national football team managers Expatriate football managers in Jordan English expatriate football managers 2015 AFC Asian Cup managers Aston Villa F.C. non-playing staff Association football midfielders Ray FA Cup Final players English expatriate sportspeople in Jordan English expatriate sportspeople in Italy English expatriate sportspeople in France

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What position did he play with Milan's team?

What position did Ray Wilkins play with Milan's team?

Ray Wilkins

Wilkins signed with A.C. Milan in the summer of 1984. He later remarked that the most difficult part of adapting to the Italian game was the focus on fitness - the coaching staff made him work to reduce his body fat levels and Wilkins described the result as being in the best shape of his career. The Italian team was struggling during this period, having suffered relegation in the 1981-82 Serie A, and Wilkins was joined by fellow Englishman Mark Hateley (himself replacing another compatriot - Luther Blissett). The only foreign players in the squad, the pair helped the team to victory over rivals Inter in the Milan Derby that October, winning plaudits from Italian press and the club's fans. In his first year there, Wilkins played 28 Serie A games to bring the team to fifth in the league and also won a runner-up medal in the Coppa Italia (having eliminated Inter in the semis). The following season he remained a key player in Milan's midfield, appearing in 29 league games and scoring two goals - one late goal to salvage a draw at Avellino and another goal the following game against Sampdoria. These were the only Serie A goals of his career. Overall, the team struggled for goals, with Pietro Paolo Virdis's total of 13 making him the club's only goalscorer in double figures that year. The club also suffered off the pitch, with owner Giuseppe Farina absconding to South Africa following accusations of bribery and theft. In Wilkin's final season there (1986-87), he fell out of the first team structure, following the signing of Roberto Donadoni and the continued presence of both Agostino Di Bartolomei and Alberigo Evani. The team finished fifth in the league, beating Inter twice, in Silvio Berlusconi's first year as owner. Wilkins played 105 games (74 in Serie A) for Milan between 1984 and 1987. Corriere della Sera eulogised him as a "serious and meticulous professional who was immediately appreciated for his long and precise passes". Wilkins signed for Paris Saint-Germain in the middle of 1987, but this proved to be short-lived: he failed to break into the team ahead of Gabriel Calderon and Safet Susic so he eagerly took the option to signed for Rangers for PS250,000 that November. At the Scottish club he won two league titles and one Scottish League Cup under Graeme Souness. He achieved cult status for his volley in the Old Firm game against reigning champions Celtic in August 1988, giving Rangers the lead in a 5-1 win against their rivals. Despite only playing two seasons for the Glasgow club, he was inducted into their Hall of Fame. CANNOTANSWER

CANNOTANSWER

Raymond Colin Wilkins, (14 September 1956 – 4 April 2018) was an English football player and coach. Born into a footballing family with his father and three brothers involved in the game, Wilkins played as a midfielder. He began his career at Chelsea, where he was appointed captain at the age of 18, and later played for clubs including Manchester United, A.C. Milan, Queens Park Rangers and Rangers. He won 84 caps for the England national football team from 1976 to 1986, playing at UEFA Euro 1980 and the 1982 and 1986 FIFA World Cups. After his playing career ended, he worked as a television pundit, and as a coach and manager with Queens Park Rangers, Fulham and Chelsea. He managed Jordan at the 2015 AFC Asian Cup and his last coaching job was as the assistant manager of Aston Villa later that year. Club career Early career Born in Hillingdon, Middlesex, Wilkins started his career with the Sunday League team Senrab that play in Wanstead Flats, East London. Chelsea Wilkins made his name in the 1970s with boyhood club Chelsea, which he joined as an apprentice, progressing to his first team debut against Norwich City at the age of 17 on 26 October 1973 as a substitute in a 3–0 home league win. In 1975, following the club's relegation and the departure of many established players, an 18-year-old Wilkins was handed the captaincy of Chelsea by new manager Eddie McCreadie, taking it from long-time Blues captain John Hollins. He took to the role well, keeping it for four years. He emerged as Chelsea's key player of that period, leading a team of mainly young players to promotion again in 1976–1977 and, in the next season, consolidation of their place in the First Division. His rapid success, along with his "dark good looks", also saw Wilkins becoming a regular pin-up feature in British teenybopper magazines. His elder brother, Graham Wilkins also played for Chelsea. Manchester United In 1979, after Chelsea were relegated, Wilkins signed for Manchester United for a fee of £825,000, the highest fee received for a Chelsea player at the time. He scored ten goals in his five years with the Red Devils, including a long-range strike in the 2–2 draw with Brighton & Hove Albion in the 1983 FA Cup Final (United won the replay). He was voted player of the year by the team's supporters at the end of the 1983–1984 season. His midfield performances drew the attention of A.C. Milan, who made United a £1.5 million offer for the player. Milan, Paris and Rangers Wilkins signed with A.C. Milan in summer 1984. He later remarked that the most difficult part of adapting to the Italian game was the focus on fitness – the coaching staff made him work to reduce his body fat levels and Wilkins described the result as being in the best shape of his career. The Italian team was struggling during this period, having suffered relegation in the 1981–82 Serie A season, and Wilkins was joined by fellow Englishman Mark Hateley (himself replacing another compatriot — Luther Blissett). The only foreign players in the squad, the pair helped the team to victory over rivals Inter Milan in the Milan Derby that October, winning plaudits from Italian press and the club's fans. In his first year there, Wilkins played 28 Serie A games to bring the team to fifth in the league and also won a runner-up medal in the Coppa Italia (having eliminated Inter in the semis). The following season he remained a key player in A.C. Milan's midfield, appearing in 29 league games and scoring two goals – one late goal to salvage a draw at Avellino and another goal the following game against Sampdoria. These were the only Serie A goals of his career. Overall, the team struggled for goals, with Pietro Paolo Virdis's total of 13 making him the club's only goalscorer in double figures that year. The club also suffered off the pitch, with owner Giuseppe Farina absconding to South Africa following accusations of bribery and theft. In Wilkins' final season there (1986–1987), he fell out of the first team structure, following the signing of Roberto Donadoni and the continued presence of both Agostino Di Bartolomei and Alberigo Evani. The team finished fifth in the league, beating Inter twice, in Silvio Berlusconi's first year as owner. Wilkins played 105 games (74 in Serie A) for Milan between 1984 and 1987. Corriere della Sera eulogised him as a "serious and meticulous professional who was immediately appreciated for his long and precise passes". Wilkins signed for Paris Saint-Germain in the middle of 1987, but this proved to be short-lived: he failed to break into the team ahead of Gabriel Calderón and Safet Sušić so he eagerly took the option to move to Scotland to sign for Rangers for £250,000 that November. He made his debut for Rangers on 28 November 1987 in a 3–2 win over Hearts at Ibrox. He became an integral part of the team for the rest of the season, making twenty-nine appearances, which included both legs of the European Cup quarter-final against Steaua Bucharest. However, it would be the following season he would truly make his mark at Rangers. Reigning Scottish champions, and Old Firm rivals, Celtic played Rangers on 27 August 1988. With the score tied at 1–1, Wilkins scored a "thunderous volley" from the edge of the penalty box to put Rangers ahead, and his side eventually recorded an emphatic 5–1 win that day over their rivals. Rangers went on to win the league title that season, the first of their eventual nine-in-a-row. Wilkins also played in Rangers' win over Aberdeen in the 1988 Scottish League Cup Final. He remained an important team member into season 1988–89, playing in almost every game for the first half of the season, but his family wished to return to London. As such, he left Rangers in December 1989 to sign for Queens Park Rangers. Following his last appearance for Rangers, Wilkins received a standing ovation from the 40,000 crowd. Despite only playing two seasons for the Glasgow club, he was later inducted into their Hall of Fame. Later career The longest stint of his late career was at Queens Park Rangers, for whom he was a regular first team player from November 1989 to 1994, including the team's first two Premier League seasons. He made his debut in the 3–0 away win versus Crystal Palace. Wilkins left QPR in the summer of 1994 on a free transfer to join Crystal Palace as a player-coach under manager Alan Smith, but only made one appearance due to breaking his left foot on his debut. Wilkins re-joined QPR as player-manager on 15 November 1994, following the exit of Gerry Francis. The rest of that season was a success with the team finishing eighth in the Premiership. However the close season of 1995 saw the departure of Les Ferdinand to Newcastle and the following season the team struggled and were relegated. As player-manager, he appeared in a further 21 games for the club from 1994 to 1996. Wilkins left QPR by mutual agreement in September 1996 after the club was bought by media tycoon Chris Wright following their relegation from the FA Premier League. Wilkins played for four clubs in the 1996–1997 season. He played one game at Wycombe Wanderers before moving to Hibernian for a 16-game stint. Toward the end of the season he played three times for Millwall in the Second Division and, finally, three Third Division games for Leyton Orient before retiring. International career Wilkins scored three goals in 84 games for England, captained the team on ten occasions, and played at the 1982 and 1986 World Cups. Wilkins was called up to play for England for the first time in 1976 by coach Don Revie, then made his debut on 28 May in a 3–2 win over Italy at the U.S.A. Bicentennial Cup Tournament in New York. He achieved one of his career highs after helping England qualify for the 1980 European Championships in Italy — the first tournament England had reached for a decade. During a group game against Belgium, Wilkins scored a memorable goal when he lobbed the whole Belgian defence (thereby breaching the Belgians' obvious offside trap) and delivered a second lob, this time over the head of the goalkeeper and into the net to put England ahead. The Belgians swiftly equalised, however, and England failed to progress beyond the group stage. Wilkins was a fixture in the England squad through a successful campaign to qualify for the 1982 World Cup in Spain, which England exited at the second group stage. Over the season 1983/84, Wilkins continued to play for England under new coach Bobby Robson but the team failed to qualify for the 1984 European Championships. Wilkins remained an England regular during his spell at A.C. Milan and he was chosen for the squad which qualified for the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. He played in the opening defeat against Portugal. Wilkins became the first Englishman to be sent off at the World Cup in a goalless draw with Morocco in 1986, for throwing the ball at Gabriel González. The ball hit the referee having been thrown in protest at being deemed offside. He was suspended for the next two games and was not reinstated by the time the quarter final against Argentina came round, a game which England lost 2–1. Wilkins made his 84th and final England appearance in November 1986, against Yugoslavia. Coaching career Early coaching career Wilkins was QPR manager from 1994 to 1996, and managed fellow West London club Fulham in 1997–1998. In March 1999, Wilkins was appointed Chelsea's first-team coach after Graham Rix was jailed for child sex offences. Wilkins and Rix were Chelsea's interim managers after the sacking of Gianluca Vialli at the start of the 2000–01 FA Premier League season, but both were sacked from the club on the orders of new manager Claudio Ranieri in November 2000. When Vialli was hired by First Division club Watford, Wilkins again assisted him until their dismissal in June 2002. From 2003 to 2005, Wilkins assisted former Chelsea player Dennis Wise in his managing of Millwall, but announced his exit when he took exception at Dave Bassett being hired in the coaching staff. England U-21 From 2004 on Wilkins was assistant coach to Peter Taylor with the England under-21s until Taylor left in early 2007. Wilkins was not retained by incoming head coach Stuart Pearce. Return to Chelsea In September 2008, Wilkins was appointed assistant first team coach to Luiz Felipe Scolari at Chelsea, following Steve Clarke's departure to West Ham United. In February 2009, following Scolari's shock sacking, Wilkins was appointed as Chelsea's caretaker manager for the Fifth round FA Cup tie with Watford. Chelsea won the game 3–1, through a Nicolas Anelka hat-trick, with the club's new manager Guus Hiddink watching from the stands. On 11 November 2010, it was announced that Wilkins' contract with Chelsea "would not be renewed" and that he was to leave the club "with immediate effect". On 1 December 2010, Wilkins reached what he described as a "harmonious conclusion" with Chelsea following his unexpected departure from Stamford Bridge. While appearing as a guest on Sky Sports Champions League coverage on 7 December 2010, Wilkins said that Chelsea still had not given him a reason for his sacking. Chelsea manager Carlo Ancelotti, who was himself sacked at the end of the 2010–2011 season, wrote about Wilkins, in his autobiographical book The Beautiful Games of an Ordinary Genius: "Ray is one of those select few, always present, noble in spirit, a real blue-blood, Chelsea flows in his veins ... without him we wouldn't have won a thing." Later coaching career On 30 December 2013, Wilkins was appointed assistant head coach of Fulham. He and technical director Alan Curbishley were sacked on 17 February 2014 and the season ended with relegation. On 3 September 2014, Wilkins was appointed as the new head coach of Jordan. He led Jordan at the 2015 AFC Asian Cup, where they were eliminated in the group-stages for the first time after two losses against Iraq and Japan and a win over Palestine. On 25 June 2015, Aston Villa manager Tim Sherwood appointed Wilkins as his assistant manager. On 26 October 2015, Wilkins was sacked along with Tim Sherwood and the rest of the coaching team. Media In the 1990s Wilkins was part of the team that contributed to the Football Italia show that aired on Channel 4. Wilkins later appeared as a commentator for Sky Sports, particularly on their Champions League coverage. He also worked for Talksport. Wilkins was also featured as a commentator on the 1990s Tango soft drink commercials, 'You know when you've been Tango'd'. Personal life The son of professional footballer George Wilkins, he had two sisters and three footballer brothers: Graham Wilkins (born 28 June 1955 in Hillingdon), a former professional, who played in the Football League as a full-back for Chelsea, Brentford, and Southend United; former Brighton & Hove Albion manager and player, Dean Wilkins; and Stephen Wilkins, who was signed by Chelsea and later made one appearance for Brentford, before playing for a number of non-League teams, including Dagenham and Hayes. Throughout his life, Wilkins was known by his childhood nickname of "Butch". Wilkins married Jackie (née Bygraves) in 1978. The couple had a son and a daughter. Wilkins was a patron for the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young. In 1993, he was made an MBE. In March 2013, he was stopped whilst driving and found to be "nearly four times" over the legal alcohol limit. In February 2014 he said that he had ulcerative colitis. In July 2016, Wilkins was given a four-year ban for drink driving. In August 2016, Wilkins admitted he was an alcoholic. Death On 28 March 2018, Wilkins had a cardiac arrest resulting in a fall and was placed into an induced coma at St George's Hospital in Tooting. He died at the age of 61 on 4 April 2018. Hours after his death, Milan played rivals Inter Milan in the Derby della Madonnina at the San Siro. His former captain Franco Baresi laid a bouquet of flowers next to Wilkins' shirt by the side of the pitch. A section of Milan fans held aloft a banner which read "Ciao Ray: Leggenda Rossonera" (English: "Goodbye Ray: Legend of the Red and Blacks"). During Chelsea's home game against West Ham United on 8 April, fans at Stamford Bridge gave a minute's applause in the eighth minute to pay tribute to Wilkins. They also held a banner which read "Ray was one those select few, he knew what it meant to be one of us a real blue blood. Chelsea flowed through his veins, may you rest in peace Ray." A memorial service was held for Wilkins on 1 May at St Luke's Church, Chelsea, attended by many figures who knew him from the world of football. His son made a speech about Wilkins' struggles with depression and alcoholism. Career statistics Club International Scores and results list England's goal tally first, score column indicates score after each Wilkins goal. Managerial statistics Honours Player Manchester United FA Cup: 1982–83 FA Charity Shield: 1983 Rangers Scottish Premier Division: 1988–89, 1989–90 Scottish League Cup: 1988–89 England Rous Cup: 1986 British Home Championship: 1977–78, 1981–82, 1982–83 Individual Chelsea Player of the Year: 1976, 1977 English Football Hall of Fame: 2013 Assistant manager Chelsea Premier League: 2009–10 FA Cup: 1999–2000, 2008–09, 2009–10 FA Community Shield: 2009 References External links England Record 1956 births 2018 deaths Footballers from Hillingdon England under-23 international footballers England under-21 international footballers England international footballers English football managers English footballers English expatriate footballers English Football Hall of Fame inductees Expatriate footballers in France Expatriate footballers in Italy Paris Saint-Germain F.C. players A.C. Milan players Chelsea F.C. players Crystal Palace F.C. players Premier League players English Football League players Ligue 1 players Scottish Football League players Serie A players UEFA Euro 1980 players 1982 FIFA World Cup players 1986 FIFA World Cup players Fulham F.C. managers Hibernian F.C. players Leyton Orient F.C. players Manchester United F.C. players Members of the Order of the British Empire Millwall F.C. players Queens Park Rangers F.C. players Rangers F.C. players Wycombe Wanderers F.C. players Chelsea F.C. non-playing staff Watford F.C. non-playing staff Queens Park Rangers F.C. managers Premier League managers English association football commentators Senrab F.C. players Fulham F.C. non-playing staff English Football League representative players Jordan national football team managers Expatriate football managers in Jordan English expatriate football managers 2015 AFC Asian Cup managers Aston Villa F.C. non-playing staff Association football midfielders Ray FA Cup Final players English expatriate sportspeople in Jordan English expatriate sportspeople in Italy English expatriate sportspeople in France

C_20de567609ed49768d60d5241074d1bd_1

Did Wilkins perform well when he signed with A.C Milan?

Did Ray Wilkins perform well with A.C Milan?

Ray Wilkins

Wilkins signed with A.C. Milan in the summer of 1984. He later remarked that the most difficult part of adapting to the Italian game was the focus on fitness - the coaching staff made him work to reduce his body fat levels and Wilkins described the result as being in the best shape of his career. The Italian team was struggling during this period, having suffered relegation in the 1981-82 Serie A, and Wilkins was joined by fellow Englishman Mark Hateley (himself replacing another compatriot - Luther Blissett). The only foreign players in the squad, the pair helped the team to victory over rivals Inter in the Milan Derby that October, winning plaudits from Italian press and the club's fans. In his first year there, Wilkins played 28 Serie A games to bring the team to fifth in the league and also won a runner-up medal in the Coppa Italia (having eliminated Inter in the semis). The following season he remained a key player in Milan's midfield, appearing in 29 league games and scoring two goals - one late goal to salvage a draw at Avellino and another goal the following game against Sampdoria. These were the only Serie A goals of his career. Overall, the team struggled for goals, with Pietro Paolo Virdis's total of 13 making him the club's only goalscorer in double figures that year. The club also suffered off the pitch, with owner Giuseppe Farina absconding to South Africa following accusations of bribery and theft. In Wilkin's final season there (1986-87), he fell out of the first team structure, following the signing of Roberto Donadoni and the continued presence of both Agostino Di Bartolomei and Alberigo Evani. The team finished fifth in the league, beating Inter twice, in Silvio Berlusconi's first year as owner. Wilkins played 105 games (74 in Serie A) for Milan between 1984 and 1987. Corriere della Sera eulogised him as a "serious and meticulous professional who was immediately appreciated for his long and precise passes". Wilkins signed for Paris Saint-Germain in the middle of 1987, but this proved to be short-lived: he failed to break into the team ahead of Gabriel Calderon and Safet Susic so he eagerly took the option to signed for Rangers for PS250,000 that November. At the Scottish club he won two league titles and one Scottish League Cup under Graeme Souness. He achieved cult status for his volley in the Old Firm game against reigning champions Celtic in August 1988, giving Rangers the lead in a 5-1 win against their rivals. Despite only playing two seasons for the Glasgow club, he was inducted into their Hall of Fame. CANNOTANSWER

Wilkins played 28 Serie A games to bring the team to fifth in the league

Raymond Colin Wilkins, (14 September 1956 – 4 April 2018) was an English football player and coach. Born into a footballing family with his father and three brothers involved in the game, Wilkins played as a midfielder. He began his career at Chelsea, where he was appointed captain at the age of 18, and later played for clubs including Manchester United, A.C. Milan, Queens Park Rangers and Rangers. He won 84 caps for the England national football team from 1976 to 1986, playing at UEFA Euro 1980 and the 1982 and 1986 FIFA World Cups. After his playing career ended, he worked as a television pundit, and as a coach and manager with Queens Park Rangers, Fulham and Chelsea. He managed Jordan at the 2015 AFC Asian Cup and his last coaching job was as the assistant manager of Aston Villa later that year. Club career Early career Born in Hillingdon, Middlesex, Wilkins started his career with the Sunday League team Senrab that play in Wanstead Flats, East London. Chelsea Wilkins made his name in the 1970s with boyhood club Chelsea, which he joined as an apprentice, progressing to his first team debut against Norwich City at the age of 17 on 26 October 1973 as a substitute in a 3–0 home league win. In 1975, following the club's relegation and the departure of many established players, an 18-year-old Wilkins was handed the captaincy of Chelsea by new manager Eddie McCreadie, taking it from long-time Blues captain John Hollins. He took to the role well, keeping it for four years. He emerged as Chelsea's key player of that period, leading a team of mainly young players to promotion again in 1976–1977 and, in the next season, consolidation of their place in the First Division. His rapid success, along with his "dark good looks", also saw Wilkins becoming a regular pin-up feature in British teenybopper magazines. His elder brother, Graham Wilkins also played for Chelsea. Manchester United In 1979, after Chelsea were relegated, Wilkins signed for Manchester United for a fee of £825,000, the highest fee received for a Chelsea player at the time. He scored ten goals in his five years with the Red Devils, including a long-range strike in the 2–2 draw with Brighton & Hove Albion in the 1983 FA Cup Final (United won the replay). He was voted player of the year by the team's supporters at the end of the 1983–1984 season. His midfield performances drew the attention of A.C. Milan, who made United a £1.5 million offer for the player. Milan, Paris and Rangers Wilkins signed with A.C. Milan in summer 1984. He later remarked that the most difficult part of adapting to the Italian game was the focus on fitness – the coaching staff made him work to reduce his body fat levels and Wilkins described the result as being in the best shape of his career. The Italian team was struggling during this period, having suffered relegation in the 1981–82 Serie A season, and Wilkins was joined by fellow Englishman Mark Hateley (himself replacing another compatriot — Luther Blissett). The only foreign players in the squad, the pair helped the team to victory over rivals Inter Milan in the Milan Derby that October, winning plaudits from Italian press and the club's fans. In his first year there, Wilkins played 28 Serie A games to bring the team to fifth in the league and also won a runner-up medal in the Coppa Italia (having eliminated Inter in the semis). The following season he remained a key player in A.C. Milan's midfield, appearing in 29 league games and scoring two goals – one late goal to salvage a draw at Avellino and another goal the following game against Sampdoria. These were the only Serie A goals of his career. Overall, the team struggled for goals, with Pietro Paolo Virdis's total of 13 making him the club's only goalscorer in double figures that year. The club also suffered off the pitch, with owner Giuseppe Farina absconding to South Africa following accusations of bribery and theft. In Wilkins' final season there (1986–1987), he fell out of the first team structure, following the signing of Roberto Donadoni and the continued presence of both Agostino Di Bartolomei and Alberigo Evani. The team finished fifth in the league, beating Inter twice, in Silvio Berlusconi's first year as owner. Wilkins played 105 games (74 in Serie A) for Milan between 1984 and 1987. Corriere della Sera eulogised him as a "serious and meticulous professional who was immediately appreciated for his long and precise passes". Wilkins signed for Paris Saint-Germain in the middle of 1987, but this proved to be short-lived: he failed to break into the team ahead of Gabriel Calderón and Safet Sušić so he eagerly took the option to move to Scotland to sign for Rangers for £250,000 that November. He made his debut for Rangers on 28 November 1987 in a 3–2 win over Hearts at Ibrox. He became an integral part of the team for the rest of the season, making twenty-nine appearances, which included both legs of the European Cup quarter-final against Steaua Bucharest. However, it would be the following season he would truly make his mark at Rangers. Reigning Scottish champions, and Old Firm rivals, Celtic played Rangers on 27 August 1988. With the score tied at 1–1, Wilkins scored a "thunderous volley" from the edge of the penalty box to put Rangers ahead, and his side eventually recorded an emphatic 5–1 win that day over their rivals. Rangers went on to win the league title that season, the first of their eventual nine-in-a-row. Wilkins also played in Rangers' win over Aberdeen in the 1988 Scottish League Cup Final. He remained an important team member into season 1988–89, playing in almost every game for the first half of the season, but his family wished to return to London. As such, he left Rangers in December 1989 to sign for Queens Park Rangers. Following his last appearance for Rangers, Wilkins received a standing ovation from the 40,000 crowd. Despite only playing two seasons for the Glasgow club, he was later inducted into their Hall of Fame. Later career The longest stint of his late career was at Queens Park Rangers, for whom he was a regular first team player from November 1989 to 1994, including the team's first two Premier League seasons. He made his debut in the 3–0 away win versus Crystal Palace. Wilkins left QPR in the summer of 1994 on a free transfer to join Crystal Palace as a player-coach under manager Alan Smith, but only made one appearance due to breaking his left foot on his debut. Wilkins re-joined QPR as player-manager on 15 November 1994, following the exit of Gerry Francis. The rest of that season was a success with the team finishing eighth in the Premiership. However the close season of 1995 saw the departure of Les Ferdinand to Newcastle and the following season the team struggled and were relegated. As player-manager, he appeared in a further 21 games for the club from 1994 to 1996. Wilkins left QPR by mutual agreement in September 1996 after the club was bought by media tycoon Chris Wright following their relegation from the FA Premier League. Wilkins played for four clubs in the 1996–1997 season. He played one game at Wycombe Wanderers before moving to Hibernian for a 16-game stint. Toward the end of the season he played three times for Millwall in the Second Division and, finally, three Third Division games for Leyton Orient before retiring. International career Wilkins scored three goals in 84 games for England, captained the team on ten occasions, and played at the 1982 and 1986 World Cups. Wilkins was called up to play for England for the first time in 1976 by coach Don Revie, then made his debut on 28 May in a 3–2 win over Italy at the U.S.A. Bicentennial Cup Tournament in New York. He achieved one of his career highs after helping England qualify for the 1980 European Championships in Italy — the first tournament England had reached for a decade. During a group game against Belgium, Wilkins scored a memorable goal when he lobbed the whole Belgian defence (thereby breaching the Belgians' obvious offside trap) and delivered a second lob, this time over the head of the goalkeeper and into the net to put England ahead. The Belgians swiftly equalised, however, and England failed to progress beyond the group stage. Wilkins was a fixture in the England squad through a successful campaign to qualify for the 1982 World Cup in Spain, which England exited at the second group stage. Over the season 1983/84, Wilkins continued to play for England under new coach Bobby Robson but the team failed to qualify for the 1984 European Championships. Wilkins remained an England regular during his spell at A.C. Milan and he was chosen for the squad which qualified for the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. He played in the opening defeat against Portugal. Wilkins became the first Englishman to be sent off at the World Cup in a goalless draw with Morocco in 1986, for throwing the ball at Gabriel González. The ball hit the referee having been thrown in protest at being deemed offside. He was suspended for the next two games and was not reinstated by the time the quarter final against Argentina came round, a game which England lost 2–1. Wilkins made his 84th and final England appearance in November 1986, against Yugoslavia. Coaching career Early coaching career Wilkins was QPR manager from 1994 to 1996, and managed fellow West London club Fulham in 1997–1998. In March 1999, Wilkins was appointed Chelsea's first-team coach after Graham Rix was jailed for child sex offences. Wilkins and Rix were Chelsea's interim managers after the sacking of Gianluca Vialli at the start of the 2000–01 FA Premier League season, but both were sacked from the club on the orders of new manager Claudio Ranieri in November 2000. When Vialli was hired by First Division club Watford, Wilkins again assisted him until their dismissal in June 2002. From 2003 to 2005, Wilkins assisted former Chelsea player Dennis Wise in his managing of Millwall, but announced his exit when he took exception at Dave Bassett being hired in the coaching staff. England U-21 From 2004 on Wilkins was assistant coach to Peter Taylor with the England under-21s until Taylor left in early 2007. Wilkins was not retained by incoming head coach Stuart Pearce. Return to Chelsea In September 2008, Wilkins was appointed assistant first team coach to Luiz Felipe Scolari at Chelsea, following Steve Clarke's departure to West Ham United. In February 2009, following Scolari's shock sacking, Wilkins was appointed as Chelsea's caretaker manager for the Fifth round FA Cup tie with Watford. Chelsea won the game 3–1, through a Nicolas Anelka hat-trick, with the club's new manager Guus Hiddink watching from the stands. On 11 November 2010, it was announced that Wilkins' contract with Chelsea "would not be renewed" and that he was to leave the club "with immediate effect". On 1 December 2010, Wilkins reached what he described as a "harmonious conclusion" with Chelsea following his unexpected departure from Stamford Bridge. While appearing as a guest on Sky Sports Champions League coverage on 7 December 2010, Wilkins said that Chelsea still had not given him a reason for his sacking. Chelsea manager Carlo Ancelotti, who was himself sacked at the end of the 2010–2011 season, wrote about Wilkins, in his autobiographical book The Beautiful Games of an Ordinary Genius: "Ray is one of those select few, always present, noble in spirit, a real blue-blood, Chelsea flows in his veins ... without him we wouldn't have won a thing." Later coaching career On 30 December 2013, Wilkins was appointed assistant head coach of Fulham. He and technical director Alan Curbishley were sacked on 17 February 2014 and the season ended with relegation. On 3 September 2014, Wilkins was appointed as the new head coach of Jordan. He led Jordan at the 2015 AFC Asian Cup, where they were eliminated in the group-stages for the first time after two losses against Iraq and Japan and a win over Palestine. On 25 June 2015, Aston Villa manager Tim Sherwood appointed Wilkins as his assistant manager. On 26 October 2015, Wilkins was sacked along with Tim Sherwood and the rest of the coaching team. Media In the 1990s Wilkins was part of the team that contributed to the Football Italia show that aired on Channel 4. Wilkins later appeared as a commentator for Sky Sports, particularly on their Champions League coverage. He also worked for Talksport. Wilkins was also featured as a commentator on the 1990s Tango soft drink commercials, 'You know when you've been Tango'd'. Personal life The son of professional footballer George Wilkins, he had two sisters and three footballer brothers: Graham Wilkins (born 28 June 1955 in Hillingdon), a former professional, who played in the Football League as a full-back for Chelsea, Brentford, and Southend United; former Brighton & Hove Albion manager and player, Dean Wilkins; and Stephen Wilkins, who was signed by Chelsea and later made one appearance for Brentford, before playing for a number of non-League teams, including Dagenham and Hayes. Throughout his life, Wilkins was known by his childhood nickname of "Butch". Wilkins married Jackie (née Bygraves) in 1978. The couple had a son and a daughter. Wilkins was a patron for the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young. In 1993, he was made an MBE. In March 2013, he was stopped whilst driving and found to be "nearly four times" over the legal alcohol limit. In February 2014 he said that he had ulcerative colitis. In July 2016, Wilkins was given a four-year ban for drink driving. In August 2016, Wilkins admitted he was an alcoholic. Death On 28 March 2018, Wilkins had a cardiac arrest resulting in a fall and was placed into an induced coma at St George's Hospital in Tooting. He died at the age of 61 on 4 April 2018. Hours after his death, Milan played rivals Inter Milan in the Derby della Madonnina at the San Siro. His former captain Franco Baresi laid a bouquet of flowers next to Wilkins' shirt by the side of the pitch. A section of Milan fans held aloft a banner which read "Ciao Ray: Leggenda Rossonera" (English: "Goodbye Ray: Legend of the Red and Blacks"). During Chelsea's home game against West Ham United on 8 April, fans at Stamford Bridge gave a minute's applause in the eighth minute to pay tribute to Wilkins. They also held a banner which read "Ray was one those select few, he knew what it meant to be one of us a real blue blood. Chelsea flowed through his veins, may you rest in peace Ray." A memorial service was held for Wilkins on 1 May at St Luke's Church, Chelsea, attended by many figures who knew him from the world of football. His son made a speech about Wilkins' struggles with depression and alcoholism. Career statistics Club International Scores and results list England's goal tally first, score column indicates score after each Wilkins goal. Managerial statistics Honours Player Manchester United FA Cup: 1982–83 FA Charity Shield: 1983 Rangers Scottish Premier Division: 1988–89, 1989–90 Scottish League Cup: 1988–89 England Rous Cup: 1986 British Home Championship: 1977–78, 1981–82, 1982–83 Individual Chelsea Player of the Year: 1976, 1977 English Football Hall of Fame: 2013 Assistant manager Chelsea Premier League: 2009–10 FA Cup: 1999–2000, 2008–09, 2009–10 FA Community Shield: 2009 References External links England Record 1956 births 2018 deaths Footballers from Hillingdon England under-23 international footballers England under-21 international footballers England international footballers English football managers English footballers English expatriate footballers English Football Hall of Fame inductees Expatriate footballers in France Expatriate footballers in Italy Paris Saint-Germain F.C. players A.C. Milan players Chelsea F.C. players Crystal Palace F.C. players Premier League players English Football League players Ligue 1 players Scottish Football League players Serie A players UEFA Euro 1980 players 1982 FIFA World Cup players 1986 FIFA World Cup players Fulham F.C. managers Hibernian F.C. players Leyton Orient F.C. players Manchester United F.C. players Members of the Order of the British Empire Millwall F.C. players Queens Park Rangers F.C. players Rangers F.C. players Wycombe Wanderers F.C. players Chelsea F.C. non-playing staff Watford F.C. non-playing staff Queens Park Rangers F.C. managers Premier League managers English association football commentators Senrab F.C. players Fulham F.C. non-playing staff English Football League representative players Jordan national football team managers Expatriate football managers in Jordan English expatriate football managers 2015 AFC Asian Cup managers Aston Villa F.C. non-playing staff Association football midfielders Ray FA Cup Final players English expatriate sportspeople in Jordan English expatriate sportspeople in Italy English expatriate sportspeople in France

C_7f5b7fac03f240eba4b0cf53ca659b83_1

What is Rather's connection to the Killian documents?

What is Dan Rather's connection to the Killian documents?

Dan Rather

On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Chicago Sun-Times. Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents - former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett - had misled the network about how he had obtained them. On September 20, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, "If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question." The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate." Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting "Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day." CANNOTANSWER

Rather reported on 60 Minutes

Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. (; born October 31, 1931) is an American journalist and former national evening news anchor. Rather began his career in Texas, becoming a national name after his reporting saved thousands of lives during Hurricane Carla in September 1961. Rather spontaneously created the first radar weather report by overlaying a transparent map over a radar image of Hurricane Carla. In his first national broadcast, he helped initiate the successful evacuation of 350,000 people. Rather reported from Dallas in November 1963 at the time that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Based on his reporting, he was promoted at CBS News, where he served as White House correspondent beginning in 1964. He served as foreign correspondent in London and Vietnam over the next two years before returning to the White House correspondent position. He covered the presidency of Richard Nixon, including Nixon's trip to China, the Watergate scandal, and the president's resignation. In 1981, Rather was promoted to news anchor for the CBS Evening News, a role he occupied for 24 years. Along with Peter Jennings at ABC News and Tom Brokaw at NBC News, he was one of the "Big Three" nightly news anchors in the U.S. from the 1980s through the early 2000s. He frequently contributed to CBS's weekly news magazine, 60 Minutes. Rather left the anchor desk in 2005 following the Killian documents controversy, in which he presented unauthenticated documents in a news report on President George W. Bush's Vietnam War–era service in the National Guard. He continued to work with CBS until 2006, when he was abruptly fired. In September 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former parent company Viacom. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. An intermediate New York state appeals court dismissed the lawsuit in September 2009, and the New York Court of Appeals refused to reinstate it in January 2010. On the cable channel AXS TV (then called HDNet), Rather hosted Dan Rather Reports, a 60 Minutes–style investigative news program, from 2006 to 2013. He also hosts several other projects for AXS TV, including Dan Rather Presents, which provides in-depth reporting on broad topics such as mental health care or adoption, and The Big Interview with Dan Rather, in which he conducts long-form interviews with musicians and other entertainers. In January 2018, he began hosting an online newscast called The News with Dan Rather on The Young Turks' YouTube channel. Early life Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. was born on October 31, 1931, in Wharton County, Texas, the son of Daniel Irvin Rather Sr., a ditch digger and pipe layer, and the former Byrl Veda Page. The Rathers moved to Houston when he was a child, where Dan attended Lovett Elementary School and Hamilton Middle School. He graduated in 1950 from John H. Reagan High School in Houston. In 1953, Rather earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas, where he was editor of the school newspaper, The Houstonian. He was also a member of the Caballeros, the founding organization of the Epsilon Psi chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity. While in college, Rather worked for KSAM-FM radio in Huntsville, calling junior high, high school, and Sam Houston State football games. After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Rather briefly attended South Texas College of Law in Houston. In January 1954, Rather enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and was sent to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego. He was soon discharged, however, because he was found to have had rheumatic fever as a child, a fact he had omitted during the enlistment process. Early career Rather began his journalism career in 1950 as an Associated Press reporter in Huntsville, Texas. Later, he was a reporter for United Press (1950–1952), several Texas radio stations, and the Houston Chronicle (1954–1955). Around 1955, Rather wrote a piece on heroin. Under the auspices of the Houston Police, he tried a dose of the drug, which he characterized as "a special kind of hell." He worked for four seasons as the play-by-play announcer for the University of Houston football team. During the 1959 minor league baseball season, Rather was the play-by-play radio announcer for the Texas League Houston Buffs. In 1959, Rather began his television career as a reporter for KTRK-TV, the ABC affiliate in Houston. He was subsequently promoted to the director of news for KHOU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Houston. In September 1961, Rather covered Hurricane Carla for KHOU-TV, broadcasting from the then National Weather Center in Galveston. He is noted for showing the first radar image of a hurricane on TV. He conceived of overlaying a transparent map over the radar screen, in order to show the size of Hurricane Carla to the audience. Convinced of the threat, more than 350,000 people evacuated from the area, the largest known evacuation to that time. Their actions are believed to have saved thousands of lives compared to the previous hurricane, which had killed 6,000 to 12,000 people. Rather's live coverage of Carla was broadcast by New York and national stations. Ray Miller, news director of KPRC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Houston, also mentored Rather in the early years. On February 28, 1962, Rather left Houston for New York City for a six-month trial initiation at CBS. Rather did not fit in easily on the East Coast. His first reports for CBS included coverage of the crash of American Airlines Flight 1 in Jamaica Bay, and a report on the suffocation of children at a hospital in Binghamton, New York. Shortly after, Rather was made chief of CBS's Southwest bureau in Dallas. In August 1963, he was appointed chief of the Southern bureau in New Orleans, responsible for coverage of news events in the South, Southwest, Mexico and Central America. CBS News JFK assassination to Watergate In his autobiography, Rather noted that he was in Dallas in November 1963 to return film from an interview in Uvalde at the ranch of former Vice President John Nance Garner, who celebrated his 95th birthday on November 22. He happened to be "on the other side of the railroad tracks, beyond the triple underpass, thirty yards from a grassy knoll that would later figure in so many conspiracy theories." His job was to fetch a film drop from a camera truck at that location, and take it to the station for editing. He did not witness the shooting of Kennedy, and knew nothing of the events until he reached KRLD, having run through Dealey Plaza. He later wrote: “The moment I cleared the railroad tracks I saw a scene I will never forget. Some people were lying on the grass, some screaming, some running, some pointing. Policemen swarmed everywhere and distinctly above the din, I heard one shout, 'DON'T ANYBODY PANIC.' And of course, there was nothing but panic wherever you looked.” In his autobiography, Rather said he was one of the first to view the Zapruder film showing the assassination, and the first to describe it on television. Rather reported the fatal headshot as forcing Kennedy's head forward, but it was thrown backward. Later, he reported that some Dallas schoolchildren had applauded when they were notified of the president's death. Administrators said they had announced that school was to be dismissed early, and did not mention the assassination. However, teacher Joanna Morgan confirmed that students had cheered at the news that Kennedy was shot. This story infuriated local journalists at then-CBS affiliate KRLD-TV (now Fox-owned-and-operated KDFW-TV). Rather's reporting during the national mourning period following the Kennedy assassination and subsequent events impressed CBS News management. In 1964, they selected him for the network's White House correspondent position. In 1965, Rather served as a foreign correspondent for CBS in London, and in 1966 in Vietnam. He served again as White House correspondent during the presidency of Richard Nixon. In 1970, he was also assigned as anchor for the CBS Sunday Night News (1970–73; 1974–75), and later for the CBS Saturday Evening News (1973–76). Rather was among those journalists who accompanied Nixon to China. He later covered the Watergate investigation, as well as the impeachment proceedings against Nixon in Congress. CBS Evening News anchor After President Nixon's resignation in 1974, Rather became chief correspondent for the documentary series CBS Reports. In December 1975, he became a correspondent of the long-running Sunday night news show 60 Minutes—at the time the program was moved from a Sunday afternoon time-slot to primetime. Success there helped Rather pull ahead of longtime correspondent Roger Mudd, who was in line to succeed Walter Cronkite as anchor and Managing Editor of The CBS Evening News. Rather succeeded to the news anchor position after Cronkite's retirement, making his first broadcast on March 9, 1981. Rather had a significantly different style of reporting the news. In contrast to the avuncular Cronkite, who ended his newscast with “That's the way it is,” Rather searched to find a broadcast ending more suitable to his tastes. For one week in September 1986, with CBS the target of potentially hostile new ownership, Rather tried ending his broadcasts with the word "courage," and was roundly ridiculed for it. For nearly two decades, Rather ended the show with: “That's part of our world tonight.” Rather also held other positions during his time as anchor. In January 1988, he became host of the newly created 48 Hours, and in January 1999, Rather joined the new 60 Minutes II as a correspondent. Ratings for the Evening News with Rather at the helm fluctuated wildly, at a time when more alternatives to TV news were developing. After a dip to second place, Rather regained the top spot in 1985 until 1989, when he ceded the ratings peak to rival Peter Jennings at ABC's World News Tonight. By 1992, however, the Evening News had fallen to third place of the three major networks. It rose in rankings in 2005, when Bob Schieffer became the interim anchor between Rather and Katie Couric. It briefly moved ahead of ABC World News Tonight in the wake of the death of Peter Jennings, but remained behind NBC Nightly News. Rather was a frequent collaborator with CBS News producer Susan Zirinsky, a leading member of the news division's staff. In 1987, new CBS owner Laurence Tisch oversaw layoffs of hundreds of CBS News employees, in a major shake-up of the network. Among those to go were correspondents such as David Andelman, Fred Graham, Morton Dean, and Ike Pappas. Fewer videotape crews were dispatched to cover stories, and numerous bureaus were closed. Critics cited the cutbacks as a major factor in CBS News' fall into third place in the ratings. For a short time from 1993 to 1995, Rather co-anchored the evening news with Connie Chung. Chung had been a Washington, DC correspondent for CBS News, and anchored short news updates on the West Coast. On joining the CBS Evening News, she reported "pop news" stories. In one widely cited case, she aggressively pursued Tonya Harding, who was accused of a plot to injure fellow Olympic ice skater Nancy Kerrigan. After Chung left the network, Rather went back to doing the newscast alone. By the 2005–06 season, the end of Rather's time as anchor, CBS Evening News lagged behind NBC Nightly News and ABC World News Tonight in the ratings. But it still drew approximately 5.5 million viewers a night. Criticism of Rather reached a fever pitch after 60 Minutes II ran his 2004 report about President Bush's military record. Numerous critics questioned the authenticity of the documents upon which the report was based. Rather subsequently admitted on the air that the documents' authenticity could not be proven. In the aftermath, CBS fired several members of CBS News staff but temporarily retained Rather, until his contract was up for renewal the following year, whereupon he was completely ousted. Journalistic history and influence Nixon During Richard Nixon's presidency, critics accused Rather of biased coverage against him. At a Houston news conference in March 1974, Nixon fielded a question from Rather, still CBS's White House correspondent, who said, “Thank you, Mr. President. Dan Rather, of CBS News.” The room filled with jeers and applause, prompting Nixon to joke, “Are you running for something?” Rather replied, “No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?” He questioned whether Nixon was cooperating with the grand jury investigation and House Judiciary Committee in relation to the Watergate scandal. NBC's Tom Brokaw has said the network considered hiring him to replace Rather as its White House correspondent, but dropped it after word was leaked to the press. Rather was believed to have provided tough coverage of the Watergate scandal, raising his profile. Space Shuttle Challenger disaster In January 1986, NASA faced repeated delays in the preparations to launch the Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger in close sequence. Rather described the January 10 delay of Columbia as: “star-crossed space shuttle Columbia stood ready for launch again today, and once more, the launch was scrubbed. Heavy rain was the cause this time. The launch has been postponed so often since its original date, December 18, that it's now known as mission impossible.”This was considered an example of the "biting sarcasm" the media used related to NASA's scheduling. Columbia launched on January 12. On January 27, Rather's reporting of the expected Challenger launch began as follows: On January 28, Challenger'''s explosion and destruction occurred 73 seconds after launch. Afghanistan, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush During the Soviet–Afghan War, Rather was filmed reporting near the front lines while wearing a traditional mujahideen headdress and garments. Rather attracted an Evening News audience (and was nicknamed "Gunga Dan"). The American comic strip Doonesbury spoofed his actions. Rather's reports were later revealed to have been influential to Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-Texas), who led an effort to help the struggling mujahideen. The CIA developed its largest covert operation to supply aid and advanced arms to the mujahideen. The Soviets eventually quit Afghanistan. Rather gained the anchor spot on the Evening News. He was competing with Roger Mudd, a more senior correspondent and a frequent substitute anchor for Walter Cronkite on Evening News. Mudd had also anchored the Sunday evening broadcast, but Rather traveled through Afghanistan when news led there. A few years into his service as anchor, Rather began wearing sweaters beneath his suit jacket to soften his on-air appearance for viewers. During the 1980s, Rather gained further renown for his forceful and skeptical reporting on the Iran–Contra affair. He eventually confronted Vice President George H. W. Bush in an on-air interview during the latter's presidential campaign. Bush referred to Rather's "dead air incident" saying: “I want to talk about why I want to be President, why those 41 percent of the people are supporting me. And I don't think it's fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?”Rather ignored Bush's comment. Shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Rather secured an interview with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. On February 24, 2003, Rather conducted another interview with Hussein before the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the interview, Hussein invited Rather to be the moderator of a live television debate between him and George W. Bush. The debate never took place. The Wall Within On June 2, 1988, Rather hosted a CBS News special, The Wall Within. In it, he interviewed six veterans, each of whom said he had witnessed horrible acts in Vietnam. Two of the men said that they had killed civilians, and two others said that they had seen friends die. Each talked about the effects the war had upon their lives—including depression, unemployment, drug use, and homelessness. In 2004, National Review ran an article by Anne Morse entitled "The First Rathergate." She said that almost nothing claimed by participants in The Wall Within was true. Citing the self-published book Stolen Valor (1998) by veteran B. G. Burkett, and investigative journalist Glenna Whitley, Morse said that military records revealed that the six former servicemen had lied about their experiences. Only one served in combat, and two had never been in Vietnam. Killian documents On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly or almost exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Chicago Sun-Times. Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents—former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett—had misled the network about how he had obtained them. On September 20, 2004, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, “If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.” The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate." Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes, and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting, “Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day.” Departure from the CBS Evening News Rather retired as the anchorman and Managing Editor of the CBS Evening News in 2005; his last broadcast was Wednesday, March 9, 2005. He had worked as the anchorman for 24 full years, the longest tenure of anyone in American television history, and for a short time, continued to work as a correspondent for 60 Minutes. Bob Schieffer, a fellow Texan and host of Face the Nation, took over Rather's position on an interim basis, with Katie Couric replacing Schieffer in 2006. Since retiring, Rather has spoken out about what he perceives as a lack of courage by American journalists. On January 24, 2006, Rather spoke to a Seattle audience. Before the speaking engagement, he told a newspaper reporter, “In many ways on many days, [reporters] have sort of adopted the attitude of 'go along, get along.'” “What many of us need is a spine transplant,” Rather added. “Whether it's City Hall, the State House, or the White House, part of our job is to speak truth to power.” Ousted from CBS News In June 2006, reports surfaced that CBS News would most likely not renew Dan Rather's contract. According to a Washington Post article, sources from CBS said that executives at the network decided "there is no future role for Rather." On June 20, 2006, CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus announced that Rather would leave the network after 44 years. Rather issued a separate statement which accompanied the news of the departure: Lawsuit over ouster from CBS Network On September 19, 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS, its former parent company Viacom; CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves; Sumner Redstone, chairman of both Viacom and CBS; and Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. A CBS spokesman claimed that the lawsuit was "old news" and "without merit." On September 21, 2009, Rather's lawyers claimed that Bush's military service would be proven to be a sham, and Rather would be vindicated. On September 29, 2009, a New York state appeals court dismissed Rather's lawsuit against CBS. On January 12, 2010, New York's top court refused to reinstate Rather's $70 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against CBS Corp. In his book titled Rather Outspoken, Rather claims that the lawsuit “took a big whack out of my time, my psyche and my bank balance, but even so, it was worth it.” On May 18, 2012, Rather appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher, and claimed he had been fired for reporting a story about George W. Bush's year of absence from the reserve unit he served with, and that the news corporations had been "very uncomfortable" with running the story. Post-CBS career Following his departure from CBS, Dan Rather joined Mark Cuban's cable network AXS TV (then called HDNet) to host and produce the weekly one-hour news show Dan Rather Reports from 2006 until 2013. Since 2013, Rather has hosted and produced the hour-long series The Big Interview with Dan Rather on AXS TV, where he sits down for in-depth interviews with influential figures in music and entertainment, such as: John Fogerty, Quentin Tarantino, Simon Cowell, Aaron Sorkin, and Sammy Hagar. He has also produced several documentary specials for the network under the banner Dan Rather Presents, including specials about "America's Mental Health Crisis," the United States Secret Service, and "The Shameful Side of International Adoption." Rather also appears frequently on a number of news shows, including MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and on CNN. He has also written for The Huffington Post and Mashable. On May 28, 2007, Rather compared historical events to events in the Star Wars films in the History Channel special titled Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed. In 2012, Rather published an autobiography titled Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News. In 2015, Rather launched an independent production company called News and Guts Media, through which he produces The Big Interview among other projects. In 2015, Rather also began actively posting on Facebook. He credits young staffers at News and Guts Media with pushing him to try social media. While his posts were considerably longer than typical social media posts, they resonated with the audience, which soon grew to more than two million followers. Even late night TV noticed Rather's unusual but effective Facebook presence. Subject matter has covered a range of topics, including: current political events, journalism, and childhood memories. On September 23, 2016, SiriusXM Radio announced a new hour-long weekly program, "Dan Rather's America," airing Tuesday mornings at 10am Eastern on Radio Andy channel 102, debuting on September 27. In the fall of 2017, the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas completed a digital humanities project dedicated to the long career of the journalist that was titled Dan Rather: American Journalist. The culmination of three years of research conducted at the Briscoe Center, the site uses materials from a dozen archives and libraries, and draws from over 25 of the Briscoe Center for American History's news media and photojournalism collections. The website features over 2,000 digitized documents, 300 excerpts from twelve oral history interviews, and 1000 video clips, enabling visitors to dive deep into the history of the last 60 years through the lens of Dan Rather's career. On January 21, 2018, it was announced that Rather would be launching a weekly 30-minute newscast on The Young Turks. Titled The News with Dan Rather, it airs on Mondays at 5:30pm Eastern Time. Personal life Rather married Jean Goebel in 1957. They have a son and daughter, and maintain homes in New York City and Austin, Texas. Their daughter Robin is an environmentalist and community activist in Austin, Texas. Their son Dan is an assistant district attorney in the District Attorney's office in Manhattan, New York. Sam Houston State University renamed its mass communications building after Rather in 1994. The building houses The Houstonian and KSHU, the student-run radio and television stations. In May 2007, Rather received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Siena College in Loudonville, New York, for his lifetime contributions to journalism. A columnist whose work is distributed by King Features Syndicate, Rather continues to speak out against alleged influence in journalism by corporations and governments. At a 2008 conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sponsored by the group Free Press, Rather criticized both local and national news organizations, stating—according to reports—that there is no longer incentive to do “good and valuable news.” Books The Palace Guard, with Gary Paul Gates, 1974. . The Camera Never Blinks: Adventures of a TV Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1977. . I Remember, with Peter Wyden, 1991. . The Camera Never Blinks Twice: The Further Adventures of a Television Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1994. . , 1999. . "The American Dream: Stories from the Heart of Our Nation", 2001. . , with Digby Diehl, 2013. . What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism, with Elliot Kirschner, 2017. .What Unites Us: The Graphic Novel, with Elliot Kirschner, illustrated by Tim Foley, 2021. . Awards He has received numerous Emmy Awards, several Peabody Awards, and various honorary degrees from universities. In addition to these awards, Rather was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2001, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. Criticism As one of the last broadcast news journalists from the era of the "Big Three" network news primacy, Rather was generally regarded highly within his profession by long-serving journalists. Rather has been accused of having a liberal bias."Dan Rather: a pioneer and a lightning rod" at The Christian Science Monitor. Claims of bias Rather's on-screen comments and election-night reporting have come under attack dating back to Richard Nixon's presidency. In a June 2002 interview with Larry King, his long-time co-worker (and self-described liberal), Andy Rooney stated that Rather is “transparently liberal.” During the weeks following the Killian documents stories, Rather received widespread criticism from other journalists and historians. In an interview with commentator Bill Maher, Rather accused Fox News Channel of receiving "talking points" from the Republican-controlled White House. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, who had defended Rather during the Killian documents incident, criticized Rather for not offering any evidence to support the claim. In 2002, Bernard Goldberg published a book with the title Bias, alleging a liberal bias in print and broadcast news organizations. In the book, Goldberg used Dan Rather as a primary example of a news anchorman with a liberal bias. He also criticized the anchor for his criticisms of President George W. Bush's and Vice President Dan Quayle's service in the National Guard, rather than the Active Duty military during the Vietnam War, and questioned Rather's own service. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has accused Rather of having "an unwillingness to challenge official power and policy" in his reporting. Investigative reporter Mark Hertsgaard characterized Rather as a "stern anti-Communist" during the Reagan administration, for allegedly having "reported the pronouncements of public officials with considerable respect." In April 2001, according to a front-page story in The Washington Post, Rather spoke at a Democratic party fundraiser in Austin, Texas, where he was the featured speaker. One of the official hosts for the fundraiser was Rather's daughter, Robin Rather; Rather said that he did not realize that his daughter was a host of the fundraiser. Rather also said that he did not realize that the event was a partisan fundraiser, although he did realize that after he arrived at the event. From Walter Cronkite During an appearance on CNN's American Morning in 2005, former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite said about Rather: “It surprised quite a few people at CBS and elsewhere that, without being able to pull up the ratings beyond third in a three-man field, that they tolerated his being there for so long.” Cronkite also said that he would like to have seen Bob Schieffer in Rather's position sooner. From Dallas CBS news director Eddie Barker In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination while Rather was a Dallas reporter, he interviewed a minister, who said some local schoolchildren had cheered upon learning of the President's shooting. The Associated Press later confirmed the story. A teacher at the school backed up the Rather story, confirming that some students at the school had cheered at the principal's news about Kennedy. Eddie Barker, local Dallas-area news director for CBS, said that Rather had in fact been aware that the children were merely happy about being sent home early, and they had not been given a reason for early school closure (Barker's children attended the school, as he informed Rather). He stated that Rather had deliberately misrepresented the facts by indicating that the children were happy about the shooting. Barker attempted to fire Rather, but was overruled by the national CBS News management. Incidents and controversies 1968 Democratic convention During live coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Rather attempted to interview a delegate from Georgia who appeared as though he was being forcibly removed by men without identification badges. As Rather approached the delegate to question the apparent strong-arm tactics of the Chicago political machine under Mayor Daley, he was punched in the stomach by one of the men, knocking him to the ground. “He lifted me right off the floor and put me away. I was down, the breath knocked out of me, as the whole group blew on by me ... In the CBS control room, they had switched the camera onto me just as I was slugged.” Walter Cronkite, after being told by Rather what happened, added on-air, "I think we got a bunch of thugs here Dan!" Chicago cab ride On November 10, 1980, Rather landed at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and got into a cab. He asked the cab driver to take him to the home of writer Studs Terkel, whom he was interviewing for 60 Minutes. A police spokesman said that the cab driver refused to go to the address and instead "wildly drove through the city streets," with Rather shouting out the window asking for help. The driver was charged with disorderly conduct. Rather called the incident “a rather minor thing.” By the time the case was about to come to trial, he was about to add anchoring the CBS Evening News to his 60 Minutes role at CBS News. Rather declined to press charges, citing a "mounting schedule of reporting assignments." Galloway lawsuit In 1980, Rather and CBS were taken to court when Carl Galloway, a California doctor, claimed that a report on 60 Minutes wrongfully implicated him in an insurance fraud scheme. CBS stated Galloway had signed the bogus report, and was suing Rather because he was upset at being caught. The jury sided with CBS and Rather, and they won the case. During the trial, Galloway's side used outtakes from the TV report showing that one interview was rehearsed. "Courage" For one week in September 1986, Rather signed off his broadcasts to CBS with the word "courage." He said that it was just a signature line, and had nothing to do with the news at the time. Other newscasters ridiculed and parodied Rather, and he dropped it. "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said “I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea.” Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who came to Rather's aid fully confirmed his version of events. The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. The opening track of the 1987 album Lolita Nation by California power pop group Game Theory is titled "Kenneth, What's the Frequency?" In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman. In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12.5-to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010. Dead air On September 11, 1987, Rather walked off the set in anger just before a remote Evening News broadcast from Miami, where Pope John Paul II had begun a rare U.S. tour, when a U.S. Open tennis match was being broadcast into the time scheduled for the newscast. He was upset that the news was being cut into to make room for sports and discussed it with the sports department, and made it clear that if the newscast did not start on time, then CBS Sports should fill the half hour. The Steffi Graf–Lori McNeil tennis match coverage then ended sooner than expected at 6:32 p.m., but Rather had disappeared. (CBS Sports had finally agreed to break away immediately after the match without commentary.) Thus, over 100 affiliates were forced to broadcast six minutes of dead air. Some stations were forced to air a slot of syndicated programming such as a rerun of a game show or a sitcom, and other stations were forced to pull out a technical difficulty telop graphic. Phil Jones, the chairman of the CBS affiliation board and general manager of Kansas City's KCTV (which the station placed a technical difficulty graphic during dead air) wanted an apology from Rather. Meanwhile in Miami, the city's CBS affiliate WTVJ was forced to drop the episode entirely, which ended up airing a syndicated rerun of a game show to fill the station's schedule. The next day, Rather apologized for leaving the anchor desk. The following year, when Rather asked then Vice President Bush about his role in the Iran–Contra affair during a live interview, Bush responded by saying, “Dan, how would you like it if I judged your entire career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?” Roger Ailes had a “mole” at CBS, who alerted him that the goal was to “take Bush out of the race” with a tough interview on Iran-Contra. Ailes alerted Bush on the cab ride over, and fed him the seven minutes retort. The aftermath of the interview showed the episode was a boost for Bush. “The vice president's poll ratings in Iowa and New Hampshire bumped visibly upward.” "Ratherisms" Rather is known for his many colorful analogies and descriptions during live broadcasts. Similar to those used by baseball announcer Red Barber, cycling commentator Phil Liggett, and Formula 1 commentator Murray Walker, these "Ratherisms" are also called "Texanisms" or "Danisms" by some. A few of the more colorful ones, several of which were used throughout the 2008 HBO made-for-TV movie Recount about the 2000 Election, include: “This race is shakier than cafeteria Jell-O.” “This thing is as tight as the rusted lugnuts on a '55 Ford.” His characterization of the Republican Party's assessment of President Obama: “[He] couldn't sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.” In popular culture Rather has been referenced in the television shows Saturday Night Live and Family Guy and many films. An animated caricature of him made a cameo appearance in the JibJab political cartoon, Good to Be in D.C. In 1971, he had a cameo in an episode of the number one hit comedy series All in the Family. Entitled The Man in the Street, series star Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker character excitedly awaits the viewing of a videotaped interview he gave earlier that day for the CBS Evening News. At the last minute, to his dismay, the segment is preempted by the telecast of a Richard Nixon presidential address from the Oval Office. Rather appears, as himself, delivering post-speech analysis from actual news footage. Jean Stapleton, as Archie's scatterbrained wife Edith Bunker, says of Rather how he's there to "...tell us what Mr. Nixon just said." In 2004, he was featured in the documentary film Barbecue: A Texas Love Story by Austin-based director Chris Elley. Two years later, Rather and Elley educated a group of New Yorkers in Madison Square Park about the true meaning of BBQ, and its significance to the identity of the Lone Star State. In the 2006–07 graphic novel Shooting War, which is set in the year 2011, an 80-year-old Dan Rather is shown to be one of the last journalists still reporting from Iraq. He had a cameo in the premiere of the Fall 2007 drama Dirty Sexy Money on ABC television. He guest-starred as himself in The Simpsons episode, "E Pluribus Wiggum." Rather appeared on The Daily Show in May 2009, wearing an Afro wig and mutton-chop sideburns to narrate a segment about the late former President Nixon eating a burrito, as a parody of MSNBC's extensive coverage of President Obama and Vice President Biden's hamburger lunch. He appears in the 2008 award-winning documentary Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story. A skit on the 38th season of Sesame Street featured Anderson Cooper interviewing two grouches, "Walter Cranky" and "Dan Rather Not," who, when asked to answer questions, demurred with the phrase "I'd rather not." Robert Redford portrayed Rather in the 2015 film Truth. Rather appeared in the docudrama Facing Saddam providing his views on Saddam Hussein. Ratings Under Rather's predecessor, Walter Cronkite, the CBS Evening News was a strong #1 in the ratings, which Rather maintained through much of the 1980s. However, Tom Brokaw and his NBC Nightly News, and Peter Jennings of ABC News' World News Tonight, increasing in popularity, eventually cut deep into the Rather broadcast's numbers. See also New Yorkers in journalism References Further reading Dan Rather & Elliot Kirschner (2017). What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. Rather, Dan. The Palace Guard, with Gary Gates Rather, Dan. I Remember, with Peter Wyden. Rather, Dan with Herskowitz, Mickey. The Camera Never Blinks Twice''. 1995. William Morrow. 2nd Saddam interview External links AXS TV The Big Interview Dan Rather: American Journalist (Briscoe Center for American History) Members of the Council on Foreign Relations 1931 births Living people American television reporters and correspondents American war correspondents American war correspondents of the Vietnam War CBS News people Emmy Award winners Peabody Award winners 60 Minutes correspondents Associated Press reporters Houston Chronicle people Television anchors from Houston Journalists from Houston Killian documents controversy People from Wharton, Texas Sam Houston State University alumni Writers from Texas American victims of crime Texas Democrats The Young Turks people American male journalists 20th-century American journalists 21st-century American journalists Journalists from New York City People from Huntsville, Texas Recipients of the Four Freedoms Award Military personnel from Texas

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What were the Killian documents?

What were the Killian documents repoted by Rather?

Dan Rather

On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Chicago Sun-Times. Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents - former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett - had misled the network about how he had obtained them. On September 20, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, "If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question." The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate." Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting "Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day." CANNOTANSWER

personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian.

Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. (; born October 31, 1931) is an American journalist and former national evening news anchor. Rather began his career in Texas, becoming a national name after his reporting saved thousands of lives during Hurricane Carla in September 1961. Rather spontaneously created the first radar weather report by overlaying a transparent map over a radar image of Hurricane Carla. In his first national broadcast, he helped initiate the successful evacuation of 350,000 people. Rather reported from Dallas in November 1963 at the time that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Based on his reporting, he was promoted at CBS News, where he served as White House correspondent beginning in 1964. He served as foreign correspondent in London and Vietnam over the next two years before returning to the White House correspondent position. He covered the presidency of Richard Nixon, including Nixon's trip to China, the Watergate scandal, and the president's resignation. In 1981, Rather was promoted to news anchor for the CBS Evening News, a role he occupied for 24 years. Along with Peter Jennings at ABC News and Tom Brokaw at NBC News, he was one of the "Big Three" nightly news anchors in the U.S. from the 1980s through the early 2000s. He frequently contributed to CBS's weekly news magazine, 60 Minutes. Rather left the anchor desk in 2005 following the Killian documents controversy, in which he presented unauthenticated documents in a news report on President George W. Bush's Vietnam War–era service in the National Guard. He continued to work with CBS until 2006, when he was abruptly fired. In September 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former parent company Viacom. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. An intermediate New York state appeals court dismissed the lawsuit in September 2009, and the New York Court of Appeals refused to reinstate it in January 2010. On the cable channel AXS TV (then called HDNet), Rather hosted Dan Rather Reports, a 60 Minutes–style investigative news program, from 2006 to 2013. He also hosts several other projects for AXS TV, including Dan Rather Presents, which provides in-depth reporting on broad topics such as mental health care or adoption, and The Big Interview with Dan Rather, in which he conducts long-form interviews with musicians and other entertainers. In January 2018, he began hosting an online newscast called The News with Dan Rather on The Young Turks' YouTube channel. Early life Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. was born on October 31, 1931, in Wharton County, Texas, the son of Daniel Irvin Rather Sr., a ditch digger and pipe layer, and the former Byrl Veda Page. The Rathers moved to Houston when he was a child, where Dan attended Lovett Elementary School and Hamilton Middle School. He graduated in 1950 from John H. Reagan High School in Houston. In 1953, Rather earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas, where he was editor of the school newspaper, The Houstonian. He was also a member of the Caballeros, the founding organization of the Epsilon Psi chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity. While in college, Rather worked for KSAM-FM radio in Huntsville, calling junior high, high school, and Sam Houston State football games. After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Rather briefly attended South Texas College of Law in Houston. In January 1954, Rather enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and was sent to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego. He was soon discharged, however, because he was found to have had rheumatic fever as a child, a fact he had omitted during the enlistment process. Early career Rather began his journalism career in 1950 as an Associated Press reporter in Huntsville, Texas. Later, he was a reporter for United Press (1950–1952), several Texas radio stations, and the Houston Chronicle (1954–1955). Around 1955, Rather wrote a piece on heroin. Under the auspices of the Houston Police, he tried a dose of the drug, which he characterized as "a special kind of hell." He worked for four seasons as the play-by-play announcer for the University of Houston football team. During the 1959 minor league baseball season, Rather was the play-by-play radio announcer for the Texas League Houston Buffs. In 1959, Rather began his television career as a reporter for KTRK-TV, the ABC affiliate in Houston. He was subsequently promoted to the director of news for KHOU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Houston. In September 1961, Rather covered Hurricane Carla for KHOU-TV, broadcasting from the then National Weather Center in Galveston. He is noted for showing the first radar image of a hurricane on TV. He conceived of overlaying a transparent map over the radar screen, in order to show the size of Hurricane Carla to the audience. Convinced of the threat, more than 350,000 people evacuated from the area, the largest known evacuation to that time. Their actions are believed to have saved thousands of lives compared to the previous hurricane, which had killed 6,000 to 12,000 people. Rather's live coverage of Carla was broadcast by New York and national stations. Ray Miller, news director of KPRC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Houston, also mentored Rather in the early years. On February 28, 1962, Rather left Houston for New York City for a six-month trial initiation at CBS. Rather did not fit in easily on the East Coast. His first reports for CBS included coverage of the crash of American Airlines Flight 1 in Jamaica Bay, and a report on the suffocation of children at a hospital in Binghamton, New York. Shortly after, Rather was made chief of CBS's Southwest bureau in Dallas. In August 1963, he was appointed chief of the Southern bureau in New Orleans, responsible for coverage of news events in the South, Southwest, Mexico and Central America. CBS News JFK assassination to Watergate In his autobiography, Rather noted that he was in Dallas in November 1963 to return film from an interview in Uvalde at the ranch of former Vice President John Nance Garner, who celebrated his 95th birthday on November 22. He happened to be "on the other side of the railroad tracks, beyond the triple underpass, thirty yards from a grassy knoll that would later figure in so many conspiracy theories." His job was to fetch a film drop from a camera truck at that location, and take it to the station for editing. He did not witness the shooting of Kennedy, and knew nothing of the events until he reached KRLD, having run through Dealey Plaza. He later wrote: “The moment I cleared the railroad tracks I saw a scene I will never forget. Some people were lying on the grass, some screaming, some running, some pointing. Policemen swarmed everywhere and distinctly above the din, I heard one shout, 'DON'T ANYBODY PANIC.' And of course, there was nothing but panic wherever you looked.” In his autobiography, Rather said he was one of the first to view the Zapruder film showing the assassination, and the first to describe it on television. Rather reported the fatal headshot as forcing Kennedy's head forward, but it was thrown backward. Later, he reported that some Dallas schoolchildren had applauded when they were notified of the president's death. Administrators said they had announced that school was to be dismissed early, and did not mention the assassination. However, teacher Joanna Morgan confirmed that students had cheered at the news that Kennedy was shot. This story infuriated local journalists at then-CBS affiliate KRLD-TV (now Fox-owned-and-operated KDFW-TV). Rather's reporting during the national mourning period following the Kennedy assassination and subsequent events impressed CBS News management. In 1964, they selected him for the network's White House correspondent position. In 1965, Rather served as a foreign correspondent for CBS in London, and in 1966 in Vietnam. He served again as White House correspondent during the presidency of Richard Nixon. In 1970, he was also assigned as anchor for the CBS Sunday Night News (1970–73; 1974–75), and later for the CBS Saturday Evening News (1973–76). Rather was among those journalists who accompanied Nixon to China. He later covered the Watergate investigation, as well as the impeachment proceedings against Nixon in Congress. CBS Evening News anchor After President Nixon's resignation in 1974, Rather became chief correspondent for the documentary series CBS Reports. In December 1975, he became a correspondent of the long-running Sunday night news show 60 Minutes—at the time the program was moved from a Sunday afternoon time-slot to primetime. Success there helped Rather pull ahead of longtime correspondent Roger Mudd, who was in line to succeed Walter Cronkite as anchor and Managing Editor of The CBS Evening News. Rather succeeded to the news anchor position after Cronkite's retirement, making his first broadcast on March 9, 1981. Rather had a significantly different style of reporting the news. In contrast to the avuncular Cronkite, who ended his newscast with “That's the way it is,” Rather searched to find a broadcast ending more suitable to his tastes. For one week in September 1986, with CBS the target of potentially hostile new ownership, Rather tried ending his broadcasts with the word "courage," and was roundly ridiculed for it. For nearly two decades, Rather ended the show with: “That's part of our world tonight.” Rather also held other positions during his time as anchor. In January 1988, he became host of the newly created 48 Hours, and in January 1999, Rather joined the new 60 Minutes II as a correspondent. Ratings for the Evening News with Rather at the helm fluctuated wildly, at a time when more alternatives to TV news were developing. After a dip to second place, Rather regained the top spot in 1985 until 1989, when he ceded the ratings peak to rival Peter Jennings at ABC's World News Tonight. By 1992, however, the Evening News had fallen to third place of the three major networks. It rose in rankings in 2005, when Bob Schieffer became the interim anchor between Rather and Katie Couric. It briefly moved ahead of ABC World News Tonight in the wake of the death of Peter Jennings, but remained behind NBC Nightly News. Rather was a frequent collaborator with CBS News producer Susan Zirinsky, a leading member of the news division's staff. In 1987, new CBS owner Laurence Tisch oversaw layoffs of hundreds of CBS News employees, in a major shake-up of the network. Among those to go were correspondents such as David Andelman, Fred Graham, Morton Dean, and Ike Pappas. Fewer videotape crews were dispatched to cover stories, and numerous bureaus were closed. Critics cited the cutbacks as a major factor in CBS News' fall into third place in the ratings. For a short time from 1993 to 1995, Rather co-anchored the evening news with Connie Chung. Chung had been a Washington, DC correspondent for CBS News, and anchored short news updates on the West Coast. On joining the CBS Evening News, she reported "pop news" stories. In one widely cited case, she aggressively pursued Tonya Harding, who was accused of a plot to injure fellow Olympic ice skater Nancy Kerrigan. After Chung left the network, Rather went back to doing the newscast alone. By the 2005–06 season, the end of Rather's time as anchor, CBS Evening News lagged behind NBC Nightly News and ABC World News Tonight in the ratings. But it still drew approximately 5.5 million viewers a night. Criticism of Rather reached a fever pitch after 60 Minutes II ran his 2004 report about President Bush's military record. Numerous critics questioned the authenticity of the documents upon which the report was based. Rather subsequently admitted on the air that the documents' authenticity could not be proven. In the aftermath, CBS fired several members of CBS News staff but temporarily retained Rather, until his contract was up for renewal the following year, whereupon he was completely ousted. Journalistic history and influence Nixon During Richard Nixon's presidency, critics accused Rather of biased coverage against him. At a Houston news conference in March 1974, Nixon fielded a question from Rather, still CBS's White House correspondent, who said, “Thank you, Mr. President. Dan Rather, of CBS News.” The room filled with jeers and applause, prompting Nixon to joke, “Are you running for something?” Rather replied, “No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?” He questioned whether Nixon was cooperating with the grand jury investigation and House Judiciary Committee in relation to the Watergate scandal. NBC's Tom Brokaw has said the network considered hiring him to replace Rather as its White House correspondent, but dropped it after word was leaked to the press. Rather was believed to have provided tough coverage of the Watergate scandal, raising his profile. Space Shuttle Challenger disaster In January 1986, NASA faced repeated delays in the preparations to launch the Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger in close sequence. Rather described the January 10 delay of Columbia as: “star-crossed space shuttle Columbia stood ready for launch again today, and once more, the launch was scrubbed. Heavy rain was the cause this time. The launch has been postponed so often since its original date, December 18, that it's now known as mission impossible.”This was considered an example of the "biting sarcasm" the media used related to NASA's scheduling. Columbia launched on January 12. On January 27, Rather's reporting of the expected Challenger launch began as follows: On January 28, Challenger'''s explosion and destruction occurred 73 seconds after launch. Afghanistan, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush During the Soviet–Afghan War, Rather was filmed reporting near the front lines while wearing a traditional mujahideen headdress and garments. Rather attracted an Evening News audience (and was nicknamed "Gunga Dan"). The American comic strip Doonesbury spoofed his actions. Rather's reports were later revealed to have been influential to Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-Texas), who led an effort to help the struggling mujahideen. The CIA developed its largest covert operation to supply aid and advanced arms to the mujahideen. The Soviets eventually quit Afghanistan. Rather gained the anchor spot on the Evening News. He was competing with Roger Mudd, a more senior correspondent and a frequent substitute anchor for Walter Cronkite on Evening News. Mudd had also anchored the Sunday evening broadcast, but Rather traveled through Afghanistan when news led there. A few years into his service as anchor, Rather began wearing sweaters beneath his suit jacket to soften his on-air appearance for viewers. During the 1980s, Rather gained further renown for his forceful and skeptical reporting on the Iran–Contra affair. He eventually confronted Vice President George H. W. Bush in an on-air interview during the latter's presidential campaign. Bush referred to Rather's "dead air incident" saying: “I want to talk about why I want to be President, why those 41 percent of the people are supporting me. And I don't think it's fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?”Rather ignored Bush's comment. Shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Rather secured an interview with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. On February 24, 2003, Rather conducted another interview with Hussein before the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the interview, Hussein invited Rather to be the moderator of a live television debate between him and George W. Bush. The debate never took place. The Wall Within On June 2, 1988, Rather hosted a CBS News special, The Wall Within. In it, he interviewed six veterans, each of whom said he had witnessed horrible acts in Vietnam. Two of the men said that they had killed civilians, and two others said that they had seen friends die. Each talked about the effects the war had upon their lives—including depression, unemployment, drug use, and homelessness. In 2004, National Review ran an article by Anne Morse entitled "The First Rathergate." She said that almost nothing claimed by participants in The Wall Within was true. Citing the self-published book Stolen Valor (1998) by veteran B. G. Burkett, and investigative journalist Glenna Whitley, Morse said that military records revealed that the six former servicemen had lied about their experiences. Only one served in combat, and two had never been in Vietnam. Killian documents On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly or almost exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Chicago Sun-Times. Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents—former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett—had misled the network about how he had obtained them. On September 20, 2004, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, “If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.” The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate." Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes, and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting, “Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day.” Departure from the CBS Evening News Rather retired as the anchorman and Managing Editor of the CBS Evening News in 2005; his last broadcast was Wednesday, March 9, 2005. He had worked as the anchorman for 24 full years, the longest tenure of anyone in American television history, and for a short time, continued to work as a correspondent for 60 Minutes. Bob Schieffer, a fellow Texan and host of Face the Nation, took over Rather's position on an interim basis, with Katie Couric replacing Schieffer in 2006. Since retiring, Rather has spoken out about what he perceives as a lack of courage by American journalists. On January 24, 2006, Rather spoke to a Seattle audience. Before the speaking engagement, he told a newspaper reporter, “In many ways on many days, [reporters] have sort of adopted the attitude of 'go along, get along.'” “What many of us need is a spine transplant,” Rather added. “Whether it's City Hall, the State House, or the White House, part of our job is to speak truth to power.” Ousted from CBS News In June 2006, reports surfaced that CBS News would most likely not renew Dan Rather's contract. According to a Washington Post article, sources from CBS said that executives at the network decided "there is no future role for Rather." On June 20, 2006, CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus announced that Rather would leave the network after 44 years. Rather issued a separate statement which accompanied the news of the departure: Lawsuit over ouster from CBS Network On September 19, 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS, its former parent company Viacom; CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves; Sumner Redstone, chairman of both Viacom and CBS; and Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. A CBS spokesman claimed that the lawsuit was "old news" and "without merit." On September 21, 2009, Rather's lawyers claimed that Bush's military service would be proven to be a sham, and Rather would be vindicated. On September 29, 2009, a New York state appeals court dismissed Rather's lawsuit against CBS. On January 12, 2010, New York's top court refused to reinstate Rather's $70 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against CBS Corp. In his book titled Rather Outspoken, Rather claims that the lawsuit “took a big whack out of my time, my psyche and my bank balance, but even so, it was worth it.” On May 18, 2012, Rather appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher, and claimed he had been fired for reporting a story about George W. Bush's year of absence from the reserve unit he served with, and that the news corporations had been "very uncomfortable" with running the story. Post-CBS career Following his departure from CBS, Dan Rather joined Mark Cuban's cable network AXS TV (then called HDNet) to host and produce the weekly one-hour news show Dan Rather Reports from 2006 until 2013. Since 2013, Rather has hosted and produced the hour-long series The Big Interview with Dan Rather on AXS TV, where he sits down for in-depth interviews with influential figures in music and entertainment, such as: John Fogerty, Quentin Tarantino, Simon Cowell, Aaron Sorkin, and Sammy Hagar. He has also produced several documentary specials for the network under the banner Dan Rather Presents, including specials about "America's Mental Health Crisis," the United States Secret Service, and "The Shameful Side of International Adoption." Rather also appears frequently on a number of news shows, including MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and on CNN. He has also written for The Huffington Post and Mashable. On May 28, 2007, Rather compared historical events to events in the Star Wars films in the History Channel special titled Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed. In 2012, Rather published an autobiography titled Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News. In 2015, Rather launched an independent production company called News and Guts Media, through which he produces The Big Interview among other projects. In 2015, Rather also began actively posting on Facebook. He credits young staffers at News and Guts Media with pushing him to try social media. While his posts were considerably longer than typical social media posts, they resonated with the audience, which soon grew to more than two million followers. Even late night TV noticed Rather's unusual but effective Facebook presence. Subject matter has covered a range of topics, including: current political events, journalism, and childhood memories. On September 23, 2016, SiriusXM Radio announced a new hour-long weekly program, "Dan Rather's America," airing Tuesday mornings at 10am Eastern on Radio Andy channel 102, debuting on September 27. In the fall of 2017, the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas completed a digital humanities project dedicated to the long career of the journalist that was titled Dan Rather: American Journalist. The culmination of three years of research conducted at the Briscoe Center, the site uses materials from a dozen archives and libraries, and draws from over 25 of the Briscoe Center for American History's news media and photojournalism collections. The website features over 2,000 digitized documents, 300 excerpts from twelve oral history interviews, and 1000 video clips, enabling visitors to dive deep into the history of the last 60 years through the lens of Dan Rather's career. On January 21, 2018, it was announced that Rather would be launching a weekly 30-minute newscast on The Young Turks. Titled The News with Dan Rather, it airs on Mondays at 5:30pm Eastern Time. Personal life Rather married Jean Goebel in 1957. They have a son and daughter, and maintain homes in New York City and Austin, Texas. Their daughter Robin is an environmentalist and community activist in Austin, Texas. Their son Dan is an assistant district attorney in the District Attorney's office in Manhattan, New York. Sam Houston State University renamed its mass communications building after Rather in 1994. The building houses The Houstonian and KSHU, the student-run radio and television stations. In May 2007, Rather received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Siena College in Loudonville, New York, for his lifetime contributions to journalism. A columnist whose work is distributed by King Features Syndicate, Rather continues to speak out against alleged influence in journalism by corporations and governments. At a 2008 conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sponsored by the group Free Press, Rather criticized both local and national news organizations, stating—according to reports—that there is no longer incentive to do “good and valuable news.” Books The Palace Guard, with Gary Paul Gates, 1974. . The Camera Never Blinks: Adventures of a TV Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1977. . I Remember, with Peter Wyden, 1991. . The Camera Never Blinks Twice: The Further Adventures of a Television Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1994. . , 1999. . "The American Dream: Stories from the Heart of Our Nation", 2001. . , with Digby Diehl, 2013. . What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism, with Elliot Kirschner, 2017. .What Unites Us: The Graphic Novel, with Elliot Kirschner, illustrated by Tim Foley, 2021. . Awards He has received numerous Emmy Awards, several Peabody Awards, and various honorary degrees from universities. In addition to these awards, Rather was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2001, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. Criticism As one of the last broadcast news journalists from the era of the "Big Three" network news primacy, Rather was generally regarded highly within his profession by long-serving journalists. Rather has been accused of having a liberal bias."Dan Rather: a pioneer and a lightning rod" at The Christian Science Monitor. Claims of bias Rather's on-screen comments and election-night reporting have come under attack dating back to Richard Nixon's presidency. In a June 2002 interview with Larry King, his long-time co-worker (and self-described liberal), Andy Rooney stated that Rather is “transparently liberal.” During the weeks following the Killian documents stories, Rather received widespread criticism from other journalists and historians. In an interview with commentator Bill Maher, Rather accused Fox News Channel of receiving "talking points" from the Republican-controlled White House. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, who had defended Rather during the Killian documents incident, criticized Rather for not offering any evidence to support the claim. In 2002, Bernard Goldberg published a book with the title Bias, alleging a liberal bias in print and broadcast news organizations. In the book, Goldberg used Dan Rather as a primary example of a news anchorman with a liberal bias. He also criticized the anchor for his criticisms of President George W. Bush's and Vice President Dan Quayle's service in the National Guard, rather than the Active Duty military during the Vietnam War, and questioned Rather's own service. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has accused Rather of having "an unwillingness to challenge official power and policy" in his reporting. Investigative reporter Mark Hertsgaard characterized Rather as a "stern anti-Communist" during the Reagan administration, for allegedly having "reported the pronouncements of public officials with considerable respect." In April 2001, according to a front-page story in The Washington Post, Rather spoke at a Democratic party fundraiser in Austin, Texas, where he was the featured speaker. One of the official hosts for the fundraiser was Rather's daughter, Robin Rather; Rather said that he did not realize that his daughter was a host of the fundraiser. Rather also said that he did not realize that the event was a partisan fundraiser, although he did realize that after he arrived at the event. From Walter Cronkite During an appearance on CNN's American Morning in 2005, former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite said about Rather: “It surprised quite a few people at CBS and elsewhere that, without being able to pull up the ratings beyond third in a three-man field, that they tolerated his being there for so long.” Cronkite also said that he would like to have seen Bob Schieffer in Rather's position sooner. From Dallas CBS news director Eddie Barker In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination while Rather was a Dallas reporter, he interviewed a minister, who said some local schoolchildren had cheered upon learning of the President's shooting. The Associated Press later confirmed the story. A teacher at the school backed up the Rather story, confirming that some students at the school had cheered at the principal's news about Kennedy. Eddie Barker, local Dallas-area news director for CBS, said that Rather had in fact been aware that the children were merely happy about being sent home early, and they had not been given a reason for early school closure (Barker's children attended the school, as he informed Rather). He stated that Rather had deliberately misrepresented the facts by indicating that the children were happy about the shooting. Barker attempted to fire Rather, but was overruled by the national CBS News management. Incidents and controversies 1968 Democratic convention During live coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Rather attempted to interview a delegate from Georgia who appeared as though he was being forcibly removed by men without identification badges. As Rather approached the delegate to question the apparent strong-arm tactics of the Chicago political machine under Mayor Daley, he was punched in the stomach by one of the men, knocking him to the ground. “He lifted me right off the floor and put me away. I was down, the breath knocked out of me, as the whole group blew on by me ... In the CBS control room, they had switched the camera onto me just as I was slugged.” Walter Cronkite, after being told by Rather what happened, added on-air, "I think we got a bunch of thugs here Dan!" Chicago cab ride On November 10, 1980, Rather landed at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and got into a cab. He asked the cab driver to take him to the home of writer Studs Terkel, whom he was interviewing for 60 Minutes. A police spokesman said that the cab driver refused to go to the address and instead "wildly drove through the city streets," with Rather shouting out the window asking for help. The driver was charged with disorderly conduct. Rather called the incident “a rather minor thing.” By the time the case was about to come to trial, he was about to add anchoring the CBS Evening News to his 60 Minutes role at CBS News. Rather declined to press charges, citing a "mounting schedule of reporting assignments." Galloway lawsuit In 1980, Rather and CBS were taken to court when Carl Galloway, a California doctor, claimed that a report on 60 Minutes wrongfully implicated him in an insurance fraud scheme. CBS stated Galloway had signed the bogus report, and was suing Rather because he was upset at being caught. The jury sided with CBS and Rather, and they won the case. During the trial, Galloway's side used outtakes from the TV report showing that one interview was rehearsed. "Courage" For one week in September 1986, Rather signed off his broadcasts to CBS with the word "courage." He said that it was just a signature line, and had nothing to do with the news at the time. Other newscasters ridiculed and parodied Rather, and he dropped it. "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said “I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea.” Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who came to Rather's aid fully confirmed his version of events. The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. The opening track of the 1987 album Lolita Nation by California power pop group Game Theory is titled "Kenneth, What's the Frequency?" In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman. In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12.5-to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010. Dead air On September 11, 1987, Rather walked off the set in anger just before a remote Evening News broadcast from Miami, where Pope John Paul II had begun a rare U.S. tour, when a U.S. Open tennis match was being broadcast into the time scheduled for the newscast. He was upset that the news was being cut into to make room for sports and discussed it with the sports department, and made it clear that if the newscast did not start on time, then CBS Sports should fill the half hour. The Steffi Graf–Lori McNeil tennis match coverage then ended sooner than expected at 6:32 p.m., but Rather had disappeared. (CBS Sports had finally agreed to break away immediately after the match without commentary.) Thus, over 100 affiliates were forced to broadcast six minutes of dead air. Some stations were forced to air a slot of syndicated programming such as a rerun of a game show or a sitcom, and other stations were forced to pull out a technical difficulty telop graphic. Phil Jones, the chairman of the CBS affiliation board and general manager of Kansas City's KCTV (which the station placed a technical difficulty graphic during dead air) wanted an apology from Rather. Meanwhile in Miami, the city's CBS affiliate WTVJ was forced to drop the episode entirely, which ended up airing a syndicated rerun of a game show to fill the station's schedule. The next day, Rather apologized for leaving the anchor desk. The following year, when Rather asked then Vice President Bush about his role in the Iran–Contra affair during a live interview, Bush responded by saying, “Dan, how would you like it if I judged your entire career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?” Roger Ailes had a “mole” at CBS, who alerted him that the goal was to “take Bush out of the race” with a tough interview on Iran-Contra. Ailes alerted Bush on the cab ride over, and fed him the seven minutes retort. The aftermath of the interview showed the episode was a boost for Bush. “The vice president's poll ratings in Iowa and New Hampshire bumped visibly upward.” "Ratherisms" Rather is known for his many colorful analogies and descriptions during live broadcasts. Similar to those used by baseball announcer Red Barber, cycling commentator Phil Liggett, and Formula 1 commentator Murray Walker, these "Ratherisms" are also called "Texanisms" or "Danisms" by some. A few of the more colorful ones, several of which were used throughout the 2008 HBO made-for-TV movie Recount about the 2000 Election, include: “This race is shakier than cafeteria Jell-O.” “This thing is as tight as the rusted lugnuts on a '55 Ford.” His characterization of the Republican Party's assessment of President Obama: “[He] couldn't sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.” In popular culture Rather has been referenced in the television shows Saturday Night Live and Family Guy and many films. An animated caricature of him made a cameo appearance in the JibJab political cartoon, Good to Be in D.C. In 1971, he had a cameo in an episode of the number one hit comedy series All in the Family. Entitled The Man in the Street, series star Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker character excitedly awaits the viewing of a videotaped interview he gave earlier that day for the CBS Evening News. At the last minute, to his dismay, the segment is preempted by the telecast of a Richard Nixon presidential address from the Oval Office. Rather appears, as himself, delivering post-speech analysis from actual news footage. Jean Stapleton, as Archie's scatterbrained wife Edith Bunker, says of Rather how he's there to "...tell us what Mr. Nixon just said." In 2004, he was featured in the documentary film Barbecue: A Texas Love Story by Austin-based director Chris Elley. Two years later, Rather and Elley educated a group of New Yorkers in Madison Square Park about the true meaning of BBQ, and its significance to the identity of the Lone Star State. In the 2006–07 graphic novel Shooting War, which is set in the year 2011, an 80-year-old Dan Rather is shown to be one of the last journalists still reporting from Iraq. He had a cameo in the premiere of the Fall 2007 drama Dirty Sexy Money on ABC television. He guest-starred as himself in The Simpsons episode, "E Pluribus Wiggum." Rather appeared on The Daily Show in May 2009, wearing an Afro wig and mutton-chop sideburns to narrate a segment about the late former President Nixon eating a burrito, as a parody of MSNBC's extensive coverage of President Obama and Vice President Biden's hamburger lunch. He appears in the 2008 award-winning documentary Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story. A skit on the 38th season of Sesame Street featured Anderson Cooper interviewing two grouches, "Walter Cranky" and "Dan Rather Not," who, when asked to answer questions, demurred with the phrase "I'd rather not." Robert Redford portrayed Rather in the 2015 film Truth. Rather appeared in the docudrama Facing Saddam providing his views on Saddam Hussein. Ratings Under Rather's predecessor, Walter Cronkite, the CBS Evening News was a strong #1 in the ratings, which Rather maintained through much of the 1980s. However, Tom Brokaw and his NBC Nightly News, and Peter Jennings of ABC News' World News Tonight, increasing in popularity, eventually cut deep into the Rather broadcast's numbers. See also New Yorkers in journalism References Further reading Dan Rather & Elliot Kirschner (2017). What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. Rather, Dan. The Palace Guard, with Gary Gates Rather, Dan. I Remember, with Peter Wyden. Rather, Dan with Herskowitz, Mickey. The Camera Never Blinks Twice''. 1995. William Morrow. 2nd Saddam interview External links AXS TV The Big Interview Dan Rather: American Journalist (Briscoe Center for American History) Members of the Council on Foreign Relations 1931 births Living people American television reporters and correspondents American war correspondents American war correspondents of the Vietnam War CBS News people Emmy Award winners Peabody Award winners 60 Minutes correspondents Associated Press reporters Houston Chronicle people Television anchors from Houston Journalists from Houston Killian documents controversy People from Wharton, Texas Sam Houston State University alumni Writers from Texas American victims of crime Texas Democrats The Young Turks people American male journalists 20th-century American journalists 21st-century American journalists Journalists from New York City People from Huntsville, Texas Recipients of the Four Freedoms Award Military personnel from Texas

C_7f5b7fac03f240eba4b0cf53ca659b83_1

What was in the files?

What was in the files linked to the Killian documents?

Dan Rather

On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Chicago Sun-Times. Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents - former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett - had misled the network about how he had obtained them. On September 20, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, "If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question." The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate." Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting "Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day." CANNOTANSWER

memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service

Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. (; born October 31, 1931) is an American journalist and former national evening news anchor. Rather began his career in Texas, becoming a national name after his reporting saved thousands of lives during Hurricane Carla in September 1961. Rather spontaneously created the first radar weather report by overlaying a transparent map over a radar image of Hurricane Carla. In his first national broadcast, he helped initiate the successful evacuation of 350,000 people. Rather reported from Dallas in November 1963 at the time that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Based on his reporting, he was promoted at CBS News, where he served as White House correspondent beginning in 1964. He served as foreign correspondent in London and Vietnam over the next two years before returning to the White House correspondent position. He covered the presidency of Richard Nixon, including Nixon's trip to China, the Watergate scandal, and the president's resignation. In 1981, Rather was promoted to news anchor for the CBS Evening News, a role he occupied for 24 years. Along with Peter Jennings at ABC News and Tom Brokaw at NBC News, he was one of the "Big Three" nightly news anchors in the U.S. from the 1980s through the early 2000s. He frequently contributed to CBS's weekly news magazine, 60 Minutes. Rather left the anchor desk in 2005 following the Killian documents controversy, in which he presented unauthenticated documents in a news report on President George W. Bush's Vietnam War–era service in the National Guard. He continued to work with CBS until 2006, when he was abruptly fired. In September 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former parent company Viacom. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. An intermediate New York state appeals court dismissed the lawsuit in September 2009, and the New York Court of Appeals refused to reinstate it in January 2010. On the cable channel AXS TV (then called HDNet), Rather hosted Dan Rather Reports, a 60 Minutes–style investigative news program, from 2006 to 2013. He also hosts several other projects for AXS TV, including Dan Rather Presents, which provides in-depth reporting on broad topics such as mental health care or adoption, and The Big Interview with Dan Rather, in which he conducts long-form interviews with musicians and other entertainers. In January 2018, he began hosting an online newscast called The News with Dan Rather on The Young Turks' YouTube channel. Early life Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. was born on October 31, 1931, in Wharton County, Texas, the son of Daniel Irvin Rather Sr., a ditch digger and pipe layer, and the former Byrl Veda Page. The Rathers moved to Houston when he was a child, where Dan attended Lovett Elementary School and Hamilton Middle School. He graduated in 1950 from John H. Reagan High School in Houston. In 1953, Rather earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas, where he was editor of the school newspaper, The Houstonian. He was also a member of the Caballeros, the founding organization of the Epsilon Psi chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity. While in college, Rather worked for KSAM-FM radio in Huntsville, calling junior high, high school, and Sam Houston State football games. After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Rather briefly attended South Texas College of Law in Houston. In January 1954, Rather enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and was sent to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego. He was soon discharged, however, because he was found to have had rheumatic fever as a child, a fact he had omitted during the enlistment process. Early career Rather began his journalism career in 1950 as an Associated Press reporter in Huntsville, Texas. Later, he was a reporter for United Press (1950–1952), several Texas radio stations, and the Houston Chronicle (1954–1955). Around 1955, Rather wrote a piece on heroin. Under the auspices of the Houston Police, he tried a dose of the drug, which he characterized as "a special kind of hell." He worked for four seasons as the play-by-play announcer for the University of Houston football team. During the 1959 minor league baseball season, Rather was the play-by-play radio announcer for the Texas League Houston Buffs. In 1959, Rather began his television career as a reporter for KTRK-TV, the ABC affiliate in Houston. He was subsequently promoted to the director of news for KHOU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Houston. In September 1961, Rather covered Hurricane Carla for KHOU-TV, broadcasting from the then National Weather Center in Galveston. He is noted for showing the first radar image of a hurricane on TV. He conceived of overlaying a transparent map over the radar screen, in order to show the size of Hurricane Carla to the audience. Convinced of the threat, more than 350,000 people evacuated from the area, the largest known evacuation to that time. Their actions are believed to have saved thousands of lives compared to the previous hurricane, which had killed 6,000 to 12,000 people. Rather's live coverage of Carla was broadcast by New York and national stations. Ray Miller, news director of KPRC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Houston, also mentored Rather in the early years. On February 28, 1962, Rather left Houston for New York City for a six-month trial initiation at CBS. Rather did not fit in easily on the East Coast. His first reports for CBS included coverage of the crash of American Airlines Flight 1 in Jamaica Bay, and a report on the suffocation of children at a hospital in Binghamton, New York. Shortly after, Rather was made chief of CBS's Southwest bureau in Dallas. In August 1963, he was appointed chief of the Southern bureau in New Orleans, responsible for coverage of news events in the South, Southwest, Mexico and Central America. CBS News JFK assassination to Watergate In his autobiography, Rather noted that he was in Dallas in November 1963 to return film from an interview in Uvalde at the ranch of former Vice President John Nance Garner, who celebrated his 95th birthday on November 22. He happened to be "on the other side of the railroad tracks, beyond the triple underpass, thirty yards from a grassy knoll that would later figure in so many conspiracy theories." His job was to fetch a film drop from a camera truck at that location, and take it to the station for editing. He did not witness the shooting of Kennedy, and knew nothing of the events until he reached KRLD, having run through Dealey Plaza. He later wrote: “The moment I cleared the railroad tracks I saw a scene I will never forget. Some people were lying on the grass, some screaming, some running, some pointing. Policemen swarmed everywhere and distinctly above the din, I heard one shout, 'DON'T ANYBODY PANIC.' And of course, there was nothing but panic wherever you looked.” In his autobiography, Rather said he was one of the first to view the Zapruder film showing the assassination, and the first to describe it on television. Rather reported the fatal headshot as forcing Kennedy's head forward, but it was thrown backward. Later, he reported that some Dallas schoolchildren had applauded when they were notified of the president's death. Administrators said they had announced that school was to be dismissed early, and did not mention the assassination. However, teacher Joanna Morgan confirmed that students had cheered at the news that Kennedy was shot. This story infuriated local journalists at then-CBS affiliate KRLD-TV (now Fox-owned-and-operated KDFW-TV). Rather's reporting during the national mourning period following the Kennedy assassination and subsequent events impressed CBS News management. In 1964, they selected him for the network's White House correspondent position. In 1965, Rather served as a foreign correspondent for CBS in London, and in 1966 in Vietnam. He served again as White House correspondent during the presidency of Richard Nixon. In 1970, he was also assigned as anchor for the CBS Sunday Night News (1970–73; 1974–75), and later for the CBS Saturday Evening News (1973–76). Rather was among those journalists who accompanied Nixon to China. He later covered the Watergate investigation, as well as the impeachment proceedings against Nixon in Congress. CBS Evening News anchor After President Nixon's resignation in 1974, Rather became chief correspondent for the documentary series CBS Reports. In December 1975, he became a correspondent of the long-running Sunday night news show 60 Minutes—at the time the program was moved from a Sunday afternoon time-slot to primetime. Success there helped Rather pull ahead of longtime correspondent Roger Mudd, who was in line to succeed Walter Cronkite as anchor and Managing Editor of The CBS Evening News. Rather succeeded to the news anchor position after Cronkite's retirement, making his first broadcast on March 9, 1981. Rather had a significantly different style of reporting the news. In contrast to the avuncular Cronkite, who ended his newscast with “That's the way it is,” Rather searched to find a broadcast ending more suitable to his tastes. For one week in September 1986, with CBS the target of potentially hostile new ownership, Rather tried ending his broadcasts with the word "courage," and was roundly ridiculed for it. For nearly two decades, Rather ended the show with: “That's part of our world tonight.” Rather also held other positions during his time as anchor. In January 1988, he became host of the newly created 48 Hours, and in January 1999, Rather joined the new 60 Minutes II as a correspondent. Ratings for the Evening News with Rather at the helm fluctuated wildly, at a time when more alternatives to TV news were developing. After a dip to second place, Rather regained the top spot in 1985 until 1989, when he ceded the ratings peak to rival Peter Jennings at ABC's World News Tonight. By 1992, however, the Evening News had fallen to third place of the three major networks. It rose in rankings in 2005, when Bob Schieffer became the interim anchor between Rather and Katie Couric. It briefly moved ahead of ABC World News Tonight in the wake of the death of Peter Jennings, but remained behind NBC Nightly News. Rather was a frequent collaborator with CBS News producer Susan Zirinsky, a leading member of the news division's staff. In 1987, new CBS owner Laurence Tisch oversaw layoffs of hundreds of CBS News employees, in a major shake-up of the network. Among those to go were correspondents such as David Andelman, Fred Graham, Morton Dean, and Ike Pappas. Fewer videotape crews were dispatched to cover stories, and numerous bureaus were closed. Critics cited the cutbacks as a major factor in CBS News' fall into third place in the ratings. For a short time from 1993 to 1995, Rather co-anchored the evening news with Connie Chung. Chung had been a Washington, DC correspondent for CBS News, and anchored short news updates on the West Coast. On joining the CBS Evening News, she reported "pop news" stories. In one widely cited case, she aggressively pursued Tonya Harding, who was accused of a plot to injure fellow Olympic ice skater Nancy Kerrigan. After Chung left the network, Rather went back to doing the newscast alone. By the 2005–06 season, the end of Rather's time as anchor, CBS Evening News lagged behind NBC Nightly News and ABC World News Tonight in the ratings. But it still drew approximately 5.5 million viewers a night. Criticism of Rather reached a fever pitch after 60 Minutes II ran his 2004 report about President Bush's military record. Numerous critics questioned the authenticity of the documents upon which the report was based. Rather subsequently admitted on the air that the documents' authenticity could not be proven. In the aftermath, CBS fired several members of CBS News staff but temporarily retained Rather, until his contract was up for renewal the following year, whereupon he was completely ousted. Journalistic history and influence Nixon During Richard Nixon's presidency, critics accused Rather of biased coverage against him. At a Houston news conference in March 1974, Nixon fielded a question from Rather, still CBS's White House correspondent, who said, “Thank you, Mr. President. Dan Rather, of CBS News.” The room filled with jeers and applause, prompting Nixon to joke, “Are you running for something?” Rather replied, “No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?” He questioned whether Nixon was cooperating with the grand jury investigation and House Judiciary Committee in relation to the Watergate scandal. NBC's Tom Brokaw has said the network considered hiring him to replace Rather as its White House correspondent, but dropped it after word was leaked to the press. Rather was believed to have provided tough coverage of the Watergate scandal, raising his profile. Space Shuttle Challenger disaster In January 1986, NASA faced repeated delays in the preparations to launch the Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger in close sequence. Rather described the January 10 delay of Columbia as: “star-crossed space shuttle Columbia stood ready for launch again today, and once more, the launch was scrubbed. Heavy rain was the cause this time. The launch has been postponed so often since its original date, December 18, that it's now known as mission impossible.”This was considered an example of the "biting sarcasm" the media used related to NASA's scheduling. Columbia launched on January 12. On January 27, Rather's reporting of the expected Challenger launch began as follows: On January 28, Challenger'''s explosion and destruction occurred 73 seconds after launch. Afghanistan, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush During the Soviet–Afghan War, Rather was filmed reporting near the front lines while wearing a traditional mujahideen headdress and garments. Rather attracted an Evening News audience (and was nicknamed "Gunga Dan"). The American comic strip Doonesbury spoofed his actions. Rather's reports were later revealed to have been influential to Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-Texas), who led an effort to help the struggling mujahideen. The CIA developed its largest covert operation to supply aid and advanced arms to the mujahideen. The Soviets eventually quit Afghanistan. Rather gained the anchor spot on the Evening News. He was competing with Roger Mudd, a more senior correspondent and a frequent substitute anchor for Walter Cronkite on Evening News. Mudd had also anchored the Sunday evening broadcast, but Rather traveled through Afghanistan when news led there. A few years into his service as anchor, Rather began wearing sweaters beneath his suit jacket to soften his on-air appearance for viewers. During the 1980s, Rather gained further renown for his forceful and skeptical reporting on the Iran–Contra affair. He eventually confronted Vice President George H. W. Bush in an on-air interview during the latter's presidential campaign. Bush referred to Rather's "dead air incident" saying: “I want to talk about why I want to be President, why those 41 percent of the people are supporting me. And I don't think it's fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?”Rather ignored Bush's comment. Shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Rather secured an interview with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. On February 24, 2003, Rather conducted another interview with Hussein before the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the interview, Hussein invited Rather to be the moderator of a live television debate between him and George W. Bush. The debate never took place. The Wall Within On June 2, 1988, Rather hosted a CBS News special, The Wall Within. In it, he interviewed six veterans, each of whom said he had witnessed horrible acts in Vietnam. Two of the men said that they had killed civilians, and two others said that they had seen friends die. Each talked about the effects the war had upon their lives—including depression, unemployment, drug use, and homelessness. In 2004, National Review ran an article by Anne Morse entitled "The First Rathergate." She said that almost nothing claimed by participants in The Wall Within was true. Citing the self-published book Stolen Valor (1998) by veteran B. G. Burkett, and investigative journalist Glenna Whitley, Morse said that military records revealed that the six former servicemen had lied about their experiences. Only one served in combat, and two had never been in Vietnam. Killian documents On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly or almost exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Chicago Sun-Times. Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents—former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett—had misled the network about how he had obtained them. On September 20, 2004, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, “If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.” The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate." Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes, and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting, “Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day.” Departure from the CBS Evening News Rather retired as the anchorman and Managing Editor of the CBS Evening News in 2005; his last broadcast was Wednesday, March 9, 2005. He had worked as the anchorman for 24 full years, the longest tenure of anyone in American television history, and for a short time, continued to work as a correspondent for 60 Minutes. Bob Schieffer, a fellow Texan and host of Face the Nation, took over Rather's position on an interim basis, with Katie Couric replacing Schieffer in 2006. Since retiring, Rather has spoken out about what he perceives as a lack of courage by American journalists. On January 24, 2006, Rather spoke to a Seattle audience. Before the speaking engagement, he told a newspaper reporter, “In many ways on many days, [reporters] have sort of adopted the attitude of 'go along, get along.'” “What many of us need is a spine transplant,” Rather added. “Whether it's City Hall, the State House, or the White House, part of our job is to speak truth to power.” Ousted from CBS News In June 2006, reports surfaced that CBS News would most likely not renew Dan Rather's contract. According to a Washington Post article, sources from CBS said that executives at the network decided "there is no future role for Rather." On June 20, 2006, CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus announced that Rather would leave the network after 44 years. Rather issued a separate statement which accompanied the news of the departure: Lawsuit over ouster from CBS Network On September 19, 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS, its former parent company Viacom; CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves; Sumner Redstone, chairman of both Viacom and CBS; and Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. A CBS spokesman claimed that the lawsuit was "old news" and "without merit." On September 21, 2009, Rather's lawyers claimed that Bush's military service would be proven to be a sham, and Rather would be vindicated. On September 29, 2009, a New York state appeals court dismissed Rather's lawsuit against CBS. On January 12, 2010, New York's top court refused to reinstate Rather's $70 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against CBS Corp. In his book titled Rather Outspoken, Rather claims that the lawsuit “took a big whack out of my time, my psyche and my bank balance, but even so, it was worth it.” On May 18, 2012, Rather appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher, and claimed he had been fired for reporting a story about George W. Bush's year of absence from the reserve unit he served with, and that the news corporations had been "very uncomfortable" with running the story. Post-CBS career Following his departure from CBS, Dan Rather joined Mark Cuban's cable network AXS TV (then called HDNet) to host and produce the weekly one-hour news show Dan Rather Reports from 2006 until 2013. Since 2013, Rather has hosted and produced the hour-long series The Big Interview with Dan Rather on AXS TV, where he sits down for in-depth interviews with influential figures in music and entertainment, such as: John Fogerty, Quentin Tarantino, Simon Cowell, Aaron Sorkin, and Sammy Hagar. He has also produced several documentary specials for the network under the banner Dan Rather Presents, including specials about "America's Mental Health Crisis," the United States Secret Service, and "The Shameful Side of International Adoption." Rather also appears frequently on a number of news shows, including MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and on CNN. He has also written for The Huffington Post and Mashable. On May 28, 2007, Rather compared historical events to events in the Star Wars films in the History Channel special titled Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed. In 2012, Rather published an autobiography titled Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News. In 2015, Rather launched an independent production company called News and Guts Media, through which he produces The Big Interview among other projects. In 2015, Rather also began actively posting on Facebook. He credits young staffers at News and Guts Media with pushing him to try social media. While his posts were considerably longer than typical social media posts, they resonated with the audience, which soon grew to more than two million followers. Even late night TV noticed Rather's unusual but effective Facebook presence. Subject matter has covered a range of topics, including: current political events, journalism, and childhood memories. On September 23, 2016, SiriusXM Radio announced a new hour-long weekly program, "Dan Rather's America," airing Tuesday mornings at 10am Eastern on Radio Andy channel 102, debuting on September 27. In the fall of 2017, the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas completed a digital humanities project dedicated to the long career of the journalist that was titled Dan Rather: American Journalist. The culmination of three years of research conducted at the Briscoe Center, the site uses materials from a dozen archives and libraries, and draws from over 25 of the Briscoe Center for American History's news media and photojournalism collections. The website features over 2,000 digitized documents, 300 excerpts from twelve oral history interviews, and 1000 video clips, enabling visitors to dive deep into the history of the last 60 years through the lens of Dan Rather's career. On January 21, 2018, it was announced that Rather would be launching a weekly 30-minute newscast on The Young Turks. Titled The News with Dan Rather, it airs on Mondays at 5:30pm Eastern Time. Personal life Rather married Jean Goebel in 1957. They have a son and daughter, and maintain homes in New York City and Austin, Texas. Their daughter Robin is an environmentalist and community activist in Austin, Texas. Their son Dan is an assistant district attorney in the District Attorney's office in Manhattan, New York. Sam Houston State University renamed its mass communications building after Rather in 1994. The building houses The Houstonian and KSHU, the student-run radio and television stations. In May 2007, Rather received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Siena College in Loudonville, New York, for his lifetime contributions to journalism. A columnist whose work is distributed by King Features Syndicate, Rather continues to speak out against alleged influence in journalism by corporations and governments. At a 2008 conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sponsored by the group Free Press, Rather criticized both local and national news organizations, stating—according to reports—that there is no longer incentive to do “good and valuable news.” Books The Palace Guard, with Gary Paul Gates, 1974. . The Camera Never Blinks: Adventures of a TV Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1977. . I Remember, with Peter Wyden, 1991. . The Camera Never Blinks Twice: The Further Adventures of a Television Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1994. . , 1999. . "The American Dream: Stories from the Heart of Our Nation", 2001. . , with Digby Diehl, 2013. . What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism, with Elliot Kirschner, 2017. .What Unites Us: The Graphic Novel, with Elliot Kirschner, illustrated by Tim Foley, 2021. . Awards He has received numerous Emmy Awards, several Peabody Awards, and various honorary degrees from universities. In addition to these awards, Rather was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2001, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. Criticism As one of the last broadcast news journalists from the era of the "Big Three" network news primacy, Rather was generally regarded highly within his profession by long-serving journalists. Rather has been accused of having a liberal bias."Dan Rather: a pioneer and a lightning rod" at The Christian Science Monitor. Claims of bias Rather's on-screen comments and election-night reporting have come under attack dating back to Richard Nixon's presidency. In a June 2002 interview with Larry King, his long-time co-worker (and self-described liberal), Andy Rooney stated that Rather is “transparently liberal.” During the weeks following the Killian documents stories, Rather received widespread criticism from other journalists and historians. In an interview with commentator Bill Maher, Rather accused Fox News Channel of receiving "talking points" from the Republican-controlled White House. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, who had defended Rather during the Killian documents incident, criticized Rather for not offering any evidence to support the claim. In 2002, Bernard Goldberg published a book with the title Bias, alleging a liberal bias in print and broadcast news organizations. In the book, Goldberg used Dan Rather as a primary example of a news anchorman with a liberal bias. He also criticized the anchor for his criticisms of President George W. Bush's and Vice President Dan Quayle's service in the National Guard, rather than the Active Duty military during the Vietnam War, and questioned Rather's own service. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has accused Rather of having "an unwillingness to challenge official power and policy" in his reporting. Investigative reporter Mark Hertsgaard characterized Rather as a "stern anti-Communist" during the Reagan administration, for allegedly having "reported the pronouncements of public officials with considerable respect." In April 2001, according to a front-page story in The Washington Post, Rather spoke at a Democratic party fundraiser in Austin, Texas, where he was the featured speaker. One of the official hosts for the fundraiser was Rather's daughter, Robin Rather; Rather said that he did not realize that his daughter was a host of the fundraiser. Rather also said that he did not realize that the event was a partisan fundraiser, although he did realize that after he arrived at the event. From Walter Cronkite During an appearance on CNN's American Morning in 2005, former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite said about Rather: “It surprised quite a few people at CBS and elsewhere that, without being able to pull up the ratings beyond third in a three-man field, that they tolerated his being there for so long.” Cronkite also said that he would like to have seen Bob Schieffer in Rather's position sooner. From Dallas CBS news director Eddie Barker In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination while Rather was a Dallas reporter, he interviewed a minister, who said some local schoolchildren had cheered upon learning of the President's shooting. The Associated Press later confirmed the story. A teacher at the school backed up the Rather story, confirming that some students at the school had cheered at the principal's news about Kennedy. Eddie Barker, local Dallas-area news director for CBS, said that Rather had in fact been aware that the children were merely happy about being sent home early, and they had not been given a reason for early school closure (Barker's children attended the school, as he informed Rather). He stated that Rather had deliberately misrepresented the facts by indicating that the children were happy about the shooting. Barker attempted to fire Rather, but was overruled by the national CBS News management. Incidents and controversies 1968 Democratic convention During live coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Rather attempted to interview a delegate from Georgia who appeared as though he was being forcibly removed by men without identification badges. As Rather approached the delegate to question the apparent strong-arm tactics of the Chicago political machine under Mayor Daley, he was punched in the stomach by one of the men, knocking him to the ground. “He lifted me right off the floor and put me away. I was down, the breath knocked out of me, as the whole group blew on by me ... In the CBS control room, they had switched the camera onto me just as I was slugged.” Walter Cronkite, after being told by Rather what happened, added on-air, "I think we got a bunch of thugs here Dan!" Chicago cab ride On November 10, 1980, Rather landed at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and got into a cab. He asked the cab driver to take him to the home of writer Studs Terkel, whom he was interviewing for 60 Minutes. A police spokesman said that the cab driver refused to go to the address and instead "wildly drove through the city streets," with Rather shouting out the window asking for help. The driver was charged with disorderly conduct. Rather called the incident “a rather minor thing.” By the time the case was about to come to trial, he was about to add anchoring the CBS Evening News to his 60 Minutes role at CBS News. Rather declined to press charges, citing a "mounting schedule of reporting assignments." Galloway lawsuit In 1980, Rather and CBS were taken to court when Carl Galloway, a California doctor, claimed that a report on 60 Minutes wrongfully implicated him in an insurance fraud scheme. CBS stated Galloway had signed the bogus report, and was suing Rather because he was upset at being caught. The jury sided with CBS and Rather, and they won the case. During the trial, Galloway's side used outtakes from the TV report showing that one interview was rehearsed. "Courage" For one week in September 1986, Rather signed off his broadcasts to CBS with the word "courage." He said that it was just a signature line, and had nothing to do with the news at the time. Other newscasters ridiculed and parodied Rather, and he dropped it. "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said “I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea.” Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who came to Rather's aid fully confirmed his version of events. The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. The opening track of the 1987 album Lolita Nation by California power pop group Game Theory is titled "Kenneth, What's the Frequency?" In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman. In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12.5-to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010. Dead air On September 11, 1987, Rather walked off the set in anger just before a remote Evening News broadcast from Miami, where Pope John Paul II had begun a rare U.S. tour, when a U.S. Open tennis match was being broadcast into the time scheduled for the newscast. He was upset that the news was being cut into to make room for sports and discussed it with the sports department, and made it clear that if the newscast did not start on time, then CBS Sports should fill the half hour. The Steffi Graf–Lori McNeil tennis match coverage then ended sooner than expected at 6:32 p.m., but Rather had disappeared. (CBS Sports had finally agreed to break away immediately after the match without commentary.) Thus, over 100 affiliates were forced to broadcast six minutes of dead air. Some stations were forced to air a slot of syndicated programming such as a rerun of a game show or a sitcom, and other stations were forced to pull out a technical difficulty telop graphic. Phil Jones, the chairman of the CBS affiliation board and general manager of Kansas City's KCTV (which the station placed a technical difficulty graphic during dead air) wanted an apology from Rather. Meanwhile in Miami, the city's CBS affiliate WTVJ was forced to drop the episode entirely, which ended up airing a syndicated rerun of a game show to fill the station's schedule. The next day, Rather apologized for leaving the anchor desk. The following year, when Rather asked then Vice President Bush about his role in the Iran–Contra affair during a live interview, Bush responded by saying, “Dan, how would you like it if I judged your entire career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?” Roger Ailes had a “mole” at CBS, who alerted him that the goal was to “take Bush out of the race” with a tough interview on Iran-Contra. Ailes alerted Bush on the cab ride over, and fed him the seven minutes retort. The aftermath of the interview showed the episode was a boost for Bush. “The vice president's poll ratings in Iowa and New Hampshire bumped visibly upward.” "Ratherisms" Rather is known for his many colorful analogies and descriptions during live broadcasts. Similar to those used by baseball announcer Red Barber, cycling commentator Phil Liggett, and Formula 1 commentator Murray Walker, these "Ratherisms" are also called "Texanisms" or "Danisms" by some. A few of the more colorful ones, several of which were used throughout the 2008 HBO made-for-TV movie Recount about the 2000 Election, include: “This race is shakier than cafeteria Jell-O.” “This thing is as tight as the rusted lugnuts on a '55 Ford.” His characterization of the Republican Party's assessment of President Obama: “[He] couldn't sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.” In popular culture Rather has been referenced in the television shows Saturday Night Live and Family Guy and many films. An animated caricature of him made a cameo appearance in the JibJab political cartoon, Good to Be in D.C. In 1971, he had a cameo in an episode of the number one hit comedy series All in the Family. Entitled The Man in the Street, series star Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker character excitedly awaits the viewing of a videotaped interview he gave earlier that day for the CBS Evening News. At the last minute, to his dismay, the segment is preempted by the telecast of a Richard Nixon presidential address from the Oval Office. Rather appears, as himself, delivering post-speech analysis from actual news footage. Jean Stapleton, as Archie's scatterbrained wife Edith Bunker, says of Rather how he's there to "...tell us what Mr. Nixon just said." In 2004, he was featured in the documentary film Barbecue: A Texas Love Story by Austin-based director Chris Elley. Two years later, Rather and Elley educated a group of New Yorkers in Madison Square Park about the true meaning of BBQ, and its significance to the identity of the Lone Star State. In the 2006–07 graphic novel Shooting War, which is set in the year 2011, an 80-year-old Dan Rather is shown to be one of the last journalists still reporting from Iraq. He had a cameo in the premiere of the Fall 2007 drama Dirty Sexy Money on ABC television. He guest-starred as himself in The Simpsons episode, "E Pluribus Wiggum." Rather appeared on The Daily Show in May 2009, wearing an Afro wig and mutton-chop sideburns to narrate a segment about the late former President Nixon eating a burrito, as a parody of MSNBC's extensive coverage of President Obama and Vice President Biden's hamburger lunch. He appears in the 2008 award-winning documentary Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story. A skit on the 38th season of Sesame Street featured Anderson Cooper interviewing two grouches, "Walter Cranky" and "Dan Rather Not," who, when asked to answer questions, demurred with the phrase "I'd rather not." Robert Redford portrayed Rather in the 2015 film Truth. Rather appeared in the docudrama Facing Saddam providing his views on Saddam Hussein. Ratings Under Rather's predecessor, Walter Cronkite, the CBS Evening News was a strong #1 in the ratings, which Rather maintained through much of the 1980s. However, Tom Brokaw and his NBC Nightly News, and Peter Jennings of ABC News' World News Tonight, increasing in popularity, eventually cut deep into the Rather broadcast's numbers. See also New Yorkers in journalism References Further reading Dan Rather & Elliot Kirschner (2017). What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. Rather, Dan. The Palace Guard, with Gary Gates Rather, Dan. I Remember, with Peter Wyden. Rather, Dan with Herskowitz, Mickey. The Camera Never Blinks Twice''. 1995. William Morrow. 2nd Saddam interview External links AXS TV The Big Interview Dan Rather: American Journalist (Briscoe Center for American History) Members of the Council on Foreign Relations 1931 births Living people American television reporters and correspondents American war correspondents American war correspondents of the Vietnam War CBS News people Emmy Award winners Peabody Award winners 60 Minutes correspondents Associated Press reporters Houston Chronicle people Television anchors from Houston Journalists from Houston Killian documents controversy People from Wharton, Texas Sam Houston State University alumni Writers from Texas American victims of crime Texas Democrats The Young Turks people American male journalists 20th-century American journalists 21st-century American journalists Journalists from New York City People from Huntsville, Texas Recipients of the Four Freedoms Award Military personnel from Texas

C_7f5b7fac03f240eba4b0cf53ca659b83_1

Were there other things in the files besides these critical memos?

Were there other things in the Killian documents besides the critical memos?

Dan Rather

On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Chicago Sun-Times. Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents - former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett - had misled the network about how he had obtained them. On September 20, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, "If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question." The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate." Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting "Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day." CANNOTANSWER

CANNOTANSWER

Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. (; born October 31, 1931) is an American journalist and former national evening news anchor. Rather began his career in Texas, becoming a national name after his reporting saved thousands of lives during Hurricane Carla in September 1961. Rather spontaneously created the first radar weather report by overlaying a transparent map over a radar image of Hurricane Carla. In his first national broadcast, he helped initiate the successful evacuation of 350,000 people. Rather reported from Dallas in November 1963 at the time that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Based on his reporting, he was promoted at CBS News, where he served as White House correspondent beginning in 1964. He served as foreign correspondent in London and Vietnam over the next two years before returning to the White House correspondent position. He covered the presidency of Richard Nixon, including Nixon's trip to China, the Watergate scandal, and the president's resignation. In 1981, Rather was promoted to news anchor for the CBS Evening News, a role he occupied for 24 years. Along with Peter Jennings at ABC News and Tom Brokaw at NBC News, he was one of the "Big Three" nightly news anchors in the U.S. from the 1980s through the early 2000s. He frequently contributed to CBS's weekly news magazine, 60 Minutes. Rather left the anchor desk in 2005 following the Killian documents controversy, in which he presented unauthenticated documents in a news report on President George W. Bush's Vietnam War–era service in the National Guard. He continued to work with CBS until 2006, when he was abruptly fired. In September 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former parent company Viacom. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. An intermediate New York state appeals court dismissed the lawsuit in September 2009, and the New York Court of Appeals refused to reinstate it in January 2010. On the cable channel AXS TV (then called HDNet), Rather hosted Dan Rather Reports, a 60 Minutes–style investigative news program, from 2006 to 2013. He also hosts several other projects for AXS TV, including Dan Rather Presents, which provides in-depth reporting on broad topics such as mental health care or adoption, and The Big Interview with Dan Rather, in which he conducts long-form interviews with musicians and other entertainers. In January 2018, he began hosting an online newscast called The News with Dan Rather on The Young Turks' YouTube channel. Early life Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. was born on October 31, 1931, in Wharton County, Texas, the son of Daniel Irvin Rather Sr., a ditch digger and pipe layer, and the former Byrl Veda Page. The Rathers moved to Houston when he was a child, where Dan attended Lovett Elementary School and Hamilton Middle School. He graduated in 1950 from John H. Reagan High School in Houston. In 1953, Rather earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas, where he was editor of the school newspaper, The Houstonian. He was also a member of the Caballeros, the founding organization of the Epsilon Psi chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity. While in college, Rather worked for KSAM-FM radio in Huntsville, calling junior high, high school, and Sam Houston State football games. After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Rather briefly attended South Texas College of Law in Houston. In January 1954, Rather enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and was sent to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego. He was soon discharged, however, because he was found to have had rheumatic fever as a child, a fact he had omitted during the enlistment process. Early career Rather began his journalism career in 1950 as an Associated Press reporter in Huntsville, Texas. Later, he was a reporter for United Press (1950–1952), several Texas radio stations, and the Houston Chronicle (1954–1955). Around 1955, Rather wrote a piece on heroin. Under the auspices of the Houston Police, he tried a dose of the drug, which he characterized as "a special kind of hell." He worked for four seasons as the play-by-play announcer for the University of Houston football team. During the 1959 minor league baseball season, Rather was the play-by-play radio announcer for the Texas League Houston Buffs. In 1959, Rather began his television career as a reporter for KTRK-TV, the ABC affiliate in Houston. He was subsequently promoted to the director of news for KHOU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Houston. In September 1961, Rather covered Hurricane Carla for KHOU-TV, broadcasting from the then National Weather Center in Galveston. He is noted for showing the first radar image of a hurricane on TV. He conceived of overlaying a transparent map over the radar screen, in order to show the size of Hurricane Carla to the audience. Convinced of the threat, more than 350,000 people evacuated from the area, the largest known evacuation to that time. Their actions are believed to have saved thousands of lives compared to the previous hurricane, which had killed 6,000 to 12,000 people. Rather's live coverage of Carla was broadcast by New York and national stations. Ray Miller, news director of KPRC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Houston, also mentored Rather in the early years. On February 28, 1962, Rather left Houston for New York City for a six-month trial initiation at CBS. Rather did not fit in easily on the East Coast. His first reports for CBS included coverage of the crash of American Airlines Flight 1 in Jamaica Bay, and a report on the suffocation of children at a hospital in Binghamton, New York. Shortly after, Rather was made chief of CBS's Southwest bureau in Dallas. In August 1963, he was appointed chief of the Southern bureau in New Orleans, responsible for coverage of news events in the South, Southwest, Mexico and Central America. CBS News JFK assassination to Watergate In his autobiography, Rather noted that he was in Dallas in November 1963 to return film from an interview in Uvalde at the ranch of former Vice President John Nance Garner, who celebrated his 95th birthday on November 22. He happened to be "on the other side of the railroad tracks, beyond the triple underpass, thirty yards from a grassy knoll that would later figure in so many conspiracy theories." His job was to fetch a film drop from a camera truck at that location, and take it to the station for editing. He did not witness the shooting of Kennedy, and knew nothing of the events until he reached KRLD, having run through Dealey Plaza. He later wrote: “The moment I cleared the railroad tracks I saw a scene I will never forget. Some people were lying on the grass, some screaming, some running, some pointing. Policemen swarmed everywhere and distinctly above the din, I heard one shout, 'DON'T ANYBODY PANIC.' And of course, there was nothing but panic wherever you looked.” In his autobiography, Rather said he was one of the first to view the Zapruder film showing the assassination, and the first to describe it on television. Rather reported the fatal headshot as forcing Kennedy's head forward, but it was thrown backward. Later, he reported that some Dallas schoolchildren had applauded when they were notified of the president's death. Administrators said they had announced that school was to be dismissed early, and did not mention the assassination. However, teacher Joanna Morgan confirmed that students had cheered at the news that Kennedy was shot. This story infuriated local journalists at then-CBS affiliate KRLD-TV (now Fox-owned-and-operated KDFW-TV). Rather's reporting during the national mourning period following the Kennedy assassination and subsequent events impressed CBS News management. In 1964, they selected him for the network's White House correspondent position. In 1965, Rather served as a foreign correspondent for CBS in London, and in 1966 in Vietnam. He served again as White House correspondent during the presidency of Richard Nixon. In 1970, he was also assigned as anchor for the CBS Sunday Night News (1970–73; 1974–75), and later for the CBS Saturday Evening News (1973–76). Rather was among those journalists who accompanied Nixon to China. He later covered the Watergate investigation, as well as the impeachment proceedings against Nixon in Congress. CBS Evening News anchor After President Nixon's resignation in 1974, Rather became chief correspondent for the documentary series CBS Reports. In December 1975, he became a correspondent of the long-running Sunday night news show 60 Minutes—at the time the program was moved from a Sunday afternoon time-slot to primetime. Success there helped Rather pull ahead of longtime correspondent Roger Mudd, who was in line to succeed Walter Cronkite as anchor and Managing Editor of The CBS Evening News. Rather succeeded to the news anchor position after Cronkite's retirement, making his first broadcast on March 9, 1981. Rather had a significantly different style of reporting the news. In contrast to the avuncular Cronkite, who ended his newscast with “That's the way it is,” Rather searched to find a broadcast ending more suitable to his tastes. For one week in September 1986, with CBS the target of potentially hostile new ownership, Rather tried ending his broadcasts with the word "courage," and was roundly ridiculed for it. For nearly two decades, Rather ended the show with: “That's part of our world tonight.” Rather also held other positions during his time as anchor. In January 1988, he became host of the newly created 48 Hours, and in January 1999, Rather joined the new 60 Minutes II as a correspondent. Ratings for the Evening News with Rather at the helm fluctuated wildly, at a time when more alternatives to TV news were developing. After a dip to second place, Rather regained the top spot in 1985 until 1989, when he ceded the ratings peak to rival Peter Jennings at ABC's World News Tonight. By 1992, however, the Evening News had fallen to third place of the three major networks. It rose in rankings in 2005, when Bob Schieffer became the interim anchor between Rather and Katie Couric. It briefly moved ahead of ABC World News Tonight in the wake of the death of Peter Jennings, but remained behind NBC Nightly News. Rather was a frequent collaborator with CBS News producer Susan Zirinsky, a leading member of the news division's staff. In 1987, new CBS owner Laurence Tisch oversaw layoffs of hundreds of CBS News employees, in a major shake-up of the network. Among those to go were correspondents such as David Andelman, Fred Graham, Morton Dean, and Ike Pappas. Fewer videotape crews were dispatched to cover stories, and numerous bureaus were closed. Critics cited the cutbacks as a major factor in CBS News' fall into third place in the ratings. For a short time from 1993 to 1995, Rather co-anchored the evening news with Connie Chung. Chung had been a Washington, DC correspondent for CBS News, and anchored short news updates on the West Coast. On joining the CBS Evening News, she reported "pop news" stories. In one widely cited case, she aggressively pursued Tonya Harding, who was accused of a plot to injure fellow Olympic ice skater Nancy Kerrigan. After Chung left the network, Rather went back to doing the newscast alone. By the 2005–06 season, the end of Rather's time as anchor, CBS Evening News lagged behind NBC Nightly News and ABC World News Tonight in the ratings. But it still drew approximately 5.5 million viewers a night. Criticism of Rather reached a fever pitch after 60 Minutes II ran his 2004 report about President Bush's military record. Numerous critics questioned the authenticity of the documents upon which the report was based. Rather subsequently admitted on the air that the documents' authenticity could not be proven. In the aftermath, CBS fired several members of CBS News staff but temporarily retained Rather, until his contract was up for renewal the following year, whereupon he was completely ousted. Journalistic history and influence Nixon During Richard Nixon's presidency, critics accused Rather of biased coverage against him. At a Houston news conference in March 1974, Nixon fielded a question from Rather, still CBS's White House correspondent, who said, “Thank you, Mr. President. Dan Rather, of CBS News.” The room filled with jeers and applause, prompting Nixon to joke, “Are you running for something?” Rather replied, “No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?” He questioned whether Nixon was cooperating with the grand jury investigation and House Judiciary Committee in relation to the Watergate scandal. NBC's Tom Brokaw has said the network considered hiring him to replace Rather as its White House correspondent, but dropped it after word was leaked to the press. Rather was believed to have provided tough coverage of the Watergate scandal, raising his profile. Space Shuttle Challenger disaster In January 1986, NASA faced repeated delays in the preparations to launch the Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger in close sequence. Rather described the January 10 delay of Columbia as: “star-crossed space shuttle Columbia stood ready for launch again today, and once more, the launch was scrubbed. Heavy rain was the cause this time. The launch has been postponed so often since its original date, December 18, that it's now known as mission impossible.”This was considered an example of the "biting sarcasm" the media used related to NASA's scheduling. Columbia launched on January 12. On January 27, Rather's reporting of the expected Challenger launch began as follows: On January 28, Challenger'''s explosion and destruction occurred 73 seconds after launch. Afghanistan, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush During the Soviet–Afghan War, Rather was filmed reporting near the front lines while wearing a traditional mujahideen headdress and garments. Rather attracted an Evening News audience (and was nicknamed "Gunga Dan"). The American comic strip Doonesbury spoofed his actions. Rather's reports were later revealed to have been influential to Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-Texas), who led an effort to help the struggling mujahideen. The CIA developed its largest covert operation to supply aid and advanced arms to the mujahideen. The Soviets eventually quit Afghanistan. Rather gained the anchor spot on the Evening News. He was competing with Roger Mudd, a more senior correspondent and a frequent substitute anchor for Walter Cronkite on Evening News. Mudd had also anchored the Sunday evening broadcast, but Rather traveled through Afghanistan when news led there. A few years into his service as anchor, Rather began wearing sweaters beneath his suit jacket to soften his on-air appearance for viewers. During the 1980s, Rather gained further renown for his forceful and skeptical reporting on the Iran–Contra affair. He eventually confronted Vice President George H. W. Bush in an on-air interview during the latter's presidential campaign. Bush referred to Rather's "dead air incident" saying: “I want to talk about why I want to be President, why those 41 percent of the people are supporting me. And I don't think it's fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?”Rather ignored Bush's comment. Shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Rather secured an interview with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. On February 24, 2003, Rather conducted another interview with Hussein before the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the interview, Hussein invited Rather to be the moderator of a live television debate between him and George W. Bush. The debate never took place. The Wall Within On June 2, 1988, Rather hosted a CBS News special, The Wall Within. In it, he interviewed six veterans, each of whom said he had witnessed horrible acts in Vietnam. Two of the men said that they had killed civilians, and two others said that they had seen friends die. Each talked about the effects the war had upon their lives—including depression, unemployment, drug use, and homelessness. In 2004, National Review ran an article by Anne Morse entitled "The First Rathergate." She said that almost nothing claimed by participants in The Wall Within was true. Citing the self-published book Stolen Valor (1998) by veteran B. G. Burkett, and investigative journalist Glenna Whitley, Morse said that military records revealed that the six former servicemen had lied about their experiences. Only one served in combat, and two had never been in Vietnam. Killian documents On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly or almost exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Chicago Sun-Times. Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents—former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett—had misled the network about how he had obtained them. On September 20, 2004, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, “If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.” The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate." Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes, and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting, “Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day.” Departure from the CBS Evening News Rather retired as the anchorman and Managing Editor of the CBS Evening News in 2005; his last broadcast was Wednesday, March 9, 2005. He had worked as the anchorman for 24 full years, the longest tenure of anyone in American television history, and for a short time, continued to work as a correspondent for 60 Minutes. Bob Schieffer, a fellow Texan and host of Face the Nation, took over Rather's position on an interim basis, with Katie Couric replacing Schieffer in 2006. Since retiring, Rather has spoken out about what he perceives as a lack of courage by American journalists. On January 24, 2006, Rather spoke to a Seattle audience. Before the speaking engagement, he told a newspaper reporter, “In many ways on many days, [reporters] have sort of adopted the attitude of 'go along, get along.'” “What many of us need is a spine transplant,” Rather added. “Whether it's City Hall, the State House, or the White House, part of our job is to speak truth to power.” Ousted from CBS News In June 2006, reports surfaced that CBS News would most likely not renew Dan Rather's contract. According to a Washington Post article, sources from CBS said that executives at the network decided "there is no future role for Rather." On June 20, 2006, CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus announced that Rather would leave the network after 44 years. Rather issued a separate statement which accompanied the news of the departure: Lawsuit over ouster from CBS Network On September 19, 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS, its former parent company Viacom; CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves; Sumner Redstone, chairman of both Viacom and CBS; and Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. A CBS spokesman claimed that the lawsuit was "old news" and "without merit." On September 21, 2009, Rather's lawyers claimed that Bush's military service would be proven to be a sham, and Rather would be vindicated. On September 29, 2009, a New York state appeals court dismissed Rather's lawsuit against CBS. On January 12, 2010, New York's top court refused to reinstate Rather's $70 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against CBS Corp. In his book titled Rather Outspoken, Rather claims that the lawsuit “took a big whack out of my time, my psyche and my bank balance, but even so, it was worth it.” On May 18, 2012, Rather appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher, and claimed he had been fired for reporting a story about George W. Bush's year of absence from the reserve unit he served with, and that the news corporations had been "very uncomfortable" with running the story. Post-CBS career Following his departure from CBS, Dan Rather joined Mark Cuban's cable network AXS TV (then called HDNet) to host and produce the weekly one-hour news show Dan Rather Reports from 2006 until 2013. Since 2013, Rather has hosted and produced the hour-long series The Big Interview with Dan Rather on AXS TV, where he sits down for in-depth interviews with influential figures in music and entertainment, such as: John Fogerty, Quentin Tarantino, Simon Cowell, Aaron Sorkin, and Sammy Hagar. He has also produced several documentary specials for the network under the banner Dan Rather Presents, including specials about "America's Mental Health Crisis," the United States Secret Service, and "The Shameful Side of International Adoption." Rather also appears frequently on a number of news shows, including MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and on CNN. He has also written for The Huffington Post and Mashable. On May 28, 2007, Rather compared historical events to events in the Star Wars films in the History Channel special titled Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed. In 2012, Rather published an autobiography titled Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News. In 2015, Rather launched an independent production company called News and Guts Media, through which he produces The Big Interview among other projects. In 2015, Rather also began actively posting on Facebook. He credits young staffers at News and Guts Media with pushing him to try social media. While his posts were considerably longer than typical social media posts, they resonated with the audience, which soon grew to more than two million followers. Even late night TV noticed Rather's unusual but effective Facebook presence. Subject matter has covered a range of topics, including: current political events, journalism, and childhood memories. On September 23, 2016, SiriusXM Radio announced a new hour-long weekly program, "Dan Rather's America," airing Tuesday mornings at 10am Eastern on Radio Andy channel 102, debuting on September 27. In the fall of 2017, the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas completed a digital humanities project dedicated to the long career of the journalist that was titled Dan Rather: American Journalist. The culmination of three years of research conducted at the Briscoe Center, the site uses materials from a dozen archives and libraries, and draws from over 25 of the Briscoe Center for American History's news media and photojournalism collections. The website features over 2,000 digitized documents, 300 excerpts from twelve oral history interviews, and 1000 video clips, enabling visitors to dive deep into the history of the last 60 years through the lens of Dan Rather's career. On January 21, 2018, it was announced that Rather would be launching a weekly 30-minute newscast on The Young Turks. Titled The News with Dan Rather, it airs on Mondays at 5:30pm Eastern Time. Personal life Rather married Jean Goebel in 1957. They have a son and daughter, and maintain homes in New York City and Austin, Texas. Their daughter Robin is an environmentalist and community activist in Austin, Texas. Their son Dan is an assistant district attorney in the District Attorney's office in Manhattan, New York. Sam Houston State University renamed its mass communications building after Rather in 1994. The building houses The Houstonian and KSHU, the student-run radio and television stations. In May 2007, Rather received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Siena College in Loudonville, New York, for his lifetime contributions to journalism. A columnist whose work is distributed by King Features Syndicate, Rather continues to speak out against alleged influence in journalism by corporations and governments. At a 2008 conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sponsored by the group Free Press, Rather criticized both local and national news organizations, stating—according to reports—that there is no longer incentive to do “good and valuable news.” Books The Palace Guard, with Gary Paul Gates, 1974. . The Camera Never Blinks: Adventures of a TV Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1977. . I Remember, with Peter Wyden, 1991. . The Camera Never Blinks Twice: The Further Adventures of a Television Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1994. . , 1999. . "The American Dream: Stories from the Heart of Our Nation", 2001. . , with Digby Diehl, 2013. . What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism, with Elliot Kirschner, 2017. .What Unites Us: The Graphic Novel, with Elliot Kirschner, illustrated by Tim Foley, 2021. . Awards He has received numerous Emmy Awards, several Peabody Awards, and various honorary degrees from universities. In addition to these awards, Rather was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2001, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. Criticism As one of the last broadcast news journalists from the era of the "Big Three" network news primacy, Rather was generally regarded highly within his profession by long-serving journalists. Rather has been accused of having a liberal bias."Dan Rather: a pioneer and a lightning rod" at The Christian Science Monitor. Claims of bias Rather's on-screen comments and election-night reporting have come under attack dating back to Richard Nixon's presidency. In a June 2002 interview with Larry King, his long-time co-worker (and self-described liberal), Andy Rooney stated that Rather is “transparently liberal.” During the weeks following the Killian documents stories, Rather received widespread criticism from other journalists and historians. In an interview with commentator Bill Maher, Rather accused Fox News Channel of receiving "talking points" from the Republican-controlled White House. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, who had defended Rather during the Killian documents incident, criticized Rather for not offering any evidence to support the claim. In 2002, Bernard Goldberg published a book with the title Bias, alleging a liberal bias in print and broadcast news organizations. In the book, Goldberg used Dan Rather as a primary example of a news anchorman with a liberal bias. He also criticized the anchor for his criticisms of President George W. Bush's and Vice President Dan Quayle's service in the National Guard, rather than the Active Duty military during the Vietnam War, and questioned Rather's own service. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has accused Rather of having "an unwillingness to challenge official power and policy" in his reporting. Investigative reporter Mark Hertsgaard characterized Rather as a "stern anti-Communist" during the Reagan administration, for allegedly having "reported the pronouncements of public officials with considerable respect." In April 2001, according to a front-page story in The Washington Post, Rather spoke at a Democratic party fundraiser in Austin, Texas, where he was the featured speaker. One of the official hosts for the fundraiser was Rather's daughter, Robin Rather; Rather said that he did not realize that his daughter was a host of the fundraiser. Rather also said that he did not realize that the event was a partisan fundraiser, although he did realize that after he arrived at the event. From Walter Cronkite During an appearance on CNN's American Morning in 2005, former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite said about Rather: “It surprised quite a few people at CBS and elsewhere that, without being able to pull up the ratings beyond third in a three-man field, that they tolerated his being there for so long.” Cronkite also said that he would like to have seen Bob Schieffer in Rather's position sooner. From Dallas CBS news director Eddie Barker In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination while Rather was a Dallas reporter, he interviewed a minister, who said some local schoolchildren had cheered upon learning of the President's shooting. The Associated Press later confirmed the story. A teacher at the school backed up the Rather story, confirming that some students at the school had cheered at the principal's news about Kennedy. Eddie Barker, local Dallas-area news director for CBS, said that Rather had in fact been aware that the children were merely happy about being sent home early, and they had not been given a reason for early school closure (Barker's children attended the school, as he informed Rather). He stated that Rather had deliberately misrepresented the facts by indicating that the children were happy about the shooting. Barker attempted to fire Rather, but was overruled by the national CBS News management. Incidents and controversies 1968 Democratic convention During live coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Rather attempted to interview a delegate from Georgia who appeared as though he was being forcibly removed by men without identification badges. As Rather approached the delegate to question the apparent strong-arm tactics of the Chicago political machine under Mayor Daley, he was punched in the stomach by one of the men, knocking him to the ground. “He lifted me right off the floor and put me away. I was down, the breath knocked out of me, as the whole group blew on by me ... In the CBS control room, they had switched the camera onto me just as I was slugged.” Walter Cronkite, after being told by Rather what happened, added on-air, "I think we got a bunch of thugs here Dan!" Chicago cab ride On November 10, 1980, Rather landed at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and got into a cab. He asked the cab driver to take him to the home of writer Studs Terkel, whom he was interviewing for 60 Minutes. A police spokesman said that the cab driver refused to go to the address and instead "wildly drove through the city streets," with Rather shouting out the window asking for help. The driver was charged with disorderly conduct. Rather called the incident “a rather minor thing.” By the time the case was about to come to trial, he was about to add anchoring the CBS Evening News to his 60 Minutes role at CBS News. Rather declined to press charges, citing a "mounting schedule of reporting assignments." Galloway lawsuit In 1980, Rather and CBS were taken to court when Carl Galloway, a California doctor, claimed that a report on 60 Minutes wrongfully implicated him in an insurance fraud scheme. CBS stated Galloway had signed the bogus report, and was suing Rather because he was upset at being caught. The jury sided with CBS and Rather, and they won the case. During the trial, Galloway's side used outtakes from the TV report showing that one interview was rehearsed. "Courage" For one week in September 1986, Rather signed off his broadcasts to CBS with the word "courage." He said that it was just a signature line, and had nothing to do with the news at the time. Other newscasters ridiculed and parodied Rather, and he dropped it. "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said “I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea.” Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who came to Rather's aid fully confirmed his version of events. The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. The opening track of the 1987 album Lolita Nation by California power pop group Game Theory is titled "Kenneth, What's the Frequency?" In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman. In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12.5-to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010. Dead air On September 11, 1987, Rather walked off the set in anger just before a remote Evening News broadcast from Miami, where Pope John Paul II had begun a rare U.S. tour, when a U.S. Open tennis match was being broadcast into the time scheduled for the newscast. He was upset that the news was being cut into to make room for sports and discussed it with the sports department, and made it clear that if the newscast did not start on time, then CBS Sports should fill the half hour. The Steffi Graf–Lori McNeil tennis match coverage then ended sooner than expected at 6:32 p.m., but Rather had disappeared. (CBS Sports had finally agreed to break away immediately after the match without commentary.) Thus, over 100 affiliates were forced to broadcast six minutes of dead air. Some stations were forced to air a slot of syndicated programming such as a rerun of a game show or a sitcom, and other stations were forced to pull out a technical difficulty telop graphic. Phil Jones, the chairman of the CBS affiliation board and general manager of Kansas City's KCTV (which the station placed a technical difficulty graphic during dead air) wanted an apology from Rather. Meanwhile in Miami, the city's CBS affiliate WTVJ was forced to drop the episode entirely, which ended up airing a syndicated rerun of a game show to fill the station's schedule. The next day, Rather apologized for leaving the anchor desk. The following year, when Rather asked then Vice President Bush about his role in the Iran–Contra affair during a live interview, Bush responded by saying, “Dan, how would you like it if I judged your entire career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?” Roger Ailes had a “mole” at CBS, who alerted him that the goal was to “take Bush out of the race” with a tough interview on Iran-Contra. Ailes alerted Bush on the cab ride over, and fed him the seven minutes retort. The aftermath of the interview showed the episode was a boost for Bush. “The vice president's poll ratings in Iowa and New Hampshire bumped visibly upward.” "Ratherisms" Rather is known for his many colorful analogies and descriptions during live broadcasts. Similar to those used by baseball announcer Red Barber, cycling commentator Phil Liggett, and Formula 1 commentator Murray Walker, these "Ratherisms" are also called "Texanisms" or "Danisms" by some. A few of the more colorful ones, several of which were used throughout the 2008 HBO made-for-TV movie Recount about the 2000 Election, include: “This race is shakier than cafeteria Jell-O.” “This thing is as tight as the rusted lugnuts on a '55 Ford.” His characterization of the Republican Party's assessment of President Obama: “[He] couldn't sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.” In popular culture Rather has been referenced in the television shows Saturday Night Live and Family Guy and many films. An animated caricature of him made a cameo appearance in the JibJab political cartoon, Good to Be in D.C. In 1971, he had a cameo in an episode of the number one hit comedy series All in the Family. Entitled The Man in the Street, series star Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker character excitedly awaits the viewing of a videotaped interview he gave earlier that day for the CBS Evening News. At the last minute, to his dismay, the segment is preempted by the telecast of a Richard Nixon presidential address from the Oval Office. Rather appears, as himself, delivering post-speech analysis from actual news footage. Jean Stapleton, as Archie's scatterbrained wife Edith Bunker, says of Rather how he's there to "...tell us what Mr. Nixon just said." In 2004, he was featured in the documentary film Barbecue: A Texas Love Story by Austin-based director Chris Elley. Two years later, Rather and Elley educated a group of New Yorkers in Madison Square Park about the true meaning of BBQ, and its significance to the identity of the Lone Star State. In the 2006–07 graphic novel Shooting War, which is set in the year 2011, an 80-year-old Dan Rather is shown to be one of the last journalists still reporting from Iraq. He had a cameo in the premiere of the Fall 2007 drama Dirty Sexy Money on ABC television. He guest-starred as himself in The Simpsons episode, "E Pluribus Wiggum." Rather appeared on The Daily Show in May 2009, wearing an Afro wig and mutton-chop sideburns to narrate a segment about the late former President Nixon eating a burrito, as a parody of MSNBC's extensive coverage of President Obama and Vice President Biden's hamburger lunch. He appears in the 2008 award-winning documentary Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story. A skit on the 38th season of Sesame Street featured Anderson Cooper interviewing two grouches, "Walter Cranky" and "Dan Rather Not," who, when asked to answer questions, demurred with the phrase "I'd rather not." Robert Redford portrayed Rather in the 2015 film Truth. Rather appeared in the docudrama Facing Saddam providing his views on Saddam Hussein. Ratings Under Rather's predecessor, Walter Cronkite, the CBS Evening News was a strong #1 in the ratings, which Rather maintained through much of the 1980s. However, Tom Brokaw and his NBC Nightly News, and Peter Jennings of ABC News' World News Tonight, increasing in popularity, eventually cut deep into the Rather broadcast's numbers. See also New Yorkers in journalism References Further reading Dan Rather & Elliot Kirschner (2017). What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. Rather, Dan. The Palace Guard, with Gary Gates Rather, Dan. I Remember, with Peter Wyden. Rather, Dan with Herskowitz, Mickey. The Camera Never Blinks Twice''. 1995. William Morrow. 2nd Saddam interview External links AXS TV The Big Interview Dan Rather: American Journalist (Briscoe Center for American History) Members of the Council on Foreign Relations 1931 births Living people American television reporters and correspondents American war correspondents American war correspondents of the Vietnam War CBS News people Emmy Award winners Peabody Award winners 60 Minutes correspondents Associated Press reporters Houston Chronicle people Television anchors from Houston Journalists from Houston Killian documents controversy People from Wharton, Texas Sam Houston State University alumni Writers from Texas American victims of crime Texas Democrats The Young Turks people American male journalists 20th-century American journalists 21st-century American journalists Journalists from New York City People from Huntsville, Texas Recipients of the Four Freedoms Award Military personnel from Texas

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What happened after Rather reported on these files?

What happened after Rather reported on the files in the Killian documents?

Dan Rather

On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Chicago Sun-Times. Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents - former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett - had misled the network about how he had obtained them. On September 20, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, "If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question." The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate." Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting "Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day." CANNOTANSWER

their authenticity was quickly called into question.

Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. (; born October 31, 1931) is an American journalist and former national evening news anchor. Rather began his career in Texas, becoming a national name after his reporting saved thousands of lives during Hurricane Carla in September 1961. Rather spontaneously created the first radar weather report by overlaying a transparent map over a radar image of Hurricane Carla. In his first national broadcast, he helped initiate the successful evacuation of 350,000 people. Rather reported from Dallas in November 1963 at the time that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Based on his reporting, he was promoted at CBS News, where he served as White House correspondent beginning in 1964. He served as foreign correspondent in London and Vietnam over the next two years before returning to the White House correspondent position. He covered the presidency of Richard Nixon, including Nixon's trip to China, the Watergate scandal, and the president's resignation. In 1981, Rather was promoted to news anchor for the CBS Evening News, a role he occupied for 24 years. Along with Peter Jennings at ABC News and Tom Brokaw at NBC News, he was one of the "Big Three" nightly news anchors in the U.S. from the 1980s through the early 2000s. He frequently contributed to CBS's weekly news magazine, 60 Minutes. Rather left the anchor desk in 2005 following the Killian documents controversy, in which he presented unauthenticated documents in a news report on President George W. Bush's Vietnam War–era service in the National Guard. He continued to work with CBS until 2006, when he was abruptly fired. In September 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former parent company Viacom. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. An intermediate New York state appeals court dismissed the lawsuit in September 2009, and the New York Court of Appeals refused to reinstate it in January 2010. On the cable channel AXS TV (then called HDNet), Rather hosted Dan Rather Reports, a 60 Minutes–style investigative news program, from 2006 to 2013. He also hosts several other projects for AXS TV, including Dan Rather Presents, which provides in-depth reporting on broad topics such as mental health care or adoption, and The Big Interview with Dan Rather, in which he conducts long-form interviews with musicians and other entertainers. In January 2018, he began hosting an online newscast called The News with Dan Rather on The Young Turks' YouTube channel. Early life Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. was born on October 31, 1931, in Wharton County, Texas, the son of Daniel Irvin Rather Sr., a ditch digger and pipe layer, and the former Byrl Veda Page. The Rathers moved to Houston when he was a child, where Dan attended Lovett Elementary School and Hamilton Middle School. He graduated in 1950 from John H. Reagan High School in Houston. In 1953, Rather earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas, where he was editor of the school newspaper, The Houstonian. He was also a member of the Caballeros, the founding organization of the Epsilon Psi chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity. While in college, Rather worked for KSAM-FM radio in Huntsville, calling junior high, high school, and Sam Houston State football games. After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Rather briefly attended South Texas College of Law in Houston. In January 1954, Rather enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and was sent to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego. He was soon discharged, however, because he was found to have had rheumatic fever as a child, a fact he had omitted during the enlistment process. Early career Rather began his journalism career in 1950 as an Associated Press reporter in Huntsville, Texas. Later, he was a reporter for United Press (1950–1952), several Texas radio stations, and the Houston Chronicle (1954–1955). Around 1955, Rather wrote a piece on heroin. Under the auspices of the Houston Police, he tried a dose of the drug, which he characterized as "a special kind of hell." He worked for four seasons as the play-by-play announcer for the University of Houston football team. During the 1959 minor league baseball season, Rather was the play-by-play radio announcer for the Texas League Houston Buffs. In 1959, Rather began his television career as a reporter for KTRK-TV, the ABC affiliate in Houston. He was subsequently promoted to the director of news for KHOU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Houston. In September 1961, Rather covered Hurricane Carla for KHOU-TV, broadcasting from the then National Weather Center in Galveston. He is noted for showing the first radar image of a hurricane on TV. He conceived of overlaying a transparent map over the radar screen, in order to show the size of Hurricane Carla to the audience. Convinced of the threat, more than 350,000 people evacuated from the area, the largest known evacuation to that time. Their actions are believed to have saved thousands of lives compared to the previous hurricane, which had killed 6,000 to 12,000 people. Rather's live coverage of Carla was broadcast by New York and national stations. Ray Miller, news director of KPRC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Houston, also mentored Rather in the early years. On February 28, 1962, Rather left Houston for New York City for a six-month trial initiation at CBS. Rather did not fit in easily on the East Coast. His first reports for CBS included coverage of the crash of American Airlines Flight 1 in Jamaica Bay, and a report on the suffocation of children at a hospital in Binghamton, New York. Shortly after, Rather was made chief of CBS's Southwest bureau in Dallas. In August 1963, he was appointed chief of the Southern bureau in New Orleans, responsible for coverage of news events in the South, Southwest, Mexico and Central America. CBS News JFK assassination to Watergate In his autobiography, Rather noted that he was in Dallas in November 1963 to return film from an interview in Uvalde at the ranch of former Vice President John Nance Garner, who celebrated his 95th birthday on November 22. He happened to be "on the other side of the railroad tracks, beyond the triple underpass, thirty yards from a grassy knoll that would later figure in so many conspiracy theories." His job was to fetch a film drop from a camera truck at that location, and take it to the station for editing. He did not witness the shooting of Kennedy, and knew nothing of the events until he reached KRLD, having run through Dealey Plaza. He later wrote: “The moment I cleared the railroad tracks I saw a scene I will never forget. Some people were lying on the grass, some screaming, some running, some pointing. Policemen swarmed everywhere and distinctly above the din, I heard one shout, 'DON'T ANYBODY PANIC.' And of course, there was nothing but panic wherever you looked.” In his autobiography, Rather said he was one of the first to view the Zapruder film showing the assassination, and the first to describe it on television. Rather reported the fatal headshot as forcing Kennedy's head forward, but it was thrown backward. Later, he reported that some Dallas schoolchildren had applauded when they were notified of the president's death. Administrators said they had announced that school was to be dismissed early, and did not mention the assassination. However, teacher Joanna Morgan confirmed that students had cheered at the news that Kennedy was shot. This story infuriated local journalists at then-CBS affiliate KRLD-TV (now Fox-owned-and-operated KDFW-TV). Rather's reporting during the national mourning period following the Kennedy assassination and subsequent events impressed CBS News management. In 1964, they selected him for the network's White House correspondent position. In 1965, Rather served as a foreign correspondent for CBS in London, and in 1966 in Vietnam. He served again as White House correspondent during the presidency of Richard Nixon. In 1970, he was also assigned as anchor for the CBS Sunday Night News (1970–73; 1974–75), and later for the CBS Saturday Evening News (1973–76). Rather was among those journalists who accompanied Nixon to China. He later covered the Watergate investigation, as well as the impeachment proceedings against Nixon in Congress. CBS Evening News anchor After President Nixon's resignation in 1974, Rather became chief correspondent for the documentary series CBS Reports. In December 1975, he became a correspondent of the long-running Sunday night news show 60 Minutes—at the time the program was moved from a Sunday afternoon time-slot to primetime. Success there helped Rather pull ahead of longtime correspondent Roger Mudd, who was in line to succeed Walter Cronkite as anchor and Managing Editor of The CBS Evening News. Rather succeeded to the news anchor position after Cronkite's retirement, making his first broadcast on March 9, 1981. Rather had a significantly different style of reporting the news. In contrast to the avuncular Cronkite, who ended his newscast with “That's the way it is,” Rather searched to find a broadcast ending more suitable to his tastes. For one week in September 1986, with CBS the target of potentially hostile new ownership, Rather tried ending his broadcasts with the word "courage," and was roundly ridiculed for it. For nearly two decades, Rather ended the show with: “That's part of our world tonight.” Rather also held other positions during his time as anchor. In January 1988, he became host of the newly created 48 Hours, and in January 1999, Rather joined the new 60 Minutes II as a correspondent. Ratings for the Evening News with Rather at the helm fluctuated wildly, at a time when more alternatives to TV news were developing. After a dip to second place, Rather regained the top spot in 1985 until 1989, when he ceded the ratings peak to rival Peter Jennings at ABC's World News Tonight. By 1992, however, the Evening News had fallen to third place of the three major networks. It rose in rankings in 2005, when Bob Schieffer became the interim anchor between Rather and Katie Couric. It briefly moved ahead of ABC World News Tonight in the wake of the death of Peter Jennings, but remained behind NBC Nightly News. Rather was a frequent collaborator with CBS News producer Susan Zirinsky, a leading member of the news division's staff. In 1987, new CBS owner Laurence Tisch oversaw layoffs of hundreds of CBS News employees, in a major shake-up of the network. Among those to go were correspondents such as David Andelman, Fred Graham, Morton Dean, and Ike Pappas. Fewer videotape crews were dispatched to cover stories, and numerous bureaus were closed. Critics cited the cutbacks as a major factor in CBS News' fall into third place in the ratings. For a short time from 1993 to 1995, Rather co-anchored the evening news with Connie Chung. Chung had been a Washington, DC correspondent for CBS News, and anchored short news updates on the West Coast. On joining the CBS Evening News, she reported "pop news" stories. In one widely cited case, she aggressively pursued Tonya Harding, who was accused of a plot to injure fellow Olympic ice skater Nancy Kerrigan. After Chung left the network, Rather went back to doing the newscast alone. By the 2005–06 season, the end of Rather's time as anchor, CBS Evening News lagged behind NBC Nightly News and ABC World News Tonight in the ratings. But it still drew approximately 5.5 million viewers a night. Criticism of Rather reached a fever pitch after 60 Minutes II ran his 2004 report about President Bush's military record. Numerous critics questioned the authenticity of the documents upon which the report was based. Rather subsequently admitted on the air that the documents' authenticity could not be proven. In the aftermath, CBS fired several members of CBS News staff but temporarily retained Rather, until his contract was up for renewal the following year, whereupon he was completely ousted. Journalistic history and influence Nixon During Richard Nixon's presidency, critics accused Rather of biased coverage against him. At a Houston news conference in March 1974, Nixon fielded a question from Rather, still CBS's White House correspondent, who said, “Thank you, Mr. President. Dan Rather, of CBS News.” The room filled with jeers and applause, prompting Nixon to joke, “Are you running for something?” Rather replied, “No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?” He questioned whether Nixon was cooperating with the grand jury investigation and House Judiciary Committee in relation to the Watergate scandal. NBC's Tom Brokaw has said the network considered hiring him to replace Rather as its White House correspondent, but dropped it after word was leaked to the press. Rather was believed to have provided tough coverage of the Watergate scandal, raising his profile. Space Shuttle Challenger disaster In January 1986, NASA faced repeated delays in the preparations to launch the Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger in close sequence. Rather described the January 10 delay of Columbia as: “star-crossed space shuttle Columbia stood ready for launch again today, and once more, the launch was scrubbed. Heavy rain was the cause this time. The launch has been postponed so often since its original date, December 18, that it's now known as mission impossible.”This was considered an example of the "biting sarcasm" the media used related to NASA's scheduling. Columbia launched on January 12. On January 27, Rather's reporting of the expected Challenger launch began as follows: On January 28, Challenger'''s explosion and destruction occurred 73 seconds after launch. Afghanistan, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush During the Soviet–Afghan War, Rather was filmed reporting near the front lines while wearing a traditional mujahideen headdress and garments. Rather attracted an Evening News audience (and was nicknamed "Gunga Dan"). The American comic strip Doonesbury spoofed his actions. Rather's reports were later revealed to have been influential to Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-Texas), who led an effort to help the struggling mujahideen. The CIA developed its largest covert operation to supply aid and advanced arms to the mujahideen. The Soviets eventually quit Afghanistan. Rather gained the anchor spot on the Evening News. He was competing with Roger Mudd, a more senior correspondent and a frequent substitute anchor for Walter Cronkite on Evening News. Mudd had also anchored the Sunday evening broadcast, but Rather traveled through Afghanistan when news led there. A few years into his service as anchor, Rather began wearing sweaters beneath his suit jacket to soften his on-air appearance for viewers. During the 1980s, Rather gained further renown for his forceful and skeptical reporting on the Iran–Contra affair. He eventually confronted Vice President George H. W. Bush in an on-air interview during the latter's presidential campaign. Bush referred to Rather's "dead air incident" saying: “I want to talk about why I want to be President, why those 41 percent of the people are supporting me. And I don't think it's fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?”Rather ignored Bush's comment. Shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Rather secured an interview with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. On February 24, 2003, Rather conducted another interview with Hussein before the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the interview, Hussein invited Rather to be the moderator of a live television debate between him and George W. Bush. The debate never took place. The Wall Within On June 2, 1988, Rather hosted a CBS News special, The Wall Within. In it, he interviewed six veterans, each of whom said he had witnessed horrible acts in Vietnam. Two of the men said that they had killed civilians, and two others said that they had seen friends die. Each talked about the effects the war had upon their lives—including depression, unemployment, drug use, and homelessness. In 2004, National Review ran an article by Anne Morse entitled "The First Rathergate." She said that almost nothing claimed by participants in The Wall Within was true. Citing the self-published book Stolen Valor (1998) by veteran B. G. Burkett, and investigative journalist Glenna Whitley, Morse said that military records revealed that the six former servicemen had lied about their experiences. Only one served in combat, and two had never been in Vietnam. Killian documents On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly or almost exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Chicago Sun-Times. Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents—former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett—had misled the network about how he had obtained them. On September 20, 2004, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, “If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.” The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate." Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes, and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting, “Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day.” Departure from the CBS Evening News Rather retired as the anchorman and Managing Editor of the CBS Evening News in 2005; his last broadcast was Wednesday, March 9, 2005. He had worked as the anchorman for 24 full years, the longest tenure of anyone in American television history, and for a short time, continued to work as a correspondent for 60 Minutes. Bob Schieffer, a fellow Texan and host of Face the Nation, took over Rather's position on an interim basis, with Katie Couric replacing Schieffer in 2006. Since retiring, Rather has spoken out about what he perceives as a lack of courage by American journalists. On January 24, 2006, Rather spoke to a Seattle audience. Before the speaking engagement, he told a newspaper reporter, “In many ways on many days, [reporters] have sort of adopted the attitude of 'go along, get along.'” “What many of us need is a spine transplant,” Rather added. “Whether it's City Hall, the State House, or the White House, part of our job is to speak truth to power.” Ousted from CBS News In June 2006, reports surfaced that CBS News would most likely not renew Dan Rather's contract. According to a Washington Post article, sources from CBS said that executives at the network decided "there is no future role for Rather." On June 20, 2006, CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus announced that Rather would leave the network after 44 years. Rather issued a separate statement which accompanied the news of the departure: Lawsuit over ouster from CBS Network On September 19, 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS, its former parent company Viacom; CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves; Sumner Redstone, chairman of both Viacom and CBS; and Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. A CBS spokesman claimed that the lawsuit was "old news" and "without merit." On September 21, 2009, Rather's lawyers claimed that Bush's military service would be proven to be a sham, and Rather would be vindicated. On September 29, 2009, a New York state appeals court dismissed Rather's lawsuit against CBS. On January 12, 2010, New York's top court refused to reinstate Rather's $70 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against CBS Corp. In his book titled Rather Outspoken, Rather claims that the lawsuit “took a big whack out of my time, my psyche and my bank balance, but even so, it was worth it.” On May 18, 2012, Rather appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher, and claimed he had been fired for reporting a story about George W. Bush's year of absence from the reserve unit he served with, and that the news corporations had been "very uncomfortable" with running the story. Post-CBS career Following his departure from CBS, Dan Rather joined Mark Cuban's cable network AXS TV (then called HDNet) to host and produce the weekly one-hour news show Dan Rather Reports from 2006 until 2013. Since 2013, Rather has hosted and produced the hour-long series The Big Interview with Dan Rather on AXS TV, where he sits down for in-depth interviews with influential figures in music and entertainment, such as: John Fogerty, Quentin Tarantino, Simon Cowell, Aaron Sorkin, and Sammy Hagar. He has also produced several documentary specials for the network under the banner Dan Rather Presents, including specials about "America's Mental Health Crisis," the United States Secret Service, and "The Shameful Side of International Adoption." Rather also appears frequently on a number of news shows, including MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and on CNN. He has also written for The Huffington Post and Mashable. On May 28, 2007, Rather compared historical events to events in the Star Wars films in the History Channel special titled Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed. In 2012, Rather published an autobiography titled Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News. In 2015, Rather launched an independent production company called News and Guts Media, through which he produces The Big Interview among other projects. In 2015, Rather also began actively posting on Facebook. He credits young staffers at News and Guts Media with pushing him to try social media. While his posts were considerably longer than typical social media posts, they resonated with the audience, which soon grew to more than two million followers. Even late night TV noticed Rather's unusual but effective Facebook presence. Subject matter has covered a range of topics, including: current political events, journalism, and childhood memories. On September 23, 2016, SiriusXM Radio announced a new hour-long weekly program, "Dan Rather's America," airing Tuesday mornings at 10am Eastern on Radio Andy channel 102, debuting on September 27. In the fall of 2017, the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas completed a digital humanities project dedicated to the long career of the journalist that was titled Dan Rather: American Journalist. The culmination of three years of research conducted at the Briscoe Center, the site uses materials from a dozen archives and libraries, and draws from over 25 of the Briscoe Center for American History's news media and photojournalism collections. The website features over 2,000 digitized documents, 300 excerpts from twelve oral history interviews, and 1000 video clips, enabling visitors to dive deep into the history of the last 60 years through the lens of Dan Rather's career. On January 21, 2018, it was announced that Rather would be launching a weekly 30-minute newscast on The Young Turks. Titled The News with Dan Rather, it airs on Mondays at 5:30pm Eastern Time. Personal life Rather married Jean Goebel in 1957. They have a son and daughter, and maintain homes in New York City and Austin, Texas. Their daughter Robin is an environmentalist and community activist in Austin, Texas. Their son Dan is an assistant district attorney in the District Attorney's office in Manhattan, New York. Sam Houston State University renamed its mass communications building after Rather in 1994. The building houses The Houstonian and KSHU, the student-run radio and television stations. In May 2007, Rather received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Siena College in Loudonville, New York, for his lifetime contributions to journalism. A columnist whose work is distributed by King Features Syndicate, Rather continues to speak out against alleged influence in journalism by corporations and governments. At a 2008 conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sponsored by the group Free Press, Rather criticized both local and national news organizations, stating—according to reports—that there is no longer incentive to do “good and valuable news.” Books The Palace Guard, with Gary Paul Gates, 1974. . The Camera Never Blinks: Adventures of a TV Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1977. . I Remember, with Peter Wyden, 1991. . The Camera Never Blinks Twice: The Further Adventures of a Television Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1994. . , 1999. . "The American Dream: Stories from the Heart of Our Nation", 2001. . , with Digby Diehl, 2013. . What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism, with Elliot Kirschner, 2017. .What Unites Us: The Graphic Novel, with Elliot Kirschner, illustrated by Tim Foley, 2021. . Awards He has received numerous Emmy Awards, several Peabody Awards, and various honorary degrees from universities. In addition to these awards, Rather was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2001, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. Criticism As one of the last broadcast news journalists from the era of the "Big Three" network news primacy, Rather was generally regarded highly within his profession by long-serving journalists. Rather has been accused of having a liberal bias."Dan Rather: a pioneer and a lightning rod" at The Christian Science Monitor. Claims of bias Rather's on-screen comments and election-night reporting have come under attack dating back to Richard Nixon's presidency. In a June 2002 interview with Larry King, his long-time co-worker (and self-described liberal), Andy Rooney stated that Rather is “transparently liberal.” During the weeks following the Killian documents stories, Rather received widespread criticism from other journalists and historians. In an interview with commentator Bill Maher, Rather accused Fox News Channel of receiving "talking points" from the Republican-controlled White House. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, who had defended Rather during the Killian documents incident, criticized Rather for not offering any evidence to support the claim. In 2002, Bernard Goldberg published a book with the title Bias, alleging a liberal bias in print and broadcast news organizations. In the book, Goldberg used Dan Rather as a primary example of a news anchorman with a liberal bias. He also criticized the anchor for his criticisms of President George W. Bush's and Vice President Dan Quayle's service in the National Guard, rather than the Active Duty military during the Vietnam War, and questioned Rather's own service. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has accused Rather of having "an unwillingness to challenge official power and policy" in his reporting. Investigative reporter Mark Hertsgaard characterized Rather as a "stern anti-Communist" during the Reagan administration, for allegedly having "reported the pronouncements of public officials with considerable respect." In April 2001, according to a front-page story in The Washington Post, Rather spoke at a Democratic party fundraiser in Austin, Texas, where he was the featured speaker. One of the official hosts for the fundraiser was Rather's daughter, Robin Rather; Rather said that he did not realize that his daughter was a host of the fundraiser. Rather also said that he did not realize that the event was a partisan fundraiser, although he did realize that after he arrived at the event. From Walter Cronkite During an appearance on CNN's American Morning in 2005, former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite said about Rather: “It surprised quite a few people at CBS and elsewhere that, without being able to pull up the ratings beyond third in a three-man field, that they tolerated his being there for so long.” Cronkite also said that he would like to have seen Bob Schieffer in Rather's position sooner. From Dallas CBS news director Eddie Barker In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination while Rather was a Dallas reporter, he interviewed a minister, who said some local schoolchildren had cheered upon learning of the President's shooting. The Associated Press later confirmed the story. A teacher at the school backed up the Rather story, confirming that some students at the school had cheered at the principal's news about Kennedy. Eddie Barker, local Dallas-area news director for CBS, said that Rather had in fact been aware that the children were merely happy about being sent home early, and they had not been given a reason for early school closure (Barker's children attended the school, as he informed Rather). He stated that Rather had deliberately misrepresented the facts by indicating that the children were happy about the shooting. Barker attempted to fire Rather, but was overruled by the national CBS News management. Incidents and controversies 1968 Democratic convention During live coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Rather attempted to interview a delegate from Georgia who appeared as though he was being forcibly removed by men without identification badges. As Rather approached the delegate to question the apparent strong-arm tactics of the Chicago political machine under Mayor Daley, he was punched in the stomach by one of the men, knocking him to the ground. “He lifted me right off the floor and put me away. I was down, the breath knocked out of me, as the whole group blew on by me ... In the CBS control room, they had switched the camera onto me just as I was slugged.” Walter Cronkite, after being told by Rather what happened, added on-air, "I think we got a bunch of thugs here Dan!" Chicago cab ride On November 10, 1980, Rather landed at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and got into a cab. He asked the cab driver to take him to the home of writer Studs Terkel, whom he was interviewing for 60 Minutes. A police spokesman said that the cab driver refused to go to the address and instead "wildly drove through the city streets," with Rather shouting out the window asking for help. The driver was charged with disorderly conduct. Rather called the incident “a rather minor thing.” By the time the case was about to come to trial, he was about to add anchoring the CBS Evening News to his 60 Minutes role at CBS News. Rather declined to press charges, citing a "mounting schedule of reporting assignments." Galloway lawsuit In 1980, Rather and CBS were taken to court when Carl Galloway, a California doctor, claimed that a report on 60 Minutes wrongfully implicated him in an insurance fraud scheme. CBS stated Galloway had signed the bogus report, and was suing Rather because he was upset at being caught. The jury sided with CBS and Rather, and they won the case. During the trial, Galloway's side used outtakes from the TV report showing that one interview was rehearsed. "Courage" For one week in September 1986, Rather signed off his broadcasts to CBS with the word "courage." He said that it was just a signature line, and had nothing to do with the news at the time. Other newscasters ridiculed and parodied Rather, and he dropped it. "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said “I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea.” Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who came to Rather's aid fully confirmed his version of events. The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. The opening track of the 1987 album Lolita Nation by California power pop group Game Theory is titled "Kenneth, What's the Frequency?" In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman. In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12.5-to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010. Dead air On September 11, 1987, Rather walked off the set in anger just before a remote Evening News broadcast from Miami, where Pope John Paul II had begun a rare U.S. tour, when a U.S. Open tennis match was being broadcast into the time scheduled for the newscast. He was upset that the news was being cut into to make room for sports and discussed it with the sports department, and made it clear that if the newscast did not start on time, then CBS Sports should fill the half hour. The Steffi Graf–Lori McNeil tennis match coverage then ended sooner than expected at 6:32 p.m., but Rather had disappeared. (CBS Sports had finally agreed to break away immediately after the match without commentary.) Thus, over 100 affiliates were forced to broadcast six minutes of dead air. Some stations were forced to air a slot of syndicated programming such as a rerun of a game show or a sitcom, and other stations were forced to pull out a technical difficulty telop graphic. Phil Jones, the chairman of the CBS affiliation board and general manager of Kansas City's KCTV (which the station placed a technical difficulty graphic during dead air) wanted an apology from Rather. Meanwhile in Miami, the city's CBS affiliate WTVJ was forced to drop the episode entirely, which ended up airing a syndicated rerun of a game show to fill the station's schedule. The next day, Rather apologized for leaving the anchor desk. The following year, when Rather asked then Vice President Bush about his role in the Iran–Contra affair during a live interview, Bush responded by saying, “Dan, how would you like it if I judged your entire career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?” Roger Ailes had a “mole” at CBS, who alerted him that the goal was to “take Bush out of the race” with a tough interview on Iran-Contra. Ailes alerted Bush on the cab ride over, and fed him the seven minutes retort. The aftermath of the interview showed the episode was a boost for Bush. “The vice president's poll ratings in Iowa and New Hampshire bumped visibly upward.” "Ratherisms" Rather is known for his many colorful analogies and descriptions during live broadcasts. Similar to those used by baseball announcer Red Barber, cycling commentator Phil Liggett, and Formula 1 commentator Murray Walker, these "Ratherisms" are also called "Texanisms" or "Danisms" by some. A few of the more colorful ones, several of which were used throughout the 2008 HBO made-for-TV movie Recount about the 2000 Election, include: “This race is shakier than cafeteria Jell-O.” “This thing is as tight as the rusted lugnuts on a '55 Ford.” His characterization of the Republican Party's assessment of President Obama: “[He] couldn't sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.” In popular culture Rather has been referenced in the television shows Saturday Night Live and Family Guy and many films. An animated caricature of him made a cameo appearance in the JibJab political cartoon, Good to Be in D.C. In 1971, he had a cameo in an episode of the number one hit comedy series All in the Family. Entitled The Man in the Street, series star Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker character excitedly awaits the viewing of a videotaped interview he gave earlier that day for the CBS Evening News. At the last minute, to his dismay, the segment is preempted by the telecast of a Richard Nixon presidential address from the Oval Office. Rather appears, as himself, delivering post-speech analysis from actual news footage. Jean Stapleton, as Archie's scatterbrained wife Edith Bunker, says of Rather how he's there to "...tell us what Mr. Nixon just said." In 2004, he was featured in the documentary film Barbecue: A Texas Love Story by Austin-based director Chris Elley. Two years later, Rather and Elley educated a group of New Yorkers in Madison Square Park about the true meaning of BBQ, and its significance to the identity of the Lone Star State. In the 2006–07 graphic novel Shooting War, which is set in the year 2011, an 80-year-old Dan Rather is shown to be one of the last journalists still reporting from Iraq. He had a cameo in the premiere of the Fall 2007 drama Dirty Sexy Money on ABC television. He guest-starred as himself in The Simpsons episode, "E Pluribus Wiggum." Rather appeared on The Daily Show in May 2009, wearing an Afro wig and mutton-chop sideburns to narrate a segment about the late former President Nixon eating a burrito, as a parody of MSNBC's extensive coverage of President Obama and Vice President Biden's hamburger lunch. He appears in the 2008 award-winning documentary Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story. A skit on the 38th season of Sesame Street featured Anderson Cooper interviewing two grouches, "Walter Cranky" and "Dan Rather Not," who, when asked to answer questions, demurred with the phrase "I'd rather not." Robert Redford portrayed Rather in the 2015 film Truth. Rather appeared in the docudrama Facing Saddam providing his views on Saddam Hussein. Ratings Under Rather's predecessor, Walter Cronkite, the CBS Evening News was a strong #1 in the ratings, which Rather maintained through much of the 1980s. However, Tom Brokaw and his NBC Nightly News, and Peter Jennings of ABC News' World News Tonight, increasing in popularity, eventually cut deep into the Rather broadcast's numbers. See also New Yorkers in journalism References Further reading Dan Rather & Elliot Kirschner (2017). What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. Rather, Dan. The Palace Guard, with Gary Gates Rather, Dan. I Remember, with Peter Wyden. Rather, Dan with Herskowitz, Mickey. The Camera Never Blinks Twice''. 1995. William Morrow. 2nd Saddam interview External links AXS TV The Big Interview Dan Rather: American Journalist (Briscoe Center for American History) Members of the Council on Foreign Relations 1931 births Living people American television reporters and correspondents American war correspondents American war correspondents of the Vietnam War CBS News people Emmy Award winners Peabody Award winners 60 Minutes correspondents Associated Press reporters Houston Chronicle people Television anchors from Houston Journalists from Houston Killian documents controversy People from Wharton, Texas Sam Houston State University alumni Writers from Texas American victims of crime Texas Democrats The Young Turks people American male journalists 20th-century American journalists 21st-century American journalists Journalists from New York City People from Huntsville, Texas Recipients of the Four Freedoms Award Military personnel from Texas

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Was their authenticity ever confirmed?

Was the in Killian documents authenticity ever confirmed?

Dan Rather

On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Chicago Sun-Times. Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents - former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett - had misled the network about how he had obtained them. On September 20, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, "If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question." The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate." Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting "Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day." CANNOTANSWER

Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery.

Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. (; born October 31, 1931) is an American journalist and former national evening news anchor. Rather began his career in Texas, becoming a national name after his reporting saved thousands of lives during Hurricane Carla in September 1961. Rather spontaneously created the first radar weather report by overlaying a transparent map over a radar image of Hurricane Carla. In his first national broadcast, he helped initiate the successful evacuation of 350,000 people. Rather reported from Dallas in November 1963 at the time that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Based on his reporting, he was promoted at CBS News, where he served as White House correspondent beginning in 1964. He served as foreign correspondent in London and Vietnam over the next two years before returning to the White House correspondent position. He covered the presidency of Richard Nixon, including Nixon's trip to China, the Watergate scandal, and the president's resignation. In 1981, Rather was promoted to news anchor for the CBS Evening News, a role he occupied for 24 years. Along with Peter Jennings at ABC News and Tom Brokaw at NBC News, he was one of the "Big Three" nightly news anchors in the U.S. from the 1980s through the early 2000s. He frequently contributed to CBS's weekly news magazine, 60 Minutes. Rather left the anchor desk in 2005 following the Killian documents controversy, in which he presented unauthenticated documents in a news report on President George W. Bush's Vietnam War–era service in the National Guard. He continued to work with CBS until 2006, when he was abruptly fired. In September 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former parent company Viacom. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. An intermediate New York state appeals court dismissed the lawsuit in September 2009, and the New York Court of Appeals refused to reinstate it in January 2010. On the cable channel AXS TV (then called HDNet), Rather hosted Dan Rather Reports, a 60 Minutes–style investigative news program, from 2006 to 2013. He also hosts several other projects for AXS TV, including Dan Rather Presents, which provides in-depth reporting on broad topics such as mental health care or adoption, and The Big Interview with Dan Rather, in which he conducts long-form interviews with musicians and other entertainers. In January 2018, he began hosting an online newscast called The News with Dan Rather on The Young Turks' YouTube channel. Early life Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. was born on October 31, 1931, in Wharton County, Texas, the son of Daniel Irvin Rather Sr., a ditch digger and pipe layer, and the former Byrl Veda Page. The Rathers moved to Houston when he was a child, where Dan attended Lovett Elementary School and Hamilton Middle School. He graduated in 1950 from John H. Reagan High School in Houston. In 1953, Rather earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas, where he was editor of the school newspaper, The Houstonian. He was also a member of the Caballeros, the founding organization of the Epsilon Psi chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity. While in college, Rather worked for KSAM-FM radio in Huntsville, calling junior high, high school, and Sam Houston State football games. After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Rather briefly attended South Texas College of Law in Houston. In January 1954, Rather enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and was sent to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego. He was soon discharged, however, because he was found to have had rheumatic fever as a child, a fact he had omitted during the enlistment process. Early career Rather began his journalism career in 1950 as an Associated Press reporter in Huntsville, Texas. Later, he was a reporter for United Press (1950–1952), several Texas radio stations, and the Houston Chronicle (1954–1955). Around 1955, Rather wrote a piece on heroin. Under the auspices of the Houston Police, he tried a dose of the drug, which he characterized as "a special kind of hell." He worked for four seasons as the play-by-play announcer for the University of Houston football team. During the 1959 minor league baseball season, Rather was the play-by-play radio announcer for the Texas League Houston Buffs. In 1959, Rather began his television career as a reporter for KTRK-TV, the ABC affiliate in Houston. He was subsequently promoted to the director of news for KHOU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Houston. In September 1961, Rather covered Hurricane Carla for KHOU-TV, broadcasting from the then National Weather Center in Galveston. He is noted for showing the first radar image of a hurricane on TV. He conceived of overlaying a transparent map over the radar screen, in order to show the size of Hurricane Carla to the audience. Convinced of the threat, more than 350,000 people evacuated from the area, the largest known evacuation to that time. Their actions are believed to have saved thousands of lives compared to the previous hurricane, which had killed 6,000 to 12,000 people. Rather's live coverage of Carla was broadcast by New York and national stations. Ray Miller, news director of KPRC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Houston, also mentored Rather in the early years. On February 28, 1962, Rather left Houston for New York City for a six-month trial initiation at CBS. Rather did not fit in easily on the East Coast. His first reports for CBS included coverage of the crash of American Airlines Flight 1 in Jamaica Bay, and a report on the suffocation of children at a hospital in Binghamton, New York. Shortly after, Rather was made chief of CBS's Southwest bureau in Dallas. In August 1963, he was appointed chief of the Southern bureau in New Orleans, responsible for coverage of news events in the South, Southwest, Mexico and Central America. CBS News JFK assassination to Watergate In his autobiography, Rather noted that he was in Dallas in November 1963 to return film from an interview in Uvalde at the ranch of former Vice President John Nance Garner, who celebrated his 95th birthday on November 22. He happened to be "on the other side of the railroad tracks, beyond the triple underpass, thirty yards from a grassy knoll that would later figure in so many conspiracy theories." His job was to fetch a film drop from a camera truck at that location, and take it to the station for editing. He did not witness the shooting of Kennedy, and knew nothing of the events until he reached KRLD, having run through Dealey Plaza. He later wrote: “The moment I cleared the railroad tracks I saw a scene I will never forget. Some people were lying on the grass, some screaming, some running, some pointing. Policemen swarmed everywhere and distinctly above the din, I heard one shout, 'DON'T ANYBODY PANIC.' And of course, there was nothing but panic wherever you looked.” In his autobiography, Rather said he was one of the first to view the Zapruder film showing the assassination, and the first to describe it on television. Rather reported the fatal headshot as forcing Kennedy's head forward, but it was thrown backward. Later, he reported that some Dallas schoolchildren had applauded when they were notified of the president's death. Administrators said they had announced that school was to be dismissed early, and did not mention the assassination. However, teacher Joanna Morgan confirmed that students had cheered at the news that Kennedy was shot. This story infuriated local journalists at then-CBS affiliate KRLD-TV (now Fox-owned-and-operated KDFW-TV). Rather's reporting during the national mourning period following the Kennedy assassination and subsequent events impressed CBS News management. In 1964, they selected him for the network's White House correspondent position. In 1965, Rather served as a foreign correspondent for CBS in London, and in 1966 in Vietnam. He served again as White House correspondent during the presidency of Richard Nixon. In 1970, he was also assigned as anchor for the CBS Sunday Night News (1970–73; 1974–75), and later for the CBS Saturday Evening News (1973–76). Rather was among those journalists who accompanied Nixon to China. He later covered the Watergate investigation, as well as the impeachment proceedings against Nixon in Congress. CBS Evening News anchor After President Nixon's resignation in 1974, Rather became chief correspondent for the documentary series CBS Reports. In December 1975, he became a correspondent of the long-running Sunday night news show 60 Minutes—at the time the program was moved from a Sunday afternoon time-slot to primetime. Success there helped Rather pull ahead of longtime correspondent Roger Mudd, who was in line to succeed Walter Cronkite as anchor and Managing Editor of The CBS Evening News. Rather succeeded to the news anchor position after Cronkite's retirement, making his first broadcast on March 9, 1981. Rather had a significantly different style of reporting the news. In contrast to the avuncular Cronkite, who ended his newscast with “That's the way it is,” Rather searched to find a broadcast ending more suitable to his tastes. For one week in September 1986, with CBS the target of potentially hostile new ownership, Rather tried ending his broadcasts with the word "courage," and was roundly ridiculed for it. For nearly two decades, Rather ended the show with: “That's part of our world tonight.” Rather also held other positions during his time as anchor. In January 1988, he became host of the newly created 48 Hours, and in January 1999, Rather joined the new 60 Minutes II as a correspondent. Ratings for the Evening News with Rather at the helm fluctuated wildly, at a time when more alternatives to TV news were developing. After a dip to second place, Rather regained the top spot in 1985 until 1989, when he ceded the ratings peak to rival Peter Jennings at ABC's World News Tonight. By 1992, however, the Evening News had fallen to third place of the three major networks. It rose in rankings in 2005, when Bob Schieffer became the interim anchor between Rather and Katie Couric. It briefly moved ahead of ABC World News Tonight in the wake of the death of Peter Jennings, but remained behind NBC Nightly News. Rather was a frequent collaborator with CBS News producer Susan Zirinsky, a leading member of the news division's staff. In 1987, new CBS owner Laurence Tisch oversaw layoffs of hundreds of CBS News employees, in a major shake-up of the network. Among those to go were correspondents such as David Andelman, Fred Graham, Morton Dean, and Ike Pappas. Fewer videotape crews were dispatched to cover stories, and numerous bureaus were closed. Critics cited the cutbacks as a major factor in CBS News' fall into third place in the ratings. For a short time from 1993 to 1995, Rather co-anchored the evening news with Connie Chung. Chung had been a Washington, DC correspondent for CBS News, and anchored short news updates on the West Coast. On joining the CBS Evening News, she reported "pop news" stories. In one widely cited case, she aggressively pursued Tonya Harding, who was accused of a plot to injure fellow Olympic ice skater Nancy Kerrigan. After Chung left the network, Rather went back to doing the newscast alone. By the 2005–06 season, the end of Rather's time as anchor, CBS Evening News lagged behind NBC Nightly News and ABC World News Tonight in the ratings. But it still drew approximately 5.5 million viewers a night. Criticism of Rather reached a fever pitch after 60 Minutes II ran his 2004 report about President Bush's military record. Numerous critics questioned the authenticity of the documents upon which the report was based. Rather subsequently admitted on the air that the documents' authenticity could not be proven. In the aftermath, CBS fired several members of CBS News staff but temporarily retained Rather, until his contract was up for renewal the following year, whereupon he was completely ousted. Journalistic history and influence Nixon During Richard Nixon's presidency, critics accused Rather of biased coverage against him. At a Houston news conference in March 1974, Nixon fielded a question from Rather, still CBS's White House correspondent, who said, “Thank you, Mr. President. Dan Rather, of CBS News.” The room filled with jeers and applause, prompting Nixon to joke, “Are you running for something?” Rather replied, “No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?” He questioned whether Nixon was cooperating with the grand jury investigation and House Judiciary Committee in relation to the Watergate scandal. NBC's Tom Brokaw has said the network considered hiring him to replace Rather as its White House correspondent, but dropped it after word was leaked to the press. Rather was believed to have provided tough coverage of the Watergate scandal, raising his profile. Space Shuttle Challenger disaster In January 1986, NASA faced repeated delays in the preparations to launch the Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger in close sequence. Rather described the January 10 delay of Columbia as: “star-crossed space shuttle Columbia stood ready for launch again today, and once more, the launch was scrubbed. Heavy rain was the cause this time. The launch has been postponed so often since its original date, December 18, that it's now known as mission impossible.”This was considered an example of the "biting sarcasm" the media used related to NASA's scheduling. Columbia launched on January 12. On January 27, Rather's reporting of the expected Challenger launch began as follows: On January 28, Challenger'''s explosion and destruction occurred 73 seconds after launch. Afghanistan, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush During the Soviet–Afghan War, Rather was filmed reporting near the front lines while wearing a traditional mujahideen headdress and garments. Rather attracted an Evening News audience (and was nicknamed "Gunga Dan"). The American comic strip Doonesbury spoofed his actions. Rather's reports were later revealed to have been influential to Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-Texas), who led an effort to help the struggling mujahideen. The CIA developed its largest covert operation to supply aid and advanced arms to the mujahideen. The Soviets eventually quit Afghanistan. Rather gained the anchor spot on the Evening News. He was competing with Roger Mudd, a more senior correspondent and a frequent substitute anchor for Walter Cronkite on Evening News. Mudd had also anchored the Sunday evening broadcast, but Rather traveled through Afghanistan when news led there. A few years into his service as anchor, Rather began wearing sweaters beneath his suit jacket to soften his on-air appearance for viewers. During the 1980s, Rather gained further renown for his forceful and skeptical reporting on the Iran–Contra affair. He eventually confronted Vice President George H. W. Bush in an on-air interview during the latter's presidential campaign. Bush referred to Rather's "dead air incident" saying: “I want to talk about why I want to be President, why those 41 percent of the people are supporting me. And I don't think it's fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?”Rather ignored Bush's comment. Shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Rather secured an interview with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. On February 24, 2003, Rather conducted another interview with Hussein before the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the interview, Hussein invited Rather to be the moderator of a live television debate between him and George W. Bush. The debate never took place. The Wall Within On June 2, 1988, Rather hosted a CBS News special, The Wall Within. In it, he interviewed six veterans, each of whom said he had witnessed horrible acts in Vietnam. Two of the men said that they had killed civilians, and two others said that they had seen friends die. Each talked about the effects the war had upon their lives—including depression, unemployment, drug use, and homelessness. In 2004, National Review ran an article by Anne Morse entitled "The First Rathergate." She said that almost nothing claimed by participants in The Wall Within was true. Citing the self-published book Stolen Valor (1998) by veteran B. G. Burkett, and investigative journalist Glenna Whitley, Morse said that military records revealed that the six former servicemen had lied about their experiences. Only one served in combat, and two had never been in Vietnam. Killian documents On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly or almost exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Chicago Sun-Times. Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents—former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett—had misled the network about how he had obtained them. On September 20, 2004, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, “If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.” The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate." Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes, and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting, “Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day.” Departure from the CBS Evening News Rather retired as the anchorman and Managing Editor of the CBS Evening News in 2005; his last broadcast was Wednesday, March 9, 2005. He had worked as the anchorman for 24 full years, the longest tenure of anyone in American television history, and for a short time, continued to work as a correspondent for 60 Minutes. Bob Schieffer, a fellow Texan and host of Face the Nation, took over Rather's position on an interim basis, with Katie Couric replacing Schieffer in 2006. Since retiring, Rather has spoken out about what he perceives as a lack of courage by American journalists. On January 24, 2006, Rather spoke to a Seattle audience. Before the speaking engagement, he told a newspaper reporter, “In many ways on many days, [reporters] have sort of adopted the attitude of 'go along, get along.'” “What many of us need is a spine transplant,” Rather added. “Whether it's City Hall, the State House, or the White House, part of our job is to speak truth to power.” Ousted from CBS News In June 2006, reports surfaced that CBS News would most likely not renew Dan Rather's contract. According to a Washington Post article, sources from CBS said that executives at the network decided "there is no future role for Rather." On June 20, 2006, CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus announced that Rather would leave the network after 44 years. Rather issued a separate statement which accompanied the news of the departure: Lawsuit over ouster from CBS Network On September 19, 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS, its former parent company Viacom; CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves; Sumner Redstone, chairman of both Viacom and CBS; and Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. A CBS spokesman claimed that the lawsuit was "old news" and "without merit." On September 21, 2009, Rather's lawyers claimed that Bush's military service would be proven to be a sham, and Rather would be vindicated. On September 29, 2009, a New York state appeals court dismissed Rather's lawsuit against CBS. On January 12, 2010, New York's top court refused to reinstate Rather's $70 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against CBS Corp. In his book titled Rather Outspoken, Rather claims that the lawsuit “took a big whack out of my time, my psyche and my bank balance, but even so, it was worth it.” On May 18, 2012, Rather appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher, and claimed he had been fired for reporting a story about George W. Bush's year of absence from the reserve unit he served with, and that the news corporations had been "very uncomfortable" with running the story. Post-CBS career Following his departure from CBS, Dan Rather joined Mark Cuban's cable network AXS TV (then called HDNet) to host and produce the weekly one-hour news show Dan Rather Reports from 2006 until 2013. Since 2013, Rather has hosted and produced the hour-long series The Big Interview with Dan Rather on AXS TV, where he sits down for in-depth interviews with influential figures in music and entertainment, such as: John Fogerty, Quentin Tarantino, Simon Cowell, Aaron Sorkin, and Sammy Hagar. He has also produced several documentary specials for the network under the banner Dan Rather Presents, including specials about "America's Mental Health Crisis," the United States Secret Service, and "The Shameful Side of International Adoption." Rather also appears frequently on a number of news shows, including MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and on CNN. He has also written for The Huffington Post and Mashable. On May 28, 2007, Rather compared historical events to events in the Star Wars films in the History Channel special titled Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed. In 2012, Rather published an autobiography titled Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News. In 2015, Rather launched an independent production company called News and Guts Media, through which he produces The Big Interview among other projects. In 2015, Rather also began actively posting on Facebook. He credits young staffers at News and Guts Media with pushing him to try social media. While his posts were considerably longer than typical social media posts, they resonated with the audience, which soon grew to more than two million followers. Even late night TV noticed Rather's unusual but effective Facebook presence. Subject matter has covered a range of topics, including: current political events, journalism, and childhood memories. On September 23, 2016, SiriusXM Radio announced a new hour-long weekly program, "Dan Rather's America," airing Tuesday mornings at 10am Eastern on Radio Andy channel 102, debuting on September 27. In the fall of 2017, the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas completed a digital humanities project dedicated to the long career of the journalist that was titled Dan Rather: American Journalist. The culmination of three years of research conducted at the Briscoe Center, the site uses materials from a dozen archives and libraries, and draws from over 25 of the Briscoe Center for American History's news media and photojournalism collections. The website features over 2,000 digitized documents, 300 excerpts from twelve oral history interviews, and 1000 video clips, enabling visitors to dive deep into the history of the last 60 years through the lens of Dan Rather's career. On January 21, 2018, it was announced that Rather would be launching a weekly 30-minute newscast on The Young Turks. Titled The News with Dan Rather, it airs on Mondays at 5:30pm Eastern Time. Personal life Rather married Jean Goebel in 1957. They have a son and daughter, and maintain homes in New York City and Austin, Texas. Their daughter Robin is an environmentalist and community activist in Austin, Texas. Their son Dan is an assistant district attorney in the District Attorney's office in Manhattan, New York. Sam Houston State University renamed its mass communications building after Rather in 1994. The building houses The Houstonian and KSHU, the student-run radio and television stations. In May 2007, Rather received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Siena College in Loudonville, New York, for his lifetime contributions to journalism. A columnist whose work is distributed by King Features Syndicate, Rather continues to speak out against alleged influence in journalism by corporations and governments. At a 2008 conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sponsored by the group Free Press, Rather criticized both local and national news organizations, stating—according to reports—that there is no longer incentive to do “good and valuable news.” Books The Palace Guard, with Gary Paul Gates, 1974. . The Camera Never Blinks: Adventures of a TV Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1977. . I Remember, with Peter Wyden, 1991. . The Camera Never Blinks Twice: The Further Adventures of a Television Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1994. . , 1999. . "The American Dream: Stories from the Heart of Our Nation", 2001. . , with Digby Diehl, 2013. . What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism, with Elliot Kirschner, 2017. .What Unites Us: The Graphic Novel, with Elliot Kirschner, illustrated by Tim Foley, 2021. . Awards He has received numerous Emmy Awards, several Peabody Awards, and various honorary degrees from universities. In addition to these awards, Rather was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2001, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. Criticism As one of the last broadcast news journalists from the era of the "Big Three" network news primacy, Rather was generally regarded highly within his profession by long-serving journalists. Rather has been accused of having a liberal bias."Dan Rather: a pioneer and a lightning rod" at The Christian Science Monitor. Claims of bias Rather's on-screen comments and election-night reporting have come under attack dating back to Richard Nixon's presidency. In a June 2002 interview with Larry King, his long-time co-worker (and self-described liberal), Andy Rooney stated that Rather is “transparently liberal.” During the weeks following the Killian documents stories, Rather received widespread criticism from other journalists and historians. In an interview with commentator Bill Maher, Rather accused Fox News Channel of receiving "talking points" from the Republican-controlled White House. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, who had defended Rather during the Killian documents incident, criticized Rather for not offering any evidence to support the claim. In 2002, Bernard Goldberg published a book with the title Bias, alleging a liberal bias in print and broadcast news organizations. In the book, Goldberg used Dan Rather as a primary example of a news anchorman with a liberal bias. He also criticized the anchor for his criticisms of President George W. Bush's and Vice President Dan Quayle's service in the National Guard, rather than the Active Duty military during the Vietnam War, and questioned Rather's own service. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has accused Rather of having "an unwillingness to challenge official power and policy" in his reporting. Investigative reporter Mark Hertsgaard characterized Rather as a "stern anti-Communist" during the Reagan administration, for allegedly having "reported the pronouncements of public officials with considerable respect." In April 2001, according to a front-page story in The Washington Post, Rather spoke at a Democratic party fundraiser in Austin, Texas, where he was the featured speaker. One of the official hosts for the fundraiser was Rather's daughter, Robin Rather; Rather said that he did not realize that his daughter was a host of the fundraiser. Rather also said that he did not realize that the event was a partisan fundraiser, although he did realize that after he arrived at the event. From Walter Cronkite During an appearance on CNN's American Morning in 2005, former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite said about Rather: “It surprised quite a few people at CBS and elsewhere that, without being able to pull up the ratings beyond third in a three-man field, that they tolerated his being there for so long.” Cronkite also said that he would like to have seen Bob Schieffer in Rather's position sooner. From Dallas CBS news director Eddie Barker In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination while Rather was a Dallas reporter, he interviewed a minister, who said some local schoolchildren had cheered upon learning of the President's shooting. The Associated Press later confirmed the story. A teacher at the school backed up the Rather story, confirming that some students at the school had cheered at the principal's news about Kennedy. Eddie Barker, local Dallas-area news director for CBS, said that Rather had in fact been aware that the children were merely happy about being sent home early, and they had not been given a reason for early school closure (Barker's children attended the school, as he informed Rather). He stated that Rather had deliberately misrepresented the facts by indicating that the children were happy about the shooting. Barker attempted to fire Rather, but was overruled by the national CBS News management. Incidents and controversies 1968 Democratic convention During live coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Rather attempted to interview a delegate from Georgia who appeared as though he was being forcibly removed by men without identification badges. As Rather approached the delegate to question the apparent strong-arm tactics of the Chicago political machine under Mayor Daley, he was punched in the stomach by one of the men, knocking him to the ground. “He lifted me right off the floor and put me away. I was down, the breath knocked out of me, as the whole group blew on by me ... In the CBS control room, they had switched the camera onto me just as I was slugged.” Walter Cronkite, after being told by Rather what happened, added on-air, "I think we got a bunch of thugs here Dan!" Chicago cab ride On November 10, 1980, Rather landed at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and got into a cab. He asked the cab driver to take him to the home of writer Studs Terkel, whom he was interviewing for 60 Minutes. A police spokesman said that the cab driver refused to go to the address and instead "wildly drove through the city streets," with Rather shouting out the window asking for help. The driver was charged with disorderly conduct. Rather called the incident “a rather minor thing.” By the time the case was about to come to trial, he was about to add anchoring the CBS Evening News to his 60 Minutes role at CBS News. Rather declined to press charges, citing a "mounting schedule of reporting assignments." Galloway lawsuit In 1980, Rather and CBS were taken to court when Carl Galloway, a California doctor, claimed that a report on 60 Minutes wrongfully implicated him in an insurance fraud scheme. CBS stated Galloway had signed the bogus report, and was suing Rather because he was upset at being caught. The jury sided with CBS and Rather, and they won the case. During the trial, Galloway's side used outtakes from the TV report showing that one interview was rehearsed. "Courage" For one week in September 1986, Rather signed off his broadcasts to CBS with the word "courage." He said that it was just a signature line, and had nothing to do with the news at the time. Other newscasters ridiculed and parodied Rather, and he dropped it. "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said “I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea.” Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who came to Rather's aid fully confirmed his version of events. The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. The opening track of the 1987 album Lolita Nation by California power pop group Game Theory is titled "Kenneth, What's the Frequency?" In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman. In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12.5-to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010. Dead air On September 11, 1987, Rather walked off the set in anger just before a remote Evening News broadcast from Miami, where Pope John Paul II had begun a rare U.S. tour, when a U.S. Open tennis match was being broadcast into the time scheduled for the newscast. He was upset that the news was being cut into to make room for sports and discussed it with the sports department, and made it clear that if the newscast did not start on time, then CBS Sports should fill the half hour. The Steffi Graf–Lori McNeil tennis match coverage then ended sooner than expected at 6:32 p.m., but Rather had disappeared. (CBS Sports had finally agreed to break away immediately after the match without commentary.) Thus, over 100 affiliates were forced to broadcast six minutes of dead air. Some stations were forced to air a slot of syndicated programming such as a rerun of a game show or a sitcom, and other stations were forced to pull out a technical difficulty telop graphic. Phil Jones, the chairman of the CBS affiliation board and general manager of Kansas City's KCTV (which the station placed a technical difficulty graphic during dead air) wanted an apology from Rather. Meanwhile in Miami, the city's CBS affiliate WTVJ was forced to drop the episode entirely, which ended up airing a syndicated rerun of a game show to fill the station's schedule. The next day, Rather apologized for leaving the anchor desk. The following year, when Rather asked then Vice President Bush about his role in the Iran–Contra affair during a live interview, Bush responded by saying, “Dan, how would you like it if I judged your entire career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?” Roger Ailes had a “mole” at CBS, who alerted him that the goal was to “take Bush out of the race” with a tough interview on Iran-Contra. Ailes alerted Bush on the cab ride over, and fed him the seven minutes retort. The aftermath of the interview showed the episode was a boost for Bush. “The vice president's poll ratings in Iowa and New Hampshire bumped visibly upward.” "Ratherisms" Rather is known for his many colorful analogies and descriptions during live broadcasts. Similar to those used by baseball announcer Red Barber, cycling commentator Phil Liggett, and Formula 1 commentator Murray Walker, these "Ratherisms" are also called "Texanisms" or "Danisms" by some. A few of the more colorful ones, several of which were used throughout the 2008 HBO made-for-TV movie Recount about the 2000 Election, include: “This race is shakier than cafeteria Jell-O.” “This thing is as tight as the rusted lugnuts on a '55 Ford.” His characterization of the Republican Party's assessment of President Obama: “[He] couldn't sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.” In popular culture Rather has been referenced in the television shows Saturday Night Live and Family Guy and many films. An animated caricature of him made a cameo appearance in the JibJab political cartoon, Good to Be in D.C. In 1971, he had a cameo in an episode of the number one hit comedy series All in the Family. Entitled The Man in the Street, series star Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker character excitedly awaits the viewing of a videotaped interview he gave earlier that day for the CBS Evening News. At the last minute, to his dismay, the segment is preempted by the telecast of a Richard Nixon presidential address from the Oval Office. Rather appears, as himself, delivering post-speech analysis from actual news footage. Jean Stapleton, as Archie's scatterbrained wife Edith Bunker, says of Rather how he's there to "...tell us what Mr. Nixon just said." In 2004, he was featured in the documentary film Barbecue: A Texas Love Story by Austin-based director Chris Elley. Two years later, Rather and Elley educated a group of New Yorkers in Madison Square Park about the true meaning of BBQ, and its significance to the identity of the Lone Star State. In the 2006–07 graphic novel Shooting War, which is set in the year 2011, an 80-year-old Dan Rather is shown to be one of the last journalists still reporting from Iraq. He had a cameo in the premiere of the Fall 2007 drama Dirty Sexy Money on ABC television. He guest-starred as himself in The Simpsons episode, "E Pluribus Wiggum." Rather appeared on The Daily Show in May 2009, wearing an Afro wig and mutton-chop sideburns to narrate a segment about the late former President Nixon eating a burrito, as a parody of MSNBC's extensive coverage of President Obama and Vice President Biden's hamburger lunch. He appears in the 2008 award-winning documentary Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story. A skit on the 38th season of Sesame Street featured Anderson Cooper interviewing two grouches, "Walter Cranky" and "Dan Rather Not," who, when asked to answer questions, demurred with the phrase "I'd rather not." Robert Redford portrayed Rather in the 2015 film Truth. Rather appeared in the docudrama Facing Saddam providing his views on Saddam Hussein. Ratings Under Rather's predecessor, Walter Cronkite, the CBS Evening News was a strong #1 in the ratings, which Rather maintained through much of the 1980s. However, Tom Brokaw and his NBC Nightly News, and Peter Jennings of ABC News' World News Tonight, increasing in popularity, eventually cut deep into the Rather broadcast's numbers. See also New Yorkers in journalism References Further reading Dan Rather & Elliot Kirschner (2017). What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. Rather, Dan. The Palace Guard, with Gary Gates Rather, Dan. I Remember, with Peter Wyden. Rather, Dan with Herskowitz, Mickey. The Camera Never Blinks Twice''. 1995. William Morrow. 2nd Saddam interview External links AXS TV The Big Interview Dan Rather: American Journalist (Briscoe Center for American History) Members of the Council on Foreign Relations 1931 births Living people American television reporters and correspondents American war correspondents American war correspondents of the Vietnam War CBS News people Emmy Award winners Peabody Award winners 60 Minutes correspondents Associated Press reporters Houston Chronicle people Television anchors from Houston Journalists from Houston Killian documents controversy People from Wharton, Texas Sam Houston State University alumni Writers from Texas American victims of crime Texas Democrats The Young Turks people American male journalists 20th-century American journalists 21st-century American journalists Journalists from New York City People from Huntsville, Texas Recipients of the Four Freedoms Award Military personnel from Texas

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Did Rather ever win any awards related to this reporting?

Did Rather ever win any awards related to the Killian documents?

Dan Rather

On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Chicago Sun-Times. Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents - former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett - had misled the network about how he had obtained them. On September 20, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, "If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question." The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate." Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting "Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day." CANNOTANSWER

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Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. (; born October 31, 1931) is an American journalist and former national evening news anchor. Rather began his career in Texas, becoming a national name after his reporting saved thousands of lives during Hurricane Carla in September 1961. Rather spontaneously created the first radar weather report by overlaying a transparent map over a radar image of Hurricane Carla. In his first national broadcast, he helped initiate the successful evacuation of 350,000 people. Rather reported from Dallas in November 1963 at the time that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Based on his reporting, he was promoted at CBS News, where he served as White House correspondent beginning in 1964. He served as foreign correspondent in London and Vietnam over the next two years before returning to the White House correspondent position. He covered the presidency of Richard Nixon, including Nixon's trip to China, the Watergate scandal, and the president's resignation. In 1981, Rather was promoted to news anchor for the CBS Evening News, a role he occupied for 24 years. Along with Peter Jennings at ABC News and Tom Brokaw at NBC News, he was one of the "Big Three" nightly news anchors in the U.S. from the 1980s through the early 2000s. He frequently contributed to CBS's weekly news magazine, 60 Minutes. Rather left the anchor desk in 2005 following the Killian documents controversy, in which he presented unauthenticated documents in a news report on President George W. Bush's Vietnam War–era service in the National Guard. He continued to work with CBS until 2006, when he was abruptly fired. In September 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former parent company Viacom. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. An intermediate New York state appeals court dismissed the lawsuit in September 2009, and the New York Court of Appeals refused to reinstate it in January 2010. On the cable channel AXS TV (then called HDNet), Rather hosted Dan Rather Reports, a 60 Minutes–style investigative news program, from 2006 to 2013. He also hosts several other projects for AXS TV, including Dan Rather Presents, which provides in-depth reporting on broad topics such as mental health care or adoption, and The Big Interview with Dan Rather, in which he conducts long-form interviews with musicians and other entertainers. In January 2018, he began hosting an online newscast called The News with Dan Rather on The Young Turks' YouTube channel. Early life Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. was born on October 31, 1931, in Wharton County, Texas, the son of Daniel Irvin Rather Sr., a ditch digger and pipe layer, and the former Byrl Veda Page. The Rathers moved to Houston when he was a child, where Dan attended Lovett Elementary School and Hamilton Middle School. He graduated in 1950 from John H. Reagan High School in Houston. In 1953, Rather earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas, where he was editor of the school newspaper, The Houstonian. He was also a member of the Caballeros, the founding organization of the Epsilon Psi chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity. While in college, Rather worked for KSAM-FM radio in Huntsville, calling junior high, high school, and Sam Houston State football games. After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Rather briefly attended South Texas College of Law in Houston. In January 1954, Rather enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and was sent to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego. He was soon discharged, however, because he was found to have had rheumatic fever as a child, a fact he had omitted during the enlistment process. Early career Rather began his journalism career in 1950 as an Associated Press reporter in Huntsville, Texas. Later, he was a reporter for United Press (1950–1952), several Texas radio stations, and the Houston Chronicle (1954–1955). Around 1955, Rather wrote a piece on heroin. Under the auspices of the Houston Police, he tried a dose of the drug, which he characterized as "a special kind of hell." He worked for four seasons as the play-by-play announcer for the University of Houston football team. During the 1959 minor league baseball season, Rather was the play-by-play radio announcer for the Texas League Houston Buffs. In 1959, Rather began his television career as a reporter for KTRK-TV, the ABC affiliate in Houston. He was subsequently promoted to the director of news for KHOU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Houston. In September 1961, Rather covered Hurricane Carla for KHOU-TV, broadcasting from the then National Weather Center in Galveston. He is noted for showing the first radar image of a hurricane on TV. He conceived of overlaying a transparent map over the radar screen, in order to show the size of Hurricane Carla to the audience. Convinced of the threat, more than 350,000 people evacuated from the area, the largest known evacuation to that time. Their actions are believed to have saved thousands of lives compared to the previous hurricane, which had killed 6,000 to 12,000 people. Rather's live coverage of Carla was broadcast by New York and national stations. Ray Miller, news director of KPRC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Houston, also mentored Rather in the early years. On February 28, 1962, Rather left Houston for New York City for a six-month trial initiation at CBS. Rather did not fit in easily on the East Coast. His first reports for CBS included coverage of the crash of American Airlines Flight 1 in Jamaica Bay, and a report on the suffocation of children at a hospital in Binghamton, New York. Shortly after, Rather was made chief of CBS's Southwest bureau in Dallas. In August 1963, he was appointed chief of the Southern bureau in New Orleans, responsible for coverage of news events in the South, Southwest, Mexico and Central America. CBS News JFK assassination to Watergate In his autobiography, Rather noted that he was in Dallas in November 1963 to return film from an interview in Uvalde at the ranch of former Vice President John Nance Garner, who celebrated his 95th birthday on November 22. He happened to be "on the other side of the railroad tracks, beyond the triple underpass, thirty yards from a grassy knoll that would later figure in so many conspiracy theories." His job was to fetch a film drop from a camera truck at that location, and take it to the station for editing. He did not witness the shooting of Kennedy, and knew nothing of the events until he reached KRLD, having run through Dealey Plaza. He later wrote: “The moment I cleared the railroad tracks I saw a scene I will never forget. Some people were lying on the grass, some screaming, some running, some pointing. Policemen swarmed everywhere and distinctly above the din, I heard one shout, 'DON'T ANYBODY PANIC.' And of course, there was nothing but panic wherever you looked.” In his autobiography, Rather said he was one of the first to view the Zapruder film showing the assassination, and the first to describe it on television. Rather reported the fatal headshot as forcing Kennedy's head forward, but it was thrown backward. Later, he reported that some Dallas schoolchildren had applauded when they were notified of the president's death. Administrators said they had announced that school was to be dismissed early, and did not mention the assassination. However, teacher Joanna Morgan confirmed that students had cheered at the news that Kennedy was shot. This story infuriated local journalists at then-CBS affiliate KRLD-TV (now Fox-owned-and-operated KDFW-TV). Rather's reporting during the national mourning period following the Kennedy assassination and subsequent events impressed CBS News management. In 1964, they selected him for the network's White House correspondent position. In 1965, Rather served as a foreign correspondent for CBS in London, and in 1966 in Vietnam. He served again as White House correspondent during the presidency of Richard Nixon. In 1970, he was also assigned as anchor for the CBS Sunday Night News (1970–73; 1974–75), and later for the CBS Saturday Evening News (1973–76). Rather was among those journalists who accompanied Nixon to China. He later covered the Watergate investigation, as well as the impeachment proceedings against Nixon in Congress. CBS Evening News anchor After President Nixon's resignation in 1974, Rather became chief correspondent for the documentary series CBS Reports. In December 1975, he became a correspondent of the long-running Sunday night news show 60 Minutes—at the time the program was moved from a Sunday afternoon time-slot to primetime. Success there helped Rather pull ahead of longtime correspondent Roger Mudd, who was in line to succeed Walter Cronkite as anchor and Managing Editor of The CBS Evening News. Rather succeeded to the news anchor position after Cronkite's retirement, making his first broadcast on March 9, 1981. Rather had a significantly different style of reporting the news. In contrast to the avuncular Cronkite, who ended his newscast with “That's the way it is,” Rather searched to find a broadcast ending more suitable to his tastes. For one week in September 1986, with CBS the target of potentially hostile new ownership, Rather tried ending his broadcasts with the word "courage," and was roundly ridiculed for it. For nearly two decades, Rather ended the show with: “That's part of our world tonight.” Rather also held other positions during his time as anchor. In January 1988, he became host of the newly created 48 Hours, and in January 1999, Rather joined the new 60 Minutes II as a correspondent. Ratings for the Evening News with Rather at the helm fluctuated wildly, at a time when more alternatives to TV news were developing. After a dip to second place, Rather regained the top spot in 1985 until 1989, when he ceded the ratings peak to rival Peter Jennings at ABC's World News Tonight. By 1992, however, the Evening News had fallen to third place of the three major networks. It rose in rankings in 2005, when Bob Schieffer became the interim anchor between Rather and Katie Couric. It briefly moved ahead of ABC World News Tonight in the wake of the death of Peter Jennings, but remained behind NBC Nightly News. Rather was a frequent collaborator with CBS News producer Susan Zirinsky, a leading member of the news division's staff. In 1987, new CBS owner Laurence Tisch oversaw layoffs of hundreds of CBS News employees, in a major shake-up of the network. Among those to go were correspondents such as David Andelman, Fred Graham, Morton Dean, and Ike Pappas. Fewer videotape crews were dispatched to cover stories, and numerous bureaus were closed. Critics cited the cutbacks as a major factor in CBS News' fall into third place in the ratings. For a short time from 1993 to 1995, Rather co-anchored the evening news with Connie Chung. Chung had been a Washington, DC correspondent for CBS News, and anchored short news updates on the West Coast. On joining the CBS Evening News, she reported "pop news" stories. In one widely cited case, she aggressively pursued Tonya Harding, who was accused of a plot to injure fellow Olympic ice skater Nancy Kerrigan. After Chung left the network, Rather went back to doing the newscast alone. By the 2005–06 season, the end of Rather's time as anchor, CBS Evening News lagged behind NBC Nightly News and ABC World News Tonight in the ratings. But it still drew approximately 5.5 million viewers a night. Criticism of Rather reached a fever pitch after 60 Minutes II ran his 2004 report about President Bush's military record. Numerous critics questioned the authenticity of the documents upon which the report was based. Rather subsequently admitted on the air that the documents' authenticity could not be proven. In the aftermath, CBS fired several members of CBS News staff but temporarily retained Rather, until his contract was up for renewal the following year, whereupon he was completely ousted. Journalistic history and influence Nixon During Richard Nixon's presidency, critics accused Rather of biased coverage against him. At a Houston news conference in March 1974, Nixon fielded a question from Rather, still CBS's White House correspondent, who said, “Thank you, Mr. President. Dan Rather, of CBS News.” The room filled with jeers and applause, prompting Nixon to joke, “Are you running for something?” Rather replied, “No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?” He questioned whether Nixon was cooperating with the grand jury investigation and House Judiciary Committee in relation to the Watergate scandal. NBC's Tom Brokaw has said the network considered hiring him to replace Rather as its White House correspondent, but dropped it after word was leaked to the press. Rather was believed to have provided tough coverage of the Watergate scandal, raising his profile. Space Shuttle Challenger disaster In January 1986, NASA faced repeated delays in the preparations to launch the Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger in close sequence. Rather described the January 10 delay of Columbia as: “star-crossed space shuttle Columbia stood ready for launch again today, and once more, the launch was scrubbed. Heavy rain was the cause this time. The launch has been postponed so often since its original date, December 18, that it's now known as mission impossible.”This was considered an example of the "biting sarcasm" the media used related to NASA's scheduling. Columbia launched on January 12. On January 27, Rather's reporting of the expected Challenger launch began as follows: On January 28, Challenger'''s explosion and destruction occurred 73 seconds after launch. Afghanistan, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush During the Soviet–Afghan War, Rather was filmed reporting near the front lines while wearing a traditional mujahideen headdress and garments. Rather attracted an Evening News audience (and was nicknamed "Gunga Dan"). The American comic strip Doonesbury spoofed his actions. Rather's reports were later revealed to have been influential to Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-Texas), who led an effort to help the struggling mujahideen. The CIA developed its largest covert operation to supply aid and advanced arms to the mujahideen. The Soviets eventually quit Afghanistan. Rather gained the anchor spot on the Evening News. He was competing with Roger Mudd, a more senior correspondent and a frequent substitute anchor for Walter Cronkite on Evening News. Mudd had also anchored the Sunday evening broadcast, but Rather traveled through Afghanistan when news led there. A few years into his service as anchor, Rather began wearing sweaters beneath his suit jacket to soften his on-air appearance for viewers. During the 1980s, Rather gained further renown for his forceful and skeptical reporting on the Iran–Contra affair. He eventually confronted Vice President George H. W. Bush in an on-air interview during the latter's presidential campaign. Bush referred to Rather's "dead air incident" saying: “I want to talk about why I want to be President, why those 41 percent of the people are supporting me. And I don't think it's fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?”Rather ignored Bush's comment. Shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Rather secured an interview with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. On February 24, 2003, Rather conducted another interview with Hussein before the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the interview, Hussein invited Rather to be the moderator of a live television debate between him and George W. Bush. The debate never took place. The Wall Within On June 2, 1988, Rather hosted a CBS News special, The Wall Within. In it, he interviewed six veterans, each of whom said he had witnessed horrible acts in Vietnam. Two of the men said that they had killed civilians, and two others said that they had seen friends die. Each talked about the effects the war had upon their lives—including depression, unemployment, drug use, and homelessness. In 2004, National Review ran an article by Anne Morse entitled "The First Rathergate." She said that almost nothing claimed by participants in The Wall Within was true. Citing the self-published book Stolen Valor (1998) by veteran B. G. Burkett, and investigative journalist Glenna Whitley, Morse said that military records revealed that the six former servicemen had lied about their experiences. Only one served in combat, and two had never been in Vietnam. Killian documents On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly or almost exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Chicago Sun-Times. Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents—former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett—had misled the network about how he had obtained them. On September 20, 2004, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, “If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.” The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate." Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes, and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting, “Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day.” Departure from the CBS Evening News Rather retired as the anchorman and Managing Editor of the CBS Evening News in 2005; his last broadcast was Wednesday, March 9, 2005. He had worked as the anchorman for 24 full years, the longest tenure of anyone in American television history, and for a short time, continued to work as a correspondent for 60 Minutes. Bob Schieffer, a fellow Texan and host of Face the Nation, took over Rather's position on an interim basis, with Katie Couric replacing Schieffer in 2006. Since retiring, Rather has spoken out about what he perceives as a lack of courage by American journalists. On January 24, 2006, Rather spoke to a Seattle audience. Before the speaking engagement, he told a newspaper reporter, “In many ways on many days, [reporters] have sort of adopted the attitude of 'go along, get along.'” “What many of us need is a spine transplant,” Rather added. “Whether it's City Hall, the State House, or the White House, part of our job is to speak truth to power.” Ousted from CBS News In June 2006, reports surfaced that CBS News would most likely not renew Dan Rather's contract. According to a Washington Post article, sources from CBS said that executives at the network decided "there is no future role for Rather." On June 20, 2006, CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus announced that Rather would leave the network after 44 years. Rather issued a separate statement which accompanied the news of the departure: Lawsuit over ouster from CBS Network On September 19, 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS, its former parent company Viacom; CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves; Sumner Redstone, chairman of both Viacom and CBS; and Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. A CBS spokesman claimed that the lawsuit was "old news" and "without merit." On September 21, 2009, Rather's lawyers claimed that Bush's military service would be proven to be a sham, and Rather would be vindicated. On September 29, 2009, a New York state appeals court dismissed Rather's lawsuit against CBS. On January 12, 2010, New York's top court refused to reinstate Rather's $70 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against CBS Corp. In his book titled Rather Outspoken, Rather claims that the lawsuit “took a big whack out of my time, my psyche and my bank balance, but even so, it was worth it.” On May 18, 2012, Rather appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher, and claimed he had been fired for reporting a story about George W. Bush's year of absence from the reserve unit he served with, and that the news corporations had been "very uncomfortable" with running the story. Post-CBS career Following his departure from CBS, Dan Rather joined Mark Cuban's cable network AXS TV (then called HDNet) to host and produce the weekly one-hour news show Dan Rather Reports from 2006 until 2013. Since 2013, Rather has hosted and produced the hour-long series The Big Interview with Dan Rather on AXS TV, where he sits down for in-depth interviews with influential figures in music and entertainment, such as: John Fogerty, Quentin Tarantino, Simon Cowell, Aaron Sorkin, and Sammy Hagar. He has also produced several documentary specials for the network under the banner Dan Rather Presents, including specials about "America's Mental Health Crisis," the United States Secret Service, and "The Shameful Side of International Adoption." Rather also appears frequently on a number of news shows, including MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and on CNN. He has also written for The Huffington Post and Mashable. On May 28, 2007, Rather compared historical events to events in the Star Wars films in the History Channel special titled Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed. In 2012, Rather published an autobiography titled Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News. In 2015, Rather launched an independent production company called News and Guts Media, through which he produces The Big Interview among other projects. In 2015, Rather also began actively posting on Facebook. He credits young staffers at News and Guts Media with pushing him to try social media. While his posts were considerably longer than typical social media posts, they resonated with the audience, which soon grew to more than two million followers. Even late night TV noticed Rather's unusual but effective Facebook presence. Subject matter has covered a range of topics, including: current political events, journalism, and childhood memories. On September 23, 2016, SiriusXM Radio announced a new hour-long weekly program, "Dan Rather's America," airing Tuesday mornings at 10am Eastern on Radio Andy channel 102, debuting on September 27. In the fall of 2017, the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas completed a digital humanities project dedicated to the long career of the journalist that was titled Dan Rather: American Journalist. The culmination of three years of research conducted at the Briscoe Center, the site uses materials from a dozen archives and libraries, and draws from over 25 of the Briscoe Center for American History's news media and photojournalism collections. The website features over 2,000 digitized documents, 300 excerpts from twelve oral history interviews, and 1000 video clips, enabling visitors to dive deep into the history of the last 60 years through the lens of Dan Rather's career. On January 21, 2018, it was announced that Rather would be launching a weekly 30-minute newscast on The Young Turks. Titled The News with Dan Rather, it airs on Mondays at 5:30pm Eastern Time. Personal life Rather married Jean Goebel in 1957. They have a son and daughter, and maintain homes in New York City and Austin, Texas. Their daughter Robin is an environmentalist and community activist in Austin, Texas. Their son Dan is an assistant district attorney in the District Attorney's office in Manhattan, New York. Sam Houston State University renamed its mass communications building after Rather in 1994. The building houses The Houstonian and KSHU, the student-run radio and television stations. In May 2007, Rather received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Siena College in Loudonville, New York, for his lifetime contributions to journalism. A columnist whose work is distributed by King Features Syndicate, Rather continues to speak out against alleged influence in journalism by corporations and governments. At a 2008 conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sponsored by the group Free Press, Rather criticized both local and national news organizations, stating—according to reports—that there is no longer incentive to do “good and valuable news.” Books The Palace Guard, with Gary Paul Gates, 1974. . The Camera Never Blinks: Adventures of a TV Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1977. . I Remember, with Peter Wyden, 1991. . The Camera Never Blinks Twice: The Further Adventures of a Television Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1994. . , 1999. . "The American Dream: Stories from the Heart of Our Nation", 2001. . , with Digby Diehl, 2013. . What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism, with Elliot Kirschner, 2017. .What Unites Us: The Graphic Novel, with Elliot Kirschner, illustrated by Tim Foley, 2021. . Awards He has received numerous Emmy Awards, several Peabody Awards, and various honorary degrees from universities. In addition to these awards, Rather was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2001, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. Criticism As one of the last broadcast news journalists from the era of the "Big Three" network news primacy, Rather was generally regarded highly within his profession by long-serving journalists. Rather has been accused of having a liberal bias."Dan Rather: a pioneer and a lightning rod" at The Christian Science Monitor. Claims of bias Rather's on-screen comments and election-night reporting have come under attack dating back to Richard Nixon's presidency. In a June 2002 interview with Larry King, his long-time co-worker (and self-described liberal), Andy Rooney stated that Rather is “transparently liberal.” During the weeks following the Killian documents stories, Rather received widespread criticism from other journalists and historians. In an interview with commentator Bill Maher, Rather accused Fox News Channel of receiving "talking points" from the Republican-controlled White House. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, who had defended Rather during the Killian documents incident, criticized Rather for not offering any evidence to support the claim. In 2002, Bernard Goldberg published a book with the title Bias, alleging a liberal bias in print and broadcast news organizations. In the book, Goldberg used Dan Rather as a primary example of a news anchorman with a liberal bias. He also criticized the anchor for his criticisms of President George W. Bush's and Vice President Dan Quayle's service in the National Guard, rather than the Active Duty military during the Vietnam War, and questioned Rather's own service. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has accused Rather of having "an unwillingness to challenge official power and policy" in his reporting. Investigative reporter Mark Hertsgaard characterized Rather as a "stern anti-Communist" during the Reagan administration, for allegedly having "reported the pronouncements of public officials with considerable respect." In April 2001, according to a front-page story in The Washington Post, Rather spoke at a Democratic party fundraiser in Austin, Texas, where he was the featured speaker. One of the official hosts for the fundraiser was Rather's daughter, Robin Rather; Rather said that he did not realize that his daughter was a host of the fundraiser. Rather also said that he did not realize that the event was a partisan fundraiser, although he did realize that after he arrived at the event. From Walter Cronkite During an appearance on CNN's American Morning in 2005, former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite said about Rather: “It surprised quite a few people at CBS and elsewhere that, without being able to pull up the ratings beyond third in a three-man field, that they tolerated his being there for so long.” Cronkite also said that he would like to have seen Bob Schieffer in Rather's position sooner. From Dallas CBS news director Eddie Barker In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination while Rather was a Dallas reporter, he interviewed a minister, who said some local schoolchildren had cheered upon learning of the President's shooting. The Associated Press later confirmed the story. A teacher at the school backed up the Rather story, confirming that some students at the school had cheered at the principal's news about Kennedy. Eddie Barker, local Dallas-area news director for CBS, said that Rather had in fact been aware that the children were merely happy about being sent home early, and they had not been given a reason for early school closure (Barker's children attended the school, as he informed Rather). He stated that Rather had deliberately misrepresented the facts by indicating that the children were happy about the shooting. Barker attempted to fire Rather, but was overruled by the national CBS News management. Incidents and controversies 1968 Democratic convention During live coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Rather attempted to interview a delegate from Georgia who appeared as though he was being forcibly removed by men without identification badges. As Rather approached the delegate to question the apparent strong-arm tactics of the Chicago political machine under Mayor Daley, he was punched in the stomach by one of the men, knocking him to the ground. “He lifted me right off the floor and put me away. I was down, the breath knocked out of me, as the whole group blew on by me ... In the CBS control room, they had switched the camera onto me just as I was slugged.” Walter Cronkite, after being told by Rather what happened, added on-air, "I think we got a bunch of thugs here Dan!" Chicago cab ride On November 10, 1980, Rather landed at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and got into a cab. He asked the cab driver to take him to the home of writer Studs Terkel, whom he was interviewing for 60 Minutes. A police spokesman said that the cab driver refused to go to the address and instead "wildly drove through the city streets," with Rather shouting out the window asking for help. The driver was charged with disorderly conduct. Rather called the incident “a rather minor thing.” By the time the case was about to come to trial, he was about to add anchoring the CBS Evening News to his 60 Minutes role at CBS News. Rather declined to press charges, citing a "mounting schedule of reporting assignments." Galloway lawsuit In 1980, Rather and CBS were taken to court when Carl Galloway, a California doctor, claimed that a report on 60 Minutes wrongfully implicated him in an insurance fraud scheme. CBS stated Galloway had signed the bogus report, and was suing Rather because he was upset at being caught. The jury sided with CBS and Rather, and they won the case. During the trial, Galloway's side used outtakes from the TV report showing that one interview was rehearsed. "Courage" For one week in September 1986, Rather signed off his broadcasts to CBS with the word "courage." He said that it was just a signature line, and had nothing to do with the news at the time. Other newscasters ridiculed and parodied Rather, and he dropped it. "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said “I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea.” Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who came to Rather's aid fully confirmed his version of events. The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. The opening track of the 1987 album Lolita Nation by California power pop group Game Theory is titled "Kenneth, What's the Frequency?" In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman. In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12.5-to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010. Dead air On September 11, 1987, Rather walked off the set in anger just before a remote Evening News broadcast from Miami, where Pope John Paul II had begun a rare U.S. tour, when a U.S. Open tennis match was being broadcast into the time scheduled for the newscast. He was upset that the news was being cut into to make room for sports and discussed it with the sports department, and made it clear that if the newscast did not start on time, then CBS Sports should fill the half hour. The Steffi Graf–Lori McNeil tennis match coverage then ended sooner than expected at 6:32 p.m., but Rather had disappeared. (CBS Sports had finally agreed to break away immediately after the match without commentary.) Thus, over 100 affiliates were forced to broadcast six minutes of dead air. Some stations were forced to air a slot of syndicated programming such as a rerun of a game show or a sitcom, and other stations were forced to pull out a technical difficulty telop graphic. Phil Jones, the chairman of the CBS affiliation board and general manager of Kansas City's KCTV (which the station placed a technical difficulty graphic during dead air) wanted an apology from Rather. Meanwhile in Miami, the city's CBS affiliate WTVJ was forced to drop the episode entirely, which ended up airing a syndicated rerun of a game show to fill the station's schedule. The next day, Rather apologized for leaving the anchor desk. The following year, when Rather asked then Vice President Bush about his role in the Iran–Contra affair during a live interview, Bush responded by saying, “Dan, how would you like it if I judged your entire career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?” Roger Ailes had a “mole” at CBS, who alerted him that the goal was to “take Bush out of the race” with a tough interview on Iran-Contra. Ailes alerted Bush on the cab ride over, and fed him the seven minutes retort. The aftermath of the interview showed the episode was a boost for Bush. “The vice president's poll ratings in Iowa and New Hampshire bumped visibly upward.” "Ratherisms" Rather is known for his many colorful analogies and descriptions during live broadcasts. Similar to those used by baseball announcer Red Barber, cycling commentator Phil Liggett, and Formula 1 commentator Murray Walker, these "Ratherisms" are also called "Texanisms" or "Danisms" by some. A few of the more colorful ones, several of which were used throughout the 2008 HBO made-for-TV movie Recount about the 2000 Election, include: “This race is shakier than cafeteria Jell-O.” “This thing is as tight as the rusted lugnuts on a '55 Ford.” His characterization of the Republican Party's assessment of President Obama: “[He] couldn't sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.” In popular culture Rather has been referenced in the television shows Saturday Night Live and Family Guy and many films. An animated caricature of him made a cameo appearance in the JibJab political cartoon, Good to Be in D.C. In 1971, he had a cameo in an episode of the number one hit comedy series All in the Family. Entitled The Man in the Street, series star Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker character excitedly awaits the viewing of a videotaped interview he gave earlier that day for the CBS Evening News. At the last minute, to his dismay, the segment is preempted by the telecast of a Richard Nixon presidential address from the Oval Office. Rather appears, as himself, delivering post-speech analysis from actual news footage. Jean Stapleton, as Archie's scatterbrained wife Edith Bunker, says of Rather how he's there to "...tell us what Mr. Nixon just said." In 2004, he was featured in the documentary film Barbecue: A Texas Love Story by Austin-based director Chris Elley. Two years later, Rather and Elley educated a group of New Yorkers in Madison Square Park about the true meaning of BBQ, and its significance to the identity of the Lone Star State. In the 2006–07 graphic novel Shooting War, which is set in the year 2011, an 80-year-old Dan Rather is shown to be one of the last journalists still reporting from Iraq. He had a cameo in the premiere of the Fall 2007 drama Dirty Sexy Money on ABC television. He guest-starred as himself in The Simpsons episode, "E Pluribus Wiggum." Rather appeared on The Daily Show in May 2009, wearing an Afro wig and mutton-chop sideburns to narrate a segment about the late former President Nixon eating a burrito, as a parody of MSNBC's extensive coverage of President Obama and Vice President Biden's hamburger lunch. He appears in the 2008 award-winning documentary Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story. A skit on the 38th season of Sesame Street featured Anderson Cooper interviewing two grouches, "Walter Cranky" and "Dan Rather Not," who, when asked to answer questions, demurred with the phrase "I'd rather not." Robert Redford portrayed Rather in the 2015 film Truth. Rather appeared in the docudrama Facing Saddam providing his views on Saddam Hussein. Ratings Under Rather's predecessor, Walter Cronkite, the CBS Evening News was a strong #1 in the ratings, which Rather maintained through much of the 1980s. However, Tom Brokaw and his NBC Nightly News, and Peter Jennings of ABC News' World News Tonight, increasing in popularity, eventually cut deep into the Rather broadcast's numbers. See also New Yorkers in journalism References Further reading Dan Rather & Elliot Kirschner (2017). What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. Rather, Dan. The Palace Guard, with Gary Gates Rather, Dan. I Remember, with Peter Wyden. Rather, Dan with Herskowitz, Mickey. The Camera Never Blinks Twice''. 1995. William Morrow. 2nd Saddam interview External links AXS TV The Big Interview Dan Rather: American Journalist (Briscoe Center for American History) Members of the Council on Foreign Relations 1931 births Living people American television reporters and correspondents American war correspondents American war correspondents of the Vietnam War CBS News people Emmy Award winners Peabody Award winners 60 Minutes correspondents Associated Press reporters Houston Chronicle people Television anchors from Houston Journalists from Houston Killian documents controversy People from Wharton, Texas Sam Houston State University alumni Writers from Texas American victims of crime Texas Democrats The Young Turks people American male journalists 20th-century American journalists 21st-century American journalists Journalists from New York City People from Huntsville, Texas Recipients of the Four Freedoms Award Military personnel from Texas

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Were there any other results of Rather's reporting on these files?

Were there any other results of Rather's reporting on the Killian documents besides the critical memoes and files?

Dan Rather

On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Chicago Sun-Times. Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents - former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett - had misled the network about how he had obtained them. On September 20, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, "If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question." The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate." Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting "Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day." CANNOTANSWER

CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign.

Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. (; born October 31, 1931) is an American journalist and former national evening news anchor. Rather began his career in Texas, becoming a national name after his reporting saved thousands of lives during Hurricane Carla in September 1961. Rather spontaneously created the first radar weather report by overlaying a transparent map over a radar image of Hurricane Carla. In his first national broadcast, he helped initiate the successful evacuation of 350,000 people. Rather reported from Dallas in November 1963 at the time that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Based on his reporting, he was promoted at CBS News, where he served as White House correspondent beginning in 1964. He served as foreign correspondent in London and Vietnam over the next two years before returning to the White House correspondent position. He covered the presidency of Richard Nixon, including Nixon's trip to China, the Watergate scandal, and the president's resignation. In 1981, Rather was promoted to news anchor for the CBS Evening News, a role he occupied for 24 years. Along with Peter Jennings at ABC News and Tom Brokaw at NBC News, he was one of the "Big Three" nightly news anchors in the U.S. from the 1980s through the early 2000s. He frequently contributed to CBS's weekly news magazine, 60 Minutes. Rather left the anchor desk in 2005 following the Killian documents controversy, in which he presented unauthenticated documents in a news report on President George W. Bush's Vietnam War–era service in the National Guard. He continued to work with CBS until 2006, when he was abruptly fired. In September 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former parent company Viacom. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. An intermediate New York state appeals court dismissed the lawsuit in September 2009, and the New York Court of Appeals refused to reinstate it in January 2010. On the cable channel AXS TV (then called HDNet), Rather hosted Dan Rather Reports, a 60 Minutes–style investigative news program, from 2006 to 2013. He also hosts several other projects for AXS TV, including Dan Rather Presents, which provides in-depth reporting on broad topics such as mental health care or adoption, and The Big Interview with Dan Rather, in which he conducts long-form interviews with musicians and other entertainers. In January 2018, he began hosting an online newscast called The News with Dan Rather on The Young Turks' YouTube channel. Early life Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. was born on October 31, 1931, in Wharton County, Texas, the son of Daniel Irvin Rather Sr., a ditch digger and pipe layer, and the former Byrl Veda Page. The Rathers moved to Houston when he was a child, where Dan attended Lovett Elementary School and Hamilton Middle School. He graduated in 1950 from John H. Reagan High School in Houston. In 1953, Rather earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas, where he was editor of the school newspaper, The Houstonian. He was also a member of the Caballeros, the founding organization of the Epsilon Psi chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity. While in college, Rather worked for KSAM-FM radio in Huntsville, calling junior high, high school, and Sam Houston State football games. After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Rather briefly attended South Texas College of Law in Houston. In January 1954, Rather enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and was sent to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego. He was soon discharged, however, because he was found to have had rheumatic fever as a child, a fact he had omitted during the enlistment process. Early career Rather began his journalism career in 1950 as an Associated Press reporter in Huntsville, Texas. Later, he was a reporter for United Press (1950–1952), several Texas radio stations, and the Houston Chronicle (1954–1955). Around 1955, Rather wrote a piece on heroin. Under the auspices of the Houston Police, he tried a dose of the drug, which he characterized as "a special kind of hell." He worked for four seasons as the play-by-play announcer for the University of Houston football team. During the 1959 minor league baseball season, Rather was the play-by-play radio announcer for the Texas League Houston Buffs. In 1959, Rather began his television career as a reporter for KTRK-TV, the ABC affiliate in Houston. He was subsequently promoted to the director of news for KHOU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Houston. In September 1961, Rather covered Hurricane Carla for KHOU-TV, broadcasting from the then National Weather Center in Galveston. He is noted for showing the first radar image of a hurricane on TV. He conceived of overlaying a transparent map over the radar screen, in order to show the size of Hurricane Carla to the audience. Convinced of the threat, more than 350,000 people evacuated from the area, the largest known evacuation to that time. Their actions are believed to have saved thousands of lives compared to the previous hurricane, which had killed 6,000 to 12,000 people. Rather's live coverage of Carla was broadcast by New York and national stations. Ray Miller, news director of KPRC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Houston, also mentored Rather in the early years. On February 28, 1962, Rather left Houston for New York City for a six-month trial initiation at CBS. Rather did not fit in easily on the East Coast. His first reports for CBS included coverage of the crash of American Airlines Flight 1 in Jamaica Bay, and a report on the suffocation of children at a hospital in Binghamton, New York. Shortly after, Rather was made chief of CBS's Southwest bureau in Dallas. In August 1963, he was appointed chief of the Southern bureau in New Orleans, responsible for coverage of news events in the South, Southwest, Mexico and Central America. CBS News JFK assassination to Watergate In his autobiography, Rather noted that he was in Dallas in November 1963 to return film from an interview in Uvalde at the ranch of former Vice President John Nance Garner, who celebrated his 95th birthday on November 22. He happened to be "on the other side of the railroad tracks, beyond the triple underpass, thirty yards from a grassy knoll that would later figure in so many conspiracy theories." His job was to fetch a film drop from a camera truck at that location, and take it to the station for editing. He did not witness the shooting of Kennedy, and knew nothing of the events until he reached KRLD, having run through Dealey Plaza. He later wrote: “The moment I cleared the railroad tracks I saw a scene I will never forget. Some people were lying on the grass, some screaming, some running, some pointing. Policemen swarmed everywhere and distinctly above the din, I heard one shout, 'DON'T ANYBODY PANIC.' And of course, there was nothing but panic wherever you looked.” In his autobiography, Rather said he was one of the first to view the Zapruder film showing the assassination, and the first to describe it on television. Rather reported the fatal headshot as forcing Kennedy's head forward, but it was thrown backward. Later, he reported that some Dallas schoolchildren had applauded when they were notified of the president's death. Administrators said they had announced that school was to be dismissed early, and did not mention the assassination. However, teacher Joanna Morgan confirmed that students had cheered at the news that Kennedy was shot. This story infuriated local journalists at then-CBS affiliate KRLD-TV (now Fox-owned-and-operated KDFW-TV). Rather's reporting during the national mourning period following the Kennedy assassination and subsequent events impressed CBS News management. In 1964, they selected him for the network's White House correspondent position. In 1965, Rather served as a foreign correspondent for CBS in London, and in 1966 in Vietnam. He served again as White House correspondent during the presidency of Richard Nixon. In 1970, he was also assigned as anchor for the CBS Sunday Night News (1970–73; 1974–75), and later for the CBS Saturday Evening News (1973–76). Rather was among those journalists who accompanied Nixon to China. He later covered the Watergate investigation, as well as the impeachment proceedings against Nixon in Congress. CBS Evening News anchor After President Nixon's resignation in 1974, Rather became chief correspondent for the documentary series CBS Reports. In December 1975, he became a correspondent of the long-running Sunday night news show 60 Minutes—at the time the program was moved from a Sunday afternoon time-slot to primetime. Success there helped Rather pull ahead of longtime correspondent Roger Mudd, who was in line to succeed Walter Cronkite as anchor and Managing Editor of The CBS Evening News. Rather succeeded to the news anchor position after Cronkite's retirement, making his first broadcast on March 9, 1981. Rather had a significantly different style of reporting the news. In contrast to the avuncular Cronkite, who ended his newscast with “That's the way it is,” Rather searched to find a broadcast ending more suitable to his tastes. For one week in September 1986, with CBS the target of potentially hostile new ownership, Rather tried ending his broadcasts with the word "courage," and was roundly ridiculed for it. For nearly two decades, Rather ended the show with: “That's part of our world tonight.” Rather also held other positions during his time as anchor. In January 1988, he became host of the newly created 48 Hours, and in January 1999, Rather joined the new 60 Minutes II as a correspondent. Ratings for the Evening News with Rather at the helm fluctuated wildly, at a time when more alternatives to TV news were developing. After a dip to second place, Rather regained the top spot in 1985 until 1989, when he ceded the ratings peak to rival Peter Jennings at ABC's World News Tonight. By 1992, however, the Evening News had fallen to third place of the three major networks. It rose in rankings in 2005, when Bob Schieffer became the interim anchor between Rather and Katie Couric. It briefly moved ahead of ABC World News Tonight in the wake of the death of Peter Jennings, but remained behind NBC Nightly News. Rather was a frequent collaborator with CBS News producer Susan Zirinsky, a leading member of the news division's staff. In 1987, new CBS owner Laurence Tisch oversaw layoffs of hundreds of CBS News employees, in a major shake-up of the network. Among those to go were correspondents such as David Andelman, Fred Graham, Morton Dean, and Ike Pappas. Fewer videotape crews were dispatched to cover stories, and numerous bureaus were closed. Critics cited the cutbacks as a major factor in CBS News' fall into third place in the ratings. For a short time from 1993 to 1995, Rather co-anchored the evening news with Connie Chung. Chung had been a Washington, DC correspondent for CBS News, and anchored short news updates on the West Coast. On joining the CBS Evening News, she reported "pop news" stories. In one widely cited case, she aggressively pursued Tonya Harding, who was accused of a plot to injure fellow Olympic ice skater Nancy Kerrigan. After Chung left the network, Rather went back to doing the newscast alone. By the 2005–06 season, the end of Rather's time as anchor, CBS Evening News lagged behind NBC Nightly News and ABC World News Tonight in the ratings. But it still drew approximately 5.5 million viewers a night. Criticism of Rather reached a fever pitch after 60 Minutes II ran his 2004 report about President Bush's military record. Numerous critics questioned the authenticity of the documents upon which the report was based. Rather subsequently admitted on the air that the documents' authenticity could not be proven. In the aftermath, CBS fired several members of CBS News staff but temporarily retained Rather, until his contract was up for renewal the following year, whereupon he was completely ousted. Journalistic history and influence Nixon During Richard Nixon's presidency, critics accused Rather of biased coverage against him. At a Houston news conference in March 1974, Nixon fielded a question from Rather, still CBS's White House correspondent, who said, “Thank you, Mr. President. Dan Rather, of CBS News.” The room filled with jeers and applause, prompting Nixon to joke, “Are you running for something?” Rather replied, “No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?” He questioned whether Nixon was cooperating with the grand jury investigation and House Judiciary Committee in relation to the Watergate scandal. NBC's Tom Brokaw has said the network considered hiring him to replace Rather as its White House correspondent, but dropped it after word was leaked to the press. Rather was believed to have provided tough coverage of the Watergate scandal, raising his profile. Space Shuttle Challenger disaster In January 1986, NASA faced repeated delays in the preparations to launch the Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger in close sequence. Rather described the January 10 delay of Columbia as: “star-crossed space shuttle Columbia stood ready for launch again today, and once more, the launch was scrubbed. Heavy rain was the cause this time. The launch has been postponed so often since its original date, December 18, that it's now known as mission impossible.”This was considered an example of the "biting sarcasm" the media used related to NASA's scheduling. Columbia launched on January 12. On January 27, Rather's reporting of the expected Challenger launch began as follows: On January 28, Challenger'''s explosion and destruction occurred 73 seconds after launch. Afghanistan, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush During the Soviet–Afghan War, Rather was filmed reporting near the front lines while wearing a traditional mujahideen headdress and garments. Rather attracted an Evening News audience (and was nicknamed "Gunga Dan"). The American comic strip Doonesbury spoofed his actions. Rather's reports were later revealed to have been influential to Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-Texas), who led an effort to help the struggling mujahideen. The CIA developed its largest covert operation to supply aid and advanced arms to the mujahideen. The Soviets eventually quit Afghanistan. Rather gained the anchor spot on the Evening News. He was competing with Roger Mudd, a more senior correspondent and a frequent substitute anchor for Walter Cronkite on Evening News. Mudd had also anchored the Sunday evening broadcast, but Rather traveled through Afghanistan when news led there. A few years into his service as anchor, Rather began wearing sweaters beneath his suit jacket to soften his on-air appearance for viewers. During the 1980s, Rather gained further renown for his forceful and skeptical reporting on the Iran–Contra affair. He eventually confronted Vice President George H. W. Bush in an on-air interview during the latter's presidential campaign. Bush referred to Rather's "dead air incident" saying: “I want to talk about why I want to be President, why those 41 percent of the people are supporting me. And I don't think it's fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?”Rather ignored Bush's comment. Shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Rather secured an interview with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. On February 24, 2003, Rather conducted another interview with Hussein before the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the interview, Hussein invited Rather to be the moderator of a live television debate between him and George W. Bush. The debate never took place. The Wall Within On June 2, 1988, Rather hosted a CBS News special, The Wall Within. In it, he interviewed six veterans, each of whom said he had witnessed horrible acts in Vietnam. Two of the men said that they had killed civilians, and two others said that they had seen friends die. Each talked about the effects the war had upon their lives—including depression, unemployment, drug use, and homelessness. In 2004, National Review ran an article by Anne Morse entitled "The First Rathergate." She said that almost nothing claimed by participants in The Wall Within was true. Citing the self-published book Stolen Valor (1998) by veteran B. G. Burkett, and investigative journalist Glenna Whitley, Morse said that military records revealed that the six former servicemen had lied about their experiences. Only one served in combat, and two had never been in Vietnam. Killian documents On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly or almost exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Chicago Sun-Times. Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents—former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett—had misled the network about how he had obtained them. On September 20, 2004, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, “If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.” The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate." Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes, and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting, “Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day.” Departure from the CBS Evening News Rather retired as the anchorman and Managing Editor of the CBS Evening News in 2005; his last broadcast was Wednesday, March 9, 2005. He had worked as the anchorman for 24 full years, the longest tenure of anyone in American television history, and for a short time, continued to work as a correspondent for 60 Minutes. Bob Schieffer, a fellow Texan and host of Face the Nation, took over Rather's position on an interim basis, with Katie Couric replacing Schieffer in 2006. Since retiring, Rather has spoken out about what he perceives as a lack of courage by American journalists. On January 24, 2006, Rather spoke to a Seattle audience. Before the speaking engagement, he told a newspaper reporter, “In many ways on many days, [reporters] have sort of adopted the attitude of 'go along, get along.'” “What many of us need is a spine transplant,” Rather added. “Whether it's City Hall, the State House, or the White House, part of our job is to speak truth to power.” Ousted from CBS News In June 2006, reports surfaced that CBS News would most likely not renew Dan Rather's contract. According to a Washington Post article, sources from CBS said that executives at the network decided "there is no future role for Rather." On June 20, 2006, CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus announced that Rather would leave the network after 44 years. Rather issued a separate statement which accompanied the news of the departure: Lawsuit over ouster from CBS Network On September 19, 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS, its former parent company Viacom; CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves; Sumner Redstone, chairman of both Viacom and CBS; and Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. A CBS spokesman claimed that the lawsuit was "old news" and "without merit." On September 21, 2009, Rather's lawyers claimed that Bush's military service would be proven to be a sham, and Rather would be vindicated. On September 29, 2009, a New York state appeals court dismissed Rather's lawsuit against CBS. On January 12, 2010, New York's top court refused to reinstate Rather's $70 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against CBS Corp. In his book titled Rather Outspoken, Rather claims that the lawsuit “took a big whack out of my time, my psyche and my bank balance, but even so, it was worth it.” On May 18, 2012, Rather appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher, and claimed he had been fired for reporting a story about George W. Bush's year of absence from the reserve unit he served with, and that the news corporations had been "very uncomfortable" with running the story. Post-CBS career Following his departure from CBS, Dan Rather joined Mark Cuban's cable network AXS TV (then called HDNet) to host and produce the weekly one-hour news show Dan Rather Reports from 2006 until 2013. Since 2013, Rather has hosted and produced the hour-long series The Big Interview with Dan Rather on AXS TV, where he sits down for in-depth interviews with influential figures in music and entertainment, such as: John Fogerty, Quentin Tarantino, Simon Cowell, Aaron Sorkin, and Sammy Hagar. He has also produced several documentary specials for the network under the banner Dan Rather Presents, including specials about "America's Mental Health Crisis," the United States Secret Service, and "The Shameful Side of International Adoption." Rather also appears frequently on a number of news shows, including MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and on CNN. He has also written for The Huffington Post and Mashable. On May 28, 2007, Rather compared historical events to events in the Star Wars films in the History Channel special titled Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed. In 2012, Rather published an autobiography titled Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News. In 2015, Rather launched an independent production company called News and Guts Media, through which he produces The Big Interview among other projects. In 2015, Rather also began actively posting on Facebook. He credits young staffers at News and Guts Media with pushing him to try social media. While his posts were considerably longer than typical social media posts, they resonated with the audience, which soon grew to more than two million followers. Even late night TV noticed Rather's unusual but effective Facebook presence. Subject matter has covered a range of topics, including: current political events, journalism, and childhood memories. On September 23, 2016, SiriusXM Radio announced a new hour-long weekly program, "Dan Rather's America," airing Tuesday mornings at 10am Eastern on Radio Andy channel 102, debuting on September 27. In the fall of 2017, the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas completed a digital humanities project dedicated to the long career of the journalist that was titled Dan Rather: American Journalist. The culmination of three years of research conducted at the Briscoe Center, the site uses materials from a dozen archives and libraries, and draws from over 25 of the Briscoe Center for American History's news media and photojournalism collections. The website features over 2,000 digitized documents, 300 excerpts from twelve oral history interviews, and 1000 video clips, enabling visitors to dive deep into the history of the last 60 years through the lens of Dan Rather's career. On January 21, 2018, it was announced that Rather would be launching a weekly 30-minute newscast on The Young Turks. Titled The News with Dan Rather, it airs on Mondays at 5:30pm Eastern Time. Personal life Rather married Jean Goebel in 1957. They have a son and daughter, and maintain homes in New York City and Austin, Texas. Their daughter Robin is an environmentalist and community activist in Austin, Texas. Their son Dan is an assistant district attorney in the District Attorney's office in Manhattan, New York. Sam Houston State University renamed its mass communications building after Rather in 1994. The building houses The Houstonian and KSHU, the student-run radio and television stations. In May 2007, Rather received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Siena College in Loudonville, New York, for his lifetime contributions to journalism. A columnist whose work is distributed by King Features Syndicate, Rather continues to speak out against alleged influence in journalism by corporations and governments. At a 2008 conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sponsored by the group Free Press, Rather criticized both local and national news organizations, stating—according to reports—that there is no longer incentive to do “good and valuable news.” Books The Palace Guard, with Gary Paul Gates, 1974. . The Camera Never Blinks: Adventures of a TV Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1977. . I Remember, with Peter Wyden, 1991. . The Camera Never Blinks Twice: The Further Adventures of a Television Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1994. . , 1999. . "The American Dream: Stories from the Heart of Our Nation", 2001. . , with Digby Diehl, 2013. . What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism, with Elliot Kirschner, 2017. .What Unites Us: The Graphic Novel, with Elliot Kirschner, illustrated by Tim Foley, 2021. . Awards He has received numerous Emmy Awards, several Peabody Awards, and various honorary degrees from universities. In addition to these awards, Rather was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2001, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. Criticism As one of the last broadcast news journalists from the era of the "Big Three" network news primacy, Rather was generally regarded highly within his profession by long-serving journalists. Rather has been accused of having a liberal bias."Dan Rather: a pioneer and a lightning rod" at The Christian Science Monitor. Claims of bias Rather's on-screen comments and election-night reporting have come under attack dating back to Richard Nixon's presidency. In a June 2002 interview with Larry King, his long-time co-worker (and self-described liberal), Andy Rooney stated that Rather is “transparently liberal.” During the weeks following the Killian documents stories, Rather received widespread criticism from other journalists and historians. In an interview with commentator Bill Maher, Rather accused Fox News Channel of receiving "talking points" from the Republican-controlled White House. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, who had defended Rather during the Killian documents incident, criticized Rather for not offering any evidence to support the claim. In 2002, Bernard Goldberg published a book with the title Bias, alleging a liberal bias in print and broadcast news organizations. In the book, Goldberg used Dan Rather as a primary example of a news anchorman with a liberal bias. He also criticized the anchor for his criticisms of President George W. Bush's and Vice President Dan Quayle's service in the National Guard, rather than the Active Duty military during the Vietnam War, and questioned Rather's own service. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has accused Rather of having "an unwillingness to challenge official power and policy" in his reporting. Investigative reporter Mark Hertsgaard characterized Rather as a "stern anti-Communist" during the Reagan administration, for allegedly having "reported the pronouncements of public officials with considerable respect." In April 2001, according to a front-page story in The Washington Post, Rather spoke at a Democratic party fundraiser in Austin, Texas, where he was the featured speaker. One of the official hosts for the fundraiser was Rather's daughter, Robin Rather; Rather said that he did not realize that his daughter was a host of the fundraiser. Rather also said that he did not realize that the event was a partisan fundraiser, although he did realize that after he arrived at the event. From Walter Cronkite During an appearance on CNN's American Morning in 2005, former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite said about Rather: “It surprised quite a few people at CBS and elsewhere that, without being able to pull up the ratings beyond third in a three-man field, that they tolerated his being there for so long.” Cronkite also said that he would like to have seen Bob Schieffer in Rather's position sooner. From Dallas CBS news director Eddie Barker In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination while Rather was a Dallas reporter, he interviewed a minister, who said some local schoolchildren had cheered upon learning of the President's shooting. The Associated Press later confirmed the story. A teacher at the school backed up the Rather story, confirming that some students at the school had cheered at the principal's news about Kennedy. Eddie Barker, local Dallas-area news director for CBS, said that Rather had in fact been aware that the children were merely happy about being sent home early, and they had not been given a reason for early school closure (Barker's children attended the school, as he informed Rather). He stated that Rather had deliberately misrepresented the facts by indicating that the children were happy about the shooting. Barker attempted to fire Rather, but was overruled by the national CBS News management. Incidents and controversies 1968 Democratic convention During live coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Rather attempted to interview a delegate from Georgia who appeared as though he was being forcibly removed by men without identification badges. As Rather approached the delegate to question the apparent strong-arm tactics of the Chicago political machine under Mayor Daley, he was punched in the stomach by one of the men, knocking him to the ground. “He lifted me right off the floor and put me away. I was down, the breath knocked out of me, as the whole group blew on by me ... In the CBS control room, they had switched the camera onto me just as I was slugged.” Walter Cronkite, after being told by Rather what happened, added on-air, "I think we got a bunch of thugs here Dan!" Chicago cab ride On November 10, 1980, Rather landed at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and got into a cab. He asked the cab driver to take him to the home of writer Studs Terkel, whom he was interviewing for 60 Minutes. A police spokesman said that the cab driver refused to go to the address and instead "wildly drove through the city streets," with Rather shouting out the window asking for help. The driver was charged with disorderly conduct. Rather called the incident “a rather minor thing.” By the time the case was about to come to trial, he was about to add anchoring the CBS Evening News to his 60 Minutes role at CBS News. Rather declined to press charges, citing a "mounting schedule of reporting assignments." Galloway lawsuit In 1980, Rather and CBS were taken to court when Carl Galloway, a California doctor, claimed that a report on 60 Minutes wrongfully implicated him in an insurance fraud scheme. CBS stated Galloway had signed the bogus report, and was suing Rather because he was upset at being caught. The jury sided with CBS and Rather, and they won the case. During the trial, Galloway's side used outtakes from the TV report showing that one interview was rehearsed. "Courage" For one week in September 1986, Rather signed off his broadcasts to CBS with the word "courage." He said that it was just a signature line, and had nothing to do with the news at the time. Other newscasters ridiculed and parodied Rather, and he dropped it. "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said “I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea.” Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who came to Rather's aid fully confirmed his version of events. The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. The opening track of the 1987 album Lolita Nation by California power pop group Game Theory is titled "Kenneth, What's the Frequency?" In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman. In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12.5-to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010. Dead air On September 11, 1987, Rather walked off the set in anger just before a remote Evening News broadcast from Miami, where Pope John Paul II had begun a rare U.S. tour, when a U.S. Open tennis match was being broadcast into the time scheduled for the newscast. He was upset that the news was being cut into to make room for sports and discussed it with the sports department, and made it clear that if the newscast did not start on time, then CBS Sports should fill the half hour. The Steffi Graf–Lori McNeil tennis match coverage then ended sooner than expected at 6:32 p.m., but Rather had disappeared. (CBS Sports had finally agreed to break away immediately after the match without commentary.) Thus, over 100 affiliates were forced to broadcast six minutes of dead air. Some stations were forced to air a slot of syndicated programming such as a rerun of a game show or a sitcom, and other stations were forced to pull out a technical difficulty telop graphic. Phil Jones, the chairman of the CBS affiliation board and general manager of Kansas City's KCTV (which the station placed a technical difficulty graphic during dead air) wanted an apology from Rather. Meanwhile in Miami, the city's CBS affiliate WTVJ was forced to drop the episode entirely, which ended up airing a syndicated rerun of a game show to fill the station's schedule. The next day, Rather apologized for leaving the anchor desk. The following year, when Rather asked then Vice President Bush about his role in the Iran–Contra affair during a live interview, Bush responded by saying, “Dan, how would you like it if I judged your entire career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?” Roger Ailes had a “mole” at CBS, who alerted him that the goal was to “take Bush out of the race” with a tough interview on Iran-Contra. Ailes alerted Bush on the cab ride over, and fed him the seven minutes retort. The aftermath of the interview showed the episode was a boost for Bush. “The vice president's poll ratings in Iowa and New Hampshire bumped visibly upward.” "Ratherisms" Rather is known for his many colorful analogies and descriptions during live broadcasts. Similar to those used by baseball announcer Red Barber, cycling commentator Phil Liggett, and Formula 1 commentator Murray Walker, these "Ratherisms" are also called "Texanisms" or "Danisms" by some. A few of the more colorful ones, several of which were used throughout the 2008 HBO made-for-TV movie Recount about the 2000 Election, include: “This race is shakier than cafeteria Jell-O.” “This thing is as tight as the rusted lugnuts on a '55 Ford.” His characterization of the Republican Party's assessment of President Obama: “[He] couldn't sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.” In popular culture Rather has been referenced in the television shows Saturday Night Live and Family Guy and many films. An animated caricature of him made a cameo appearance in the JibJab political cartoon, Good to Be in D.C. In 1971, he had a cameo in an episode of the number one hit comedy series All in the Family. Entitled The Man in the Street, series star Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker character excitedly awaits the viewing of a videotaped interview he gave earlier that day for the CBS Evening News. At the last minute, to his dismay, the segment is preempted by the telecast of a Richard Nixon presidential address from the Oval Office. Rather appears, as himself, delivering post-speech analysis from actual news footage. Jean Stapleton, as Archie's scatterbrained wife Edith Bunker, says of Rather how he's there to "...tell us what Mr. Nixon just said." In 2004, he was featured in the documentary film Barbecue: A Texas Love Story by Austin-based director Chris Elley. Two years later, Rather and Elley educated a group of New Yorkers in Madison Square Park about the true meaning of BBQ, and its significance to the identity of the Lone Star State. In the 2006–07 graphic novel Shooting War, which is set in the year 2011, an 80-year-old Dan Rather is shown to be one of the last journalists still reporting from Iraq. He had a cameo in the premiere of the Fall 2007 drama Dirty Sexy Money on ABC television. He guest-starred as himself in The Simpsons episode, "E Pluribus Wiggum." Rather appeared on The Daily Show in May 2009, wearing an Afro wig and mutton-chop sideburns to narrate a segment about the late former President Nixon eating a burrito, as a parody of MSNBC's extensive coverage of President Obama and Vice President Biden's hamburger lunch. He appears in the 2008 award-winning documentary Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story. A skit on the 38th season of Sesame Street featured Anderson Cooper interviewing two grouches, "Walter Cranky" and "Dan Rather Not," who, when asked to answer questions, demurred with the phrase "I'd rather not." Robert Redford portrayed Rather in the 2015 film Truth. Rather appeared in the docudrama Facing Saddam providing his views on Saddam Hussein. Ratings Under Rather's predecessor, Walter Cronkite, the CBS Evening News was a strong #1 in the ratings, which Rather maintained through much of the 1980s. However, Tom Brokaw and his NBC Nightly News, and Peter Jennings of ABC News' World News Tonight, increasing in popularity, eventually cut deep into the Rather broadcast's numbers. See also New Yorkers in journalism References Further reading Dan Rather & Elliot Kirschner (2017). What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. Rather, Dan. The Palace Guard, with Gary Gates Rather, Dan. I Remember, with Peter Wyden. Rather, Dan with Herskowitz, Mickey. The Camera Never Blinks Twice''. 1995. William Morrow. 2nd Saddam interview External links AXS TV The Big Interview Dan Rather: American Journalist (Briscoe Center for American History) Members of the Council on Foreign Relations 1931 births Living people American television reporters and correspondents American war correspondents American war correspondents of the Vietnam War CBS News people Emmy Award winners Peabody Award winners 60 Minutes correspondents Associated Press reporters Houston Chronicle people Television anchors from Houston Journalists from Houston Killian documents controversy People from Wharton, Texas Sam Houston State University alumni Writers from Texas American victims of crime Texas Democrats The Young Turks people American male journalists 20th-century American journalists 21st-century American journalists Journalists from New York City People from Huntsville, Texas Recipients of the Four Freedoms Award Military personnel from Texas

C_7f5b7fac03f240eba4b0cf53ca659b83_1

Was Rather disciplined?

Was Dan Rather disciplined?

Dan Rather

On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Chicago Sun-Times. Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents - former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett - had misled the network about how he had obtained them. On September 20, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, "If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question." The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate." Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting "Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day." CANNOTANSWER

The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate."

Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. (; born October 31, 1931) is an American journalist and former national evening news anchor. Rather began his career in Texas, becoming a national name after his reporting saved thousands of lives during Hurricane Carla in September 1961. Rather spontaneously created the first radar weather report by overlaying a transparent map over a radar image of Hurricane Carla. In his first national broadcast, he helped initiate the successful evacuation of 350,000 people. Rather reported from Dallas in November 1963 at the time that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Based on his reporting, he was promoted at CBS News, where he served as White House correspondent beginning in 1964. He served as foreign correspondent in London and Vietnam over the next two years before returning to the White House correspondent position. He covered the presidency of Richard Nixon, including Nixon's trip to China, the Watergate scandal, and the president's resignation. In 1981, Rather was promoted to news anchor for the CBS Evening News, a role he occupied for 24 years. Along with Peter Jennings at ABC News and Tom Brokaw at NBC News, he was one of the "Big Three" nightly news anchors in the U.S. from the 1980s through the early 2000s. He frequently contributed to CBS's weekly news magazine, 60 Minutes. Rather left the anchor desk in 2005 following the Killian documents controversy, in which he presented unauthenticated documents in a news report on President George W. Bush's Vietnam War–era service in the National Guard. He continued to work with CBS until 2006, when he was abruptly fired. In September 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former parent company Viacom. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. An intermediate New York state appeals court dismissed the lawsuit in September 2009, and the New York Court of Appeals refused to reinstate it in January 2010. On the cable channel AXS TV (then called HDNet), Rather hosted Dan Rather Reports, a 60 Minutes–style investigative news program, from 2006 to 2013. He also hosts several other projects for AXS TV, including Dan Rather Presents, which provides in-depth reporting on broad topics such as mental health care or adoption, and The Big Interview with Dan Rather, in which he conducts long-form interviews with musicians and other entertainers. In January 2018, he began hosting an online newscast called The News with Dan Rather on The Young Turks' YouTube channel. Early life Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. was born on October 31, 1931, in Wharton County, Texas, the son of Daniel Irvin Rather Sr., a ditch digger and pipe layer, and the former Byrl Veda Page. The Rathers moved to Houston when he was a child, where Dan attended Lovett Elementary School and Hamilton Middle School. He graduated in 1950 from John H. Reagan High School in Houston. In 1953, Rather earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas, where he was editor of the school newspaper, The Houstonian. He was also a member of the Caballeros, the founding organization of the Epsilon Psi chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity. While in college, Rather worked for KSAM-FM radio in Huntsville, calling junior high, high school, and Sam Houston State football games. After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Rather briefly attended South Texas College of Law in Houston. In January 1954, Rather enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and was sent to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego. He was soon discharged, however, because he was found to have had rheumatic fever as a child, a fact he had omitted during the enlistment process. Early career Rather began his journalism career in 1950 as an Associated Press reporter in Huntsville, Texas. Later, he was a reporter for United Press (1950–1952), several Texas radio stations, and the Houston Chronicle (1954–1955). Around 1955, Rather wrote a piece on heroin. Under the auspices of the Houston Police, he tried a dose of the drug, which he characterized as "a special kind of hell." He worked for four seasons as the play-by-play announcer for the University of Houston football team. During the 1959 minor league baseball season, Rather was the play-by-play radio announcer for the Texas League Houston Buffs. In 1959, Rather began his television career as a reporter for KTRK-TV, the ABC affiliate in Houston. He was subsequently promoted to the director of news for KHOU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Houston. In September 1961, Rather covered Hurricane Carla for KHOU-TV, broadcasting from the then National Weather Center in Galveston. He is noted for showing the first radar image of a hurricane on TV. He conceived of overlaying a transparent map over the radar screen, in order to show the size of Hurricane Carla to the audience. Convinced of the threat, more than 350,000 people evacuated from the area, the largest known evacuation to that time. Their actions are believed to have saved thousands of lives compared to the previous hurricane, which had killed 6,000 to 12,000 people. Rather's live coverage of Carla was broadcast by New York and national stations. Ray Miller, news director of KPRC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Houston, also mentored Rather in the early years. On February 28, 1962, Rather left Houston for New York City for a six-month trial initiation at CBS. Rather did not fit in easily on the East Coast. His first reports for CBS included coverage of the crash of American Airlines Flight 1 in Jamaica Bay, and a report on the suffocation of children at a hospital in Binghamton, New York. Shortly after, Rather was made chief of CBS's Southwest bureau in Dallas. In August 1963, he was appointed chief of the Southern bureau in New Orleans, responsible for coverage of news events in the South, Southwest, Mexico and Central America. CBS News JFK assassination to Watergate In his autobiography, Rather noted that he was in Dallas in November 1963 to return film from an interview in Uvalde at the ranch of former Vice President John Nance Garner, who celebrated his 95th birthday on November 22. He happened to be "on the other side of the railroad tracks, beyond the triple underpass, thirty yards from a grassy knoll that would later figure in so many conspiracy theories." His job was to fetch a film drop from a camera truck at that location, and take it to the station for editing. He did not witness the shooting of Kennedy, and knew nothing of the events until he reached KRLD, having run through Dealey Plaza. He later wrote: “The moment I cleared the railroad tracks I saw a scene I will never forget. Some people were lying on the grass, some screaming, some running, some pointing. Policemen swarmed everywhere and distinctly above the din, I heard one shout, 'DON'T ANYBODY PANIC.' And of course, there was nothing but panic wherever you looked.” In his autobiography, Rather said he was one of the first to view the Zapruder film showing the assassination, and the first to describe it on television. Rather reported the fatal headshot as forcing Kennedy's head forward, but it was thrown backward. Later, he reported that some Dallas schoolchildren had applauded when they were notified of the president's death. Administrators said they had announced that school was to be dismissed early, and did not mention the assassination. However, teacher Joanna Morgan confirmed that students had cheered at the news that Kennedy was shot. This story infuriated local journalists at then-CBS affiliate KRLD-TV (now Fox-owned-and-operated KDFW-TV). Rather's reporting during the national mourning period following the Kennedy assassination and subsequent events impressed CBS News management. In 1964, they selected him for the network's White House correspondent position. In 1965, Rather served as a foreign correspondent for CBS in London, and in 1966 in Vietnam. He served again as White House correspondent during the presidency of Richard Nixon. In 1970, he was also assigned as anchor for the CBS Sunday Night News (1970–73; 1974–75), and later for the CBS Saturday Evening News (1973–76). Rather was among those journalists who accompanied Nixon to China. He later covered the Watergate investigation, as well as the impeachment proceedings against Nixon in Congress. CBS Evening News anchor After President Nixon's resignation in 1974, Rather became chief correspondent for the documentary series CBS Reports. In December 1975, he became a correspondent of the long-running Sunday night news show 60 Minutes—at the time the program was moved from a Sunday afternoon time-slot to primetime. Success there helped Rather pull ahead of longtime correspondent Roger Mudd, who was in line to succeed Walter Cronkite as anchor and Managing Editor of The CBS Evening News. Rather succeeded to the news anchor position after Cronkite's retirement, making his first broadcast on March 9, 1981. Rather had a significantly different style of reporting the news. In contrast to the avuncular Cronkite, who ended his newscast with “That's the way it is,” Rather searched to find a broadcast ending more suitable to his tastes. For one week in September 1986, with CBS the target of potentially hostile new ownership, Rather tried ending his broadcasts with the word "courage," and was roundly ridiculed for it. For nearly two decades, Rather ended the show with: “That's part of our world tonight.” Rather also held other positions during his time as anchor. In January 1988, he became host of the newly created 48 Hours, and in January 1999, Rather joined the new 60 Minutes II as a correspondent. Ratings for the Evening News with Rather at the helm fluctuated wildly, at a time when more alternatives to TV news were developing. After a dip to second place, Rather regained the top spot in 1985 until 1989, when he ceded the ratings peak to rival Peter Jennings at ABC's World News Tonight. By 1992, however, the Evening News had fallen to third place of the three major networks. It rose in rankings in 2005, when Bob Schieffer became the interim anchor between Rather and Katie Couric. It briefly moved ahead of ABC World News Tonight in the wake of the death of Peter Jennings, but remained behind NBC Nightly News. Rather was a frequent collaborator with CBS News producer Susan Zirinsky, a leading member of the news division's staff. In 1987, new CBS owner Laurence Tisch oversaw layoffs of hundreds of CBS News employees, in a major shake-up of the network. Among those to go were correspondents such as David Andelman, Fred Graham, Morton Dean, and Ike Pappas. Fewer videotape crews were dispatched to cover stories, and numerous bureaus were closed. Critics cited the cutbacks as a major factor in CBS News' fall into third place in the ratings. For a short time from 1993 to 1995, Rather co-anchored the evening news with Connie Chung. Chung had been a Washington, DC correspondent for CBS News, and anchored short news updates on the West Coast. On joining the CBS Evening News, she reported "pop news" stories. In one widely cited case, she aggressively pursued Tonya Harding, who was accused of a plot to injure fellow Olympic ice skater Nancy Kerrigan. After Chung left the network, Rather went back to doing the newscast alone. By the 2005–06 season, the end of Rather's time as anchor, CBS Evening News lagged behind NBC Nightly News and ABC World News Tonight in the ratings. But it still drew approximately 5.5 million viewers a night. Criticism of Rather reached a fever pitch after 60 Minutes II ran his 2004 report about President Bush's military record. Numerous critics questioned the authenticity of the documents upon which the report was based. Rather subsequently admitted on the air that the documents' authenticity could not be proven. In the aftermath, CBS fired several members of CBS News staff but temporarily retained Rather, until his contract was up for renewal the following year, whereupon he was completely ousted. Journalistic history and influence Nixon During Richard Nixon's presidency, critics accused Rather of biased coverage against him. At a Houston news conference in March 1974, Nixon fielded a question from Rather, still CBS's White House correspondent, who said, “Thank you, Mr. President. Dan Rather, of CBS News.” The room filled with jeers and applause, prompting Nixon to joke, “Are you running for something?” Rather replied, “No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?” He questioned whether Nixon was cooperating with the grand jury investigation and House Judiciary Committee in relation to the Watergate scandal. NBC's Tom Brokaw has said the network considered hiring him to replace Rather as its White House correspondent, but dropped it after word was leaked to the press. Rather was believed to have provided tough coverage of the Watergate scandal, raising his profile. Space Shuttle Challenger disaster In January 1986, NASA faced repeated delays in the preparations to launch the Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger in close sequence. Rather described the January 10 delay of Columbia as: “star-crossed space shuttle Columbia stood ready for launch again today, and once more, the launch was scrubbed. Heavy rain was the cause this time. The launch has been postponed so often since its original date, December 18, that it's now known as mission impossible.”This was considered an example of the "biting sarcasm" the media used related to NASA's scheduling. Columbia launched on January 12. On January 27, Rather's reporting of the expected Challenger launch began as follows: On January 28, Challenger'''s explosion and destruction occurred 73 seconds after launch. Afghanistan, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush During the Soviet–Afghan War, Rather was filmed reporting near the front lines while wearing a traditional mujahideen headdress and garments. Rather attracted an Evening News audience (and was nicknamed "Gunga Dan"). The American comic strip Doonesbury spoofed his actions. Rather's reports were later revealed to have been influential to Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-Texas), who led an effort to help the struggling mujahideen. The CIA developed its largest covert operation to supply aid and advanced arms to the mujahideen. The Soviets eventually quit Afghanistan. Rather gained the anchor spot on the Evening News. He was competing with Roger Mudd, a more senior correspondent and a frequent substitute anchor for Walter Cronkite on Evening News. Mudd had also anchored the Sunday evening broadcast, but Rather traveled through Afghanistan when news led there. A few years into his service as anchor, Rather began wearing sweaters beneath his suit jacket to soften his on-air appearance for viewers. During the 1980s, Rather gained further renown for his forceful and skeptical reporting on the Iran–Contra affair. He eventually confronted Vice President George H. W. Bush in an on-air interview during the latter's presidential campaign. Bush referred to Rather's "dead air incident" saying: “I want to talk about why I want to be President, why those 41 percent of the people are supporting me. And I don't think it's fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?”Rather ignored Bush's comment. Shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Rather secured an interview with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. On February 24, 2003, Rather conducted another interview with Hussein before the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the interview, Hussein invited Rather to be the moderator of a live television debate between him and George W. Bush. The debate never took place. The Wall Within On June 2, 1988, Rather hosted a CBS News special, The Wall Within. In it, he interviewed six veterans, each of whom said he had witnessed horrible acts in Vietnam. Two of the men said that they had killed civilians, and two others said that they had seen friends die. Each talked about the effects the war had upon their lives—including depression, unemployment, drug use, and homelessness. In 2004, National Review ran an article by Anne Morse entitled "The First Rathergate." She said that almost nothing claimed by participants in The Wall Within was true. Citing the self-published book Stolen Valor (1998) by veteran B. G. Burkett, and investigative journalist Glenna Whitley, Morse said that military records revealed that the six former servicemen had lied about their experiences. Only one served in combat, and two had never been in Vietnam. Killian documents On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly or almost exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Chicago Sun-Times. Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents—former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett—had misled the network about how he had obtained them. On September 20, 2004, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, “If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.” The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate." Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes, and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting, “Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day.” Departure from the CBS Evening News Rather retired as the anchorman and Managing Editor of the CBS Evening News in 2005; his last broadcast was Wednesday, March 9, 2005. He had worked as the anchorman for 24 full years, the longest tenure of anyone in American television history, and for a short time, continued to work as a correspondent for 60 Minutes. Bob Schieffer, a fellow Texan and host of Face the Nation, took over Rather's position on an interim basis, with Katie Couric replacing Schieffer in 2006. Since retiring, Rather has spoken out about what he perceives as a lack of courage by American journalists. On January 24, 2006, Rather spoke to a Seattle audience. Before the speaking engagement, he told a newspaper reporter, “In many ways on many days, [reporters] have sort of adopted the attitude of 'go along, get along.'” “What many of us need is a spine transplant,” Rather added. “Whether it's City Hall, the State House, or the White House, part of our job is to speak truth to power.” Ousted from CBS News In June 2006, reports surfaced that CBS News would most likely not renew Dan Rather's contract. According to a Washington Post article, sources from CBS said that executives at the network decided "there is no future role for Rather." On June 20, 2006, CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus announced that Rather would leave the network after 44 years. Rather issued a separate statement which accompanied the news of the departure: Lawsuit over ouster from CBS Network On September 19, 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS, its former parent company Viacom; CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves; Sumner Redstone, chairman of both Viacom and CBS; and Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. A CBS spokesman claimed that the lawsuit was "old news" and "without merit." On September 21, 2009, Rather's lawyers claimed that Bush's military service would be proven to be a sham, and Rather would be vindicated. On September 29, 2009, a New York state appeals court dismissed Rather's lawsuit against CBS. On January 12, 2010, New York's top court refused to reinstate Rather's $70 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against CBS Corp. In his book titled Rather Outspoken, Rather claims that the lawsuit “took a big whack out of my time, my psyche and my bank balance, but even so, it was worth it.” On May 18, 2012, Rather appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher, and claimed he had been fired for reporting a story about George W. Bush's year of absence from the reserve unit he served with, and that the news corporations had been "very uncomfortable" with running the story. Post-CBS career Following his departure from CBS, Dan Rather joined Mark Cuban's cable network AXS TV (then called HDNet) to host and produce the weekly one-hour news show Dan Rather Reports from 2006 until 2013. Since 2013, Rather has hosted and produced the hour-long series The Big Interview with Dan Rather on AXS TV, where he sits down for in-depth interviews with influential figures in music and entertainment, such as: John Fogerty, Quentin Tarantino, Simon Cowell, Aaron Sorkin, and Sammy Hagar. He has also produced several documentary specials for the network under the banner Dan Rather Presents, including specials about "America's Mental Health Crisis," the United States Secret Service, and "The Shameful Side of International Adoption." Rather also appears frequently on a number of news shows, including MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and on CNN. He has also written for The Huffington Post and Mashable. On May 28, 2007, Rather compared historical events to events in the Star Wars films in the History Channel special titled Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed. In 2012, Rather published an autobiography titled Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News. In 2015, Rather launched an independent production company called News and Guts Media, through which he produces The Big Interview among other projects. In 2015, Rather also began actively posting on Facebook. He credits young staffers at News and Guts Media with pushing him to try social media. While his posts were considerably longer than typical social media posts, they resonated with the audience, which soon grew to more than two million followers. Even late night TV noticed Rather's unusual but effective Facebook presence. Subject matter has covered a range of topics, including: current political events, journalism, and childhood memories. On September 23, 2016, SiriusXM Radio announced a new hour-long weekly program, "Dan Rather's America," airing Tuesday mornings at 10am Eastern on Radio Andy channel 102, debuting on September 27. In the fall of 2017, the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas completed a digital humanities project dedicated to the long career of the journalist that was titled Dan Rather: American Journalist. The culmination of three years of research conducted at the Briscoe Center, the site uses materials from a dozen archives and libraries, and draws from over 25 of the Briscoe Center for American History's news media and photojournalism collections. The website features over 2,000 digitized documents, 300 excerpts from twelve oral history interviews, and 1000 video clips, enabling visitors to dive deep into the history of the last 60 years through the lens of Dan Rather's career. On January 21, 2018, it was announced that Rather would be launching a weekly 30-minute newscast on The Young Turks. Titled The News with Dan Rather, it airs on Mondays at 5:30pm Eastern Time. Personal life Rather married Jean Goebel in 1957. They have a son and daughter, and maintain homes in New York City and Austin, Texas. Their daughter Robin is an environmentalist and community activist in Austin, Texas. Their son Dan is an assistant district attorney in the District Attorney's office in Manhattan, New York. Sam Houston State University renamed its mass communications building after Rather in 1994. The building houses The Houstonian and KSHU, the student-run radio and television stations. In May 2007, Rather received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Siena College in Loudonville, New York, for his lifetime contributions to journalism. A columnist whose work is distributed by King Features Syndicate, Rather continues to speak out against alleged influence in journalism by corporations and governments. At a 2008 conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sponsored by the group Free Press, Rather criticized both local and national news organizations, stating—according to reports—that there is no longer incentive to do “good and valuable news.” Books The Palace Guard, with Gary Paul Gates, 1974. . The Camera Never Blinks: Adventures of a TV Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1977. . I Remember, with Peter Wyden, 1991. . The Camera Never Blinks Twice: The Further Adventures of a Television Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1994. . , 1999. . "The American Dream: Stories from the Heart of Our Nation", 2001. . , with Digby Diehl, 2013. . What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism, with Elliot Kirschner, 2017. .What Unites Us: The Graphic Novel, with Elliot Kirschner, illustrated by Tim Foley, 2021. . Awards He has received numerous Emmy Awards, several Peabody Awards, and various honorary degrees from universities. In addition to these awards, Rather was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2001, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. Criticism As one of the last broadcast news journalists from the era of the "Big Three" network news primacy, Rather was generally regarded highly within his profession by long-serving journalists. Rather has been accused of having a liberal bias."Dan Rather: a pioneer and a lightning rod" at The Christian Science Monitor. Claims of bias Rather's on-screen comments and election-night reporting have come under attack dating back to Richard Nixon's presidency. In a June 2002 interview with Larry King, his long-time co-worker (and self-described liberal), Andy Rooney stated that Rather is “transparently liberal.” During the weeks following the Killian documents stories, Rather received widespread criticism from other journalists and historians. In an interview with commentator Bill Maher, Rather accused Fox News Channel of receiving "talking points" from the Republican-controlled White House. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, who had defended Rather during the Killian documents incident, criticized Rather for not offering any evidence to support the claim. In 2002, Bernard Goldberg published a book with the title Bias, alleging a liberal bias in print and broadcast news organizations. In the book, Goldberg used Dan Rather as a primary example of a news anchorman with a liberal bias. He also criticized the anchor for his criticisms of President George W. Bush's and Vice President Dan Quayle's service in the National Guard, rather than the Active Duty military during the Vietnam War, and questioned Rather's own service. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has accused Rather of having "an unwillingness to challenge official power and policy" in his reporting. Investigative reporter Mark Hertsgaard characterized Rather as a "stern anti-Communist" during the Reagan administration, for allegedly having "reported the pronouncements of public officials with considerable respect." In April 2001, according to a front-page story in The Washington Post, Rather spoke at a Democratic party fundraiser in Austin, Texas, where he was the featured speaker. One of the official hosts for the fundraiser was Rather's daughter, Robin Rather; Rather said that he did not realize that his daughter was a host of the fundraiser. Rather also said that he did not realize that the event was a partisan fundraiser, although he did realize that after he arrived at the event. From Walter Cronkite During an appearance on CNN's American Morning in 2005, former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite said about Rather: “It surprised quite a few people at CBS and elsewhere that, without being able to pull up the ratings beyond third in a three-man field, that they tolerated his being there for so long.” Cronkite also said that he would like to have seen Bob Schieffer in Rather's position sooner. From Dallas CBS news director Eddie Barker In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination while Rather was a Dallas reporter, he interviewed a minister, who said some local schoolchildren had cheered upon learning of the President's shooting. The Associated Press later confirmed the story. A teacher at the school backed up the Rather story, confirming that some students at the school had cheered at the principal's news about Kennedy. Eddie Barker, local Dallas-area news director for CBS, said that Rather had in fact been aware that the children were merely happy about being sent home early, and they had not been given a reason for early school closure (Barker's children attended the school, as he informed Rather). He stated that Rather had deliberately misrepresented the facts by indicating that the children were happy about the shooting. Barker attempted to fire Rather, but was overruled by the national CBS News management. Incidents and controversies 1968 Democratic convention During live coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Rather attempted to interview a delegate from Georgia who appeared as though he was being forcibly removed by men without identification badges. As Rather approached the delegate to question the apparent strong-arm tactics of the Chicago political machine under Mayor Daley, he was punched in the stomach by one of the men, knocking him to the ground. “He lifted me right off the floor and put me away. I was down, the breath knocked out of me, as the whole group blew on by me ... In the CBS control room, they had switched the camera onto me just as I was slugged.” Walter Cronkite, after being told by Rather what happened, added on-air, "I think we got a bunch of thugs here Dan!" Chicago cab ride On November 10, 1980, Rather landed at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and got into a cab. He asked the cab driver to take him to the home of writer Studs Terkel, whom he was interviewing for 60 Minutes. A police spokesman said that the cab driver refused to go to the address and instead "wildly drove through the city streets," with Rather shouting out the window asking for help. The driver was charged with disorderly conduct. Rather called the incident “a rather minor thing.” By the time the case was about to come to trial, he was about to add anchoring the CBS Evening News to his 60 Minutes role at CBS News. Rather declined to press charges, citing a "mounting schedule of reporting assignments." Galloway lawsuit In 1980, Rather and CBS were taken to court when Carl Galloway, a California doctor, claimed that a report on 60 Minutes wrongfully implicated him in an insurance fraud scheme. CBS stated Galloway had signed the bogus report, and was suing Rather because he was upset at being caught. The jury sided with CBS and Rather, and they won the case. During the trial, Galloway's side used outtakes from the TV report showing that one interview was rehearsed. "Courage" For one week in September 1986, Rather signed off his broadcasts to CBS with the word "courage." He said that it was just a signature line, and had nothing to do with the news at the time. Other newscasters ridiculed and parodied Rather, and he dropped it. "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said “I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea.” Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who came to Rather's aid fully confirmed his version of events. The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. The opening track of the 1987 album Lolita Nation by California power pop group Game Theory is titled "Kenneth, What's the Frequency?" In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman. In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12.5-to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010. Dead air On September 11, 1987, Rather walked off the set in anger just before a remote Evening News broadcast from Miami, where Pope John Paul II had begun a rare U.S. tour, when a U.S. Open tennis match was being broadcast into the time scheduled for the newscast. He was upset that the news was being cut into to make room for sports and discussed it with the sports department, and made it clear that if the newscast did not start on time, then CBS Sports should fill the half hour. The Steffi Graf–Lori McNeil tennis match coverage then ended sooner than expected at 6:32 p.m., but Rather had disappeared. (CBS Sports had finally agreed to break away immediately after the match without commentary.) Thus, over 100 affiliates were forced to broadcast six minutes of dead air. Some stations were forced to air a slot of syndicated programming such as a rerun of a game show or a sitcom, and other stations were forced to pull out a technical difficulty telop graphic. Phil Jones, the chairman of the CBS affiliation board and general manager of Kansas City's KCTV (which the station placed a technical difficulty graphic during dead air) wanted an apology from Rather. Meanwhile in Miami, the city's CBS affiliate WTVJ was forced to drop the episode entirely, which ended up airing a syndicated rerun of a game show to fill the station's schedule. The next day, Rather apologized for leaving the anchor desk. The following year, when Rather asked then Vice President Bush about his role in the Iran–Contra affair during a live interview, Bush responded by saying, “Dan, how would you like it if I judged your entire career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?” Roger Ailes had a “mole” at CBS, who alerted him that the goal was to “take Bush out of the race” with a tough interview on Iran-Contra. Ailes alerted Bush on the cab ride over, and fed him the seven minutes retort. The aftermath of the interview showed the episode was a boost for Bush. “The vice president's poll ratings in Iowa and New Hampshire bumped visibly upward.” "Ratherisms" Rather is known for his many colorful analogies and descriptions during live broadcasts. Similar to those used by baseball announcer Red Barber, cycling commentator Phil Liggett, and Formula 1 commentator Murray Walker, these "Ratherisms" are also called "Texanisms" or "Danisms" by some. A few of the more colorful ones, several of which were used throughout the 2008 HBO made-for-TV movie Recount about the 2000 Election, include: “This race is shakier than cafeteria Jell-O.” “This thing is as tight as the rusted lugnuts on a '55 Ford.” His characterization of the Republican Party's assessment of President Obama: “[He] couldn't sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.” In popular culture Rather has been referenced in the television shows Saturday Night Live and Family Guy and many films. An animated caricature of him made a cameo appearance in the JibJab political cartoon, Good to Be in D.C. In 1971, he had a cameo in an episode of the number one hit comedy series All in the Family. Entitled The Man in the Street, series star Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker character excitedly awaits the viewing of a videotaped interview he gave earlier that day for the CBS Evening News. At the last minute, to his dismay, the segment is preempted by the telecast of a Richard Nixon presidential address from the Oval Office. Rather appears, as himself, delivering post-speech analysis from actual news footage. Jean Stapleton, as Archie's scatterbrained wife Edith Bunker, says of Rather how he's there to "...tell us what Mr. Nixon just said." In 2004, he was featured in the documentary film Barbecue: A Texas Love Story by Austin-based director Chris Elley. Two years later, Rather and Elley educated a group of New Yorkers in Madison Square Park about the true meaning of BBQ, and its significance to the identity of the Lone Star State. In the 2006–07 graphic novel Shooting War, which is set in the year 2011, an 80-year-old Dan Rather is shown to be one of the last journalists still reporting from Iraq. He had a cameo in the premiere of the Fall 2007 drama Dirty Sexy Money on ABC television. He guest-starred as himself in The Simpsons episode, "E Pluribus Wiggum." Rather appeared on The Daily Show in May 2009, wearing an Afro wig and mutton-chop sideburns to narrate a segment about the late former President Nixon eating a burrito, as a parody of MSNBC's extensive coverage of President Obama and Vice President Biden's hamburger lunch. He appears in the 2008 award-winning documentary Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story. A skit on the 38th season of Sesame Street featured Anderson Cooper interviewing two grouches, "Walter Cranky" and "Dan Rather Not," who, when asked to answer questions, demurred with the phrase "I'd rather not." Robert Redford portrayed Rather in the 2015 film Truth. Rather appeared in the docudrama Facing Saddam providing his views on Saddam Hussein. Ratings Under Rather's predecessor, Walter Cronkite, the CBS Evening News was a strong #1 in the ratings, which Rather maintained through much of the 1980s. However, Tom Brokaw and his NBC Nightly News, and Peter Jennings of ABC News' World News Tonight, increasing in popularity, eventually cut deep into the Rather broadcast's numbers. See also New Yorkers in journalism References Further reading Dan Rather & Elliot Kirschner (2017). What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. Rather, Dan. The Palace Guard, with Gary Gates Rather, Dan. I Remember, with Peter Wyden. Rather, Dan with Herskowitz, Mickey. The Camera Never Blinks Twice''. 1995. William Morrow. 2nd Saddam interview External links AXS TV The Big Interview Dan Rather: American Journalist (Briscoe Center for American History) Members of the Council on Foreign Relations 1931 births Living people American television reporters and correspondents American war correspondents American war correspondents of the Vietnam War CBS News people Emmy Award winners Peabody Award winners 60 Minutes correspondents Associated Press reporters Houston Chronicle people Television anchors from Houston Journalists from Houston Killian documents controversy People from Wharton, Texas Sam Houston State University alumni Writers from Texas American victims of crime Texas Democrats The Young Turks people American male journalists 20th-century American journalists 21st-century American journalists Journalists from New York City People from Huntsville, Texas Recipients of the Four Freedoms Award Military personnel from Texas

C_65204209c84c44cd9d64d3dbaa8b91fb_1

when was he born

When was James Levine born?

James Levine

Levine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a Jewish, musical family. His maternal grandfather was a composer and a cantor in a synagogue, his father (Lawrence) was a violinist who led dance bands under the name "Larry Lee" before entering his father's clothing business, and his mother (Helen Goldstein Levine) was briefly an actress on Broadway, performing as "Helen Golden". He has a brother Tom who is two years younger, who followed him to New York City from Cincinnati in 1974, and with whom he is very close. He employs Tom as his business assistant (looking after all of his affairs, arranging his rehearsal schedules, fielding queries, scouting out where he will live, meeting with accountants, and accompanying Levine on trips to Europe), and his brother is a painter as well. He also has a younger sister, Janet, who is a marriage counselor. He began to play the piano as a small child. On February 21, 1954, at the age of 10, Levine made his concert debut as soloist playing Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2 at a youth concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in Ohio. Levine subsequently studied music with Walter Levin, first violinist in the LaSalle Quartet. In 1956 he took piano lessons with Rudolf Serkin at the Marlboro Music School, in Vermont. In the following year he began to study piano with Rosina Lhevinne at the Aspen Music School. He graduated from Walnut Hills High School, an acclaimed magnet school in Cincinnati. He entered the Juilliard School of Music in New York City in 1961, and took courses in conducting with Jean Morel. He graduated from the Juilliard School in 1964, and joined the American Conductors project connected with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Levine lives in The San Remo on Central Park West in New York City. CANNOTANSWER

CANNOTANSWER

James Lawrence Levine (; June 23, 1943 – March 9, 2021) was an American conductor and pianist. He was music director of the Metropolitan Opera (the "Met") from 1976 to 2016. He was formally terminated from all his positions and affiliations with the Met on March 12, 2018, over sexual misconduct allegations, which he denied. Levine held leadership positions with the Ravinia Festival, the Munich Philharmonic, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 1980 he started the Lindemann Young Artists Development Program, and trained singers, conductors, and musicians for professional careers. After taking an almost two-year health-related hiatus from conducting from 2011 to 2013, during which time he held artistic and administrative planning sessions at the Met, and led training of the Lindemann Young Artists, Levine retired as the Met's full-time Music Director following the 2015–16 season to become Music Director Emeritus. Early years and personal life Levine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a Jewish, musical family. His maternal grandfather was a composer and a cantor in a synagogue; his father, Lawrence, was a violinist who led dance bands under the name "Larry Lee" before entering his father's clothing business; and his mother, Helen Goldstein Levine, was briefly an actress on Broadway, performing as "Helen Golden". He had a brother, Tom, who was two years younger, who followed him to New York City from Cincinnati in 1974, and with whom he was very close. He employed Tom as his business assistant, looking after his affairs, arranging his rehearsal schedules, fielding queries, scouting out places to live, meeting with accountants, and accompanying Levine on trips to Europe. Tom was also a painter. He also had a younger sister, Janet, who is a marriage counselor. He began to play the piano as a small child. On February 21, 1954, at age 10, Levine made his concert debut as soloist playing Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2 at a youth concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in Ohio. Levine subsequently studied music with Walter Levin, first violinist in the LaSalle Quartet. In 1956 he took piano lessons with Rudolf Serkin at the Marlboro Music School in Vermont. The next year he began to study piano with Rosina Lhévinne at the Aspen Music School. He graduated from Walnut Hills High School, a magnet school in Cincinnati. He entered the Juilliard School of Music in New York City in 1961, and took courses in conducting with Jean Morel. He graduated from Juilliard in 1964, and joined the American Conductors project connected with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Levine lived in The San Remo on Central Park West in New York City. Career Early career From 1964 to 1965, Levine served as an apprentice to George Szell with the Cleveland Orchestra. He then served as the Orchestra's assistant conductor until 1970. That year, he also made debuts as guest conductor with the Philadelphia Orchestra at its summer home at Robin Hood Dell, the Welsh National Opera, and the San Francisco Opera. From 1965 to 1972 he concurrently taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In the summers, he worked at the Meadow Brook School of Music in Michigan and at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. During that time, the charismatic Levine developed a devoted following of young musicians and music lovers. In June 1971, Levine was called in at the last moment to substitute for István Kertész, to lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Mahler's Second Symphony for the Ravinia Festival's opening concert of their 36th season. This concert began a long association with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. From 1973 to 1993 he was music director of the Ravinia Festival, succeeding the late Kertész. He made numerous recordings with the orchestra, including the symphonies and German Requiem of Johannes Brahms, and major works of Gershwin, Holst, Berg, Beethoven, Mozart, and others. In 1990, at the request of Roy E. Disney, he arranged the music and conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in the soundtrack of Fantasia 2000, released by Walt Disney Pictures. From 1974 to 1978, Levine also served as music director of the Cincinnati May Festival. Metropolitan Opera Levine made his Metropolitan Opera debut a few weeks before he turned 28, on June 5, 1971, leading a June Festival performance of Puccini's Tosca. After further appearances with the company, he was named its principal conductor in February 1972. He became its music director in 1975. In 1983, he served as conductor and musical director for the Franco Zeffirelli screen adaptation of Verdi's La Traviata, which featured the Met orchestra and chorus members. He became the company's first artistic director in 1986, and relinquished the title in 2004. In 2005, Levine's combined salary from the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Met made him the highest-paid conductor in the country, at $3.5 million. During Levine's tenure, the Metropolitan Opera orchestra expanded its activities into recording and concert series for the orchestra and chamber ensembles from the orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Levine led the Metropolitan Opera on many domestic and international tours. For the 25th anniversary of his Met debut, Levine conducted the world premiere of John Harbison's The Great Gatsby, commissioned for the occasion. On his appointment as general manager of the Met, Peter Gelb emphasized that Levine was welcome to remain as long as he wanted to direct music there. Levine was paid $2.1 million by the Met in 2010. Following a series of injuries that began with a fall, Levine's health problems led to his withdrawal from many Metropolitan Opera engagements. After a May 2011 performance of Wagner's Die Walküre, Levine formally withdrew from all engagements at the Met. After two years of physical therapy, he returned to conducting with a May 2013 concert with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. On September 25, 2013, Levine conducted his first Met performance since May 2011, in a revival production of Mozart's Così fan tutte. He was scheduled to conduct three productions at the opera house and three at Carnegie Hall in the 2013–14 season. On April 14, 2016, Met management announced that Levine would step down from his position as music director at the end of the 2015–16 season. Levine was paid $1.8 million by the Met for the 2015–16 season. He assumed the new title of Music Director Emeritus, which he held until December 2017, when in the wake of allegations that Levine had sexually abused four young men, the Met suspended its relationship with him and canceled all his scheduled performances with the company. Boston Symphony Orchestra Levine first conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) in April 1972. In October 2001, he was named its music director effective with the 2004–05 season, with an initial contract of five years, becoming the first American-born conductor to head the BSO. One unique condition that Levine negotiated was increased flexibility of the time allotted for rehearsal, allowing the orchestra additional time to prepare more challenging works. After the start of his tenure, the orchestra also established an "Artistic Initiative Fund" of about $40 million to fund the more expensive of his projects. One criticism of Levine during his BSO tenure is that he did not attend many orchestra auditions. A 2005 article reported that he had attended two out of 16 auditions during his tenure up to that time. Levine responded that he has the ability to provide input on musician tenure decisions after the initial probationary period, and that it is difficult to know how well a given player will fit the given position until that person has had a chance to work with the orchestra: "My message is the audition isn't everything." Another 2005 report stated that during Levine's first season as music director, the greater workload from the demands of playing more unfamiliar and contemporary music had increased physical stress on some of the BSO musicians. Levine and the players met to discuss this, and he agreed to program changes to lessen these demands. He received general critical praise for revitalizing the orchestra's quality and repertoire since the beginning of his tenure. Levine experienced ongoing health problems, starting with an onstage fall in 2006 that resulted in a torn rotator cuff and started discussion of how long Levine's tenure with the BSO would last. In April 2010, in the wake of his continuing health problems, it emerged that Levine had not officially signed a contract extension, so that he was the BSO's music director without a signed contract. On March 2, 2011, the BSO announced Levine's resignation as music director effective September 2011, after the Orchestra's Tanglewood season. Working on a commission from Levine and the BSO, the composer John Harbison dedicated his Symphony No. 6 "in friendship and gratitude" to him, whose premature departure from the orchestra prevented him from conducting the premiere. After allegations of his abusing a number of young men came out in December 2017 the BSO said Levine "will never be employed or contracted by the BSO at any time in the future". Conducting in Europe Levine's BSO contract limited his guest appearances with American orchestras, but he still conducted regularly in Europe, with the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, and at the Bayreuth Festival. Levine was a regular guest with the Philharmonia of London and the Staatskapelle Dresden. Beginning in 1975 he conducted regularly at the Salzburg Festival and the annual July Verbier Festival. From 1999 to 2004, he was chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, and was credited with improving the quality of instrumental ensemble during his tenure. Work with students Levine initiated the Lindemann Young Artists Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera in 1980, a professional training program for graduated singers with, today, many famous alumni. Levine was conductor of the UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra, the student resident orchestra at the annual summer music festival in Verbier, Switzerland, from 1999 through 2006. It was Levine's first long-term commitment to a student orchestra since becoming music director at the Met. After becoming music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Levine also served as music director of the Tanglewood Music Center, the BSO's acclaimed summer academy at Tanglewood for student instrumentalists, singers, composers, and conductors. There he conducted the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, directed fully staged opera performances with student singers, and gave master classes for singers and conductors. Levine said in an interview: At my age, you are naturally inclined towards teaching. You want to teach what you have learned to the next generation so that they don't have to spend time reinventing the wheel. I was lucky that I met the right mentors and teachers at the right moment. I love working with young musicians and singers, and those at the Tanglewood Music Center are unequivocally some of the finest and most talented in the world. He continued to work with young students even when his health issues kept him from conducting. He was awarded the Lotus Award ("for inspiration to young musicians") from Young Concert Artists. Anthony Tommasini wrote in The New York Times in 2016: "The aspiring singers in the Met's young artist development program, one of many important ventures Mr. Levine started, must understand how lucky they are to have, as a teacher and mentor, a musician who even in his 20s worked at the Met with giants like Jon Vickers and Renata Tebaldi." Health problems and death Levine experienced recurrent health issues beginning in 2006, including sciatica and what he called "intermittent tremors". On March 1, 2006, he tripped and fell onstage during a standing ovation after a performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and tore the rotator cuff in his right shoulder, leaving the remaining subscription concerts in Boston to his assistant conductor at the time. Later that month, Levine underwent surgery to repair the injury. He returned to the podium on July 7, 2006. Levine withdrew from the majority of the Tanglewood 2008 summer season because of surgery required to remove a kidney with a malignant cyst. He returned to the podium in Boston on September 24, 2008, at Symphony Hall. On September 29, 2009, it was announced that Levine would undergo emergency back surgery for a herniated disk. He missed three weeks of engagements. In March 2010, the BSO announced that Levine would miss the remainder of the Boston Symphony season because of back pain. The Met also announced, on April 4, 2010, that he was withdrawing from the remainder of his performances for the season. According to the Met, Levine was required to have "corrective surgery for an ongoing lower back problem". He returned to conducting at the Met and the BSO at the beginning of the 2010–11 season, but in February 2011 canceled his Boston engagements for the rest of the season. In the summer of 2011, Levine underwent further surgery on his back. In September 2011, after he fell down a flight of stairs, fractured his spine, and injured his back while on vacation in Vermont, the Met announced that he would not conduct at the Met at least for the rest of 2011. After two years of surgery and physical therapy, Levine returned to conducting for the first time on May 19, 2013, in a concert with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Levine conducted from a motorized wheelchair, with a special platform designed to accommodate it, which could rise and descend like an elevator. He returned to the Met on September 24, 2013. The same type of platform was present in the Met orchestra pit for his September 2013 return performance. For many years, both Levine and the Met denied as unfounded the rumors that Levine had Parkinson's disease. As New York magazine reported: "The conductor states flatly that the condition is not Parkinson's disease, as people had speculated in 'that silly Times piece.'" But in 2016 both he and the Met finally admitted that the rumors were true, and that Levine had in fact had the disease since 1994. The Washington Post noted: "It wasn't just the illnesses, but the constant alternation between concealment and an excess of revelation that kept so much attention focused on them and away from the music." Levine died in his Palm Springs home on March 9, 2021. Len Horovitz, his personal physician, announced Levine's death on March 17 and said that he had died of natural causes. Sexual assault allegations Four men accused Levine of sexually molesting them (starting when they were 16, 17, 17, and 20 years old), from the 1960s to the 1990s. On December 2, 2017, it was publicly revealed that an October 2016 police report detailed that Levine had allegedly sexually molested a male teenager for years. The alleged sexual abuse began while Levine was guest conductor at the Ravinia Festival, outside Chicago, where Levine was music director for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's summer residencies from 1973 to 1993. One accuser said that in the summer of 1968, when he was a 17-year-old high school student attending Meadow Brook School of Music in Michigan, Levine (then a 25-year-old faculty member) had sexual contact with a student. When he next saw Levine, the accuser told him that he would not repeat the sexual behavior, but asked if they could continue to make music as they had before; Levine said no. The accuser later played bass in the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra for decades and became a professor. A second accuser said that that same summer, Levine had sexual contact with a 17-year-old student and that Levine then initiated with the teenager a number of sexual encounters that have since haunted him. He said (and another male corroborated, on the condition of anonymity) that the next year, in Cleveland, where Levine was an assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, Levine on several occasions had sexual contact with that student and other students. A third accuser, a violinist and pianist who grew up in Illinois near the Ravinia Music Festival, a summer program for aspiring musicians of which Levine was music director from 1971 to 1993, said Levine sexually abused him beginning when the accuser was 16 years old (and Levine was in his 40s) in 1986. He had previously detailed his accusation in 2016 in a report to the Lake Forest Police Department in Illinois. On December 8, the department announced that Levine could not be charged criminally in Illinois because the accuser was 16 years old at the time, and while today a 16-year-old is not considered old enough to consent to such conduct in Illinois (he must be 17, or 18 in cases in which the suspect is in a position of trust, authority, or supervision in relation to the victim), at the time that was the statutory age of consent. The department noted: "we are bound to apply the law that was in effect at the time the allegations occurred rather than the law as it currently exists." On December 4, a fourth man, who later had a long career as a violinist in the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, said he had been abused by Levine beginning in 1968, when he was 20 years old and attending the Meadow Brook School of Music. Levine was a teacher in the summer program. Reactions The New York Times said that the Met had known of at least one sexual abuse allegation as early as 1979, but dismissed it as baseless. Furthermore, the Met (including its General Manager Peter Gelb, who was contacted directly by a police detective about the allegations in October 2016) had been aware of both the third accuser's abuse allegations since they were made in the 2016 police report, and of the attendant police investigation. But the Met did not suspend Levine or launch an investigation of its own until over a year later, in December 2017. In response to the December 2017 news article, the Met announced that it would investigate the sexual abuse allegations dating to the 1980s that were set forth in the 2016 police report. On December 3, after two additional males came forward with allegations of abuse, the Met suspended its ties with Levine, and canceled all upcoming engagements with him. A fourth accuser came forward the following day. For its part, the Ravinia Festival, in April 2017, six months after the criminal investigation of Levine began, created an honorific title for Levine—"Conductor Laureate"—and signed him to a five-year renewable contract to begin in 2018. On December 4, 2017, the Ravinia Festival severed all ties with Levine, and terminated his five-year contract to lead the Chicago Symphony there. The Boston Symphony Orchestra said Levine "will never be employed or contracted by the BSO at any time in the future". The Juilliard School, where Levine had studied, replaced him in a February 2018 performance where he was scheduled to lead the Juilliard Orchestra and singers from the Met's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. On December 5, the Cincinnati May Festival canceled Levine's appearance in May. On December 7, in New Plymouth, New Zealand, the cinema chain Event Cinemas abruptly cancelled the screening of a Met production of Levine conducting Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. On December 8, Fred Child, host of the classical music radio show Performance Today, wrote that Levine "is accused of inflicting grievous harm to living members of our musical community. Out of respect for these people and their wounds, I choose not to broadcast performances featuring Mr. Levine on the podium." Classical music blogger, former Village Voice music critic, and Juilliard School faculty member Greg Sandow said he had been contacted by three men over the years who said that Levine had abused them, and that reports of sexual abuse by Levine were "widely talked about" for 40 years. Sandow said further: "Everybody in the classical music business at least since the 1980s has talked about Levine as a sex abuser. The investigation should have been done decades ago." Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Justin Davidson mused on the culture website of New York magazine, "James Levine's career has clearly ended" and "I'm not sure the Met can survive Levine's disgrace." Similarly, drama critic Terry Teachout of The Wall Street Journal wrote an article called "The Levine Cataclysm; How allegations against James Levine of sexual misconduct with teenagers could topple the entire Metropolitan Opera". The Washington Post music critic Anne Midgette noted: "The Met has known about these allegations for at least a year, and are only investigating them now that they are public", and opined on her Facebook page that the Met has "quite probably spent years protecting its star conductor from just this kind of allegation". Music critic Tim Pfaff of the LGBT Bay Area Reporter wrote that The New York Times chief classical music critic Anthony Tommasini had the "weirdest" reaction, "lamenting the ugliness of it all under a...headline, 'Should I Put Away My James Levine Recordings?' His conclusion was that he and his husband...should move those recordings from their living room." The Met orchestra musicians applauded the courage of the four men who came forward with accusations that Levine had abused them. Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, which represents the Met's orchestra and Levine, said, "We are horrified and sickened by the recently reported allegations of sexual abuse by Mr. Levine." Five days after news of the accusations by the four men broke, Levine spoke about them for the first time, and called them "unfounded". The accusers stood by their claims, with one saying, "I will take a lie-detector test. Will he?" Six days later, music critic Arthur Kaptainis wrote in the Montreal Gazette that Levine's denial "had little effect". On March 12, 2018, the Met announced that it had fired Levine. Its investigation found Levine had "engaged in sexually abusive and harassing conduct towards vulnerable artists in the early stages of their careers". Levine sued the Metropolitan Opera in New York State Supreme Court for breach of contract and defamation on March 15, 2018, three days after the company fired him, seeking more than $5.8 million in damages. The Met denied Levine's allegations. A year later, a New York State Supreme Court judge dismissed most of Levine's claims, but ruled that the Met and its attorney had made defamatory statements. The Metropolitan Opera and Levine announced a settlement on undisclosed terms in August 2019. In September 2020, the size of the payout was indirectly exposed by annual disclosure statements required for nonprofits; Levine had received $3.5 million in the settlement. It is speculated that he was able to negotiate such a large settlement due to the lack of a morals clause in his contract with the Met. Recordings and film Levine made many audio and video recordings. He recorded extensively with many orchestras, and especially often with the Metropolitan Opera. His performance of Aida with Leontyne Price, her last in opera, was preserved on video and may be seen at the Met's own online archive of performances. Of particular note are his performances of Wagner's complete Der Ring des Nibelungen. A studio recording made for Deutsche Grammophon from 1987 to 1989 is on compact disc, and a 1989 live performance of the Ring is available on DVD. He also appears on several dozen albums as a pianist, collaborating with such singers as Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, Christa Ludwig, and Dawn Upshaw, as well as performing the chamber music of Franz Schubert and Francis Poulenc, among others. Levine was featured in the animated Disney film Fantasia 2000. He conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the soundtrack recordings of all the music in the film (with the exception of one segment from the original 1940 Fantasia). Levine is also seen in the film talking briefly with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, just as his predecessor Leopold Stokowski did in the original film. Discography Marilyn Horne: Divas in Song (1994), RCA Victor Red Seal CD, 09026-62547-2 Videography Mozart: Idomeneo (1982), Deutsche Grammophon DVD, 00440-073-4234 The Metropolitan Opera Centennial Gala (1983), Deutsche Grammophon DVD, 00440-073-4538 The Metropolitan Opera Gala 1991, Deutsche Grammophon DVD, 00440-073-4582 James Levine's 25th Anniversary Metropolitan Opera Gala (1996), Deutsche Grammophon DVD, B0004602-09 Honors Among the awards listed in his Met biography are: 1980 – Manhattan Cultural Award 1982 – first of eight Grammy Awards 1984 – Named "Musician of the Year" by Musical America 1986 – Smetana Medal (presented by the former Czechoslovakia) 1997 – National Medal of Arts 1999 – Wilhelm Furtwängler Prize from the Committee for Cultural Advancement of Baden-Baden, Germany 2003 – Kennedy Center Honors 2005 – Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts from the American Academy of Arts and Letters 2006 – Opera News Award 2009 – Award in the Vocal Arts from Bard College 2009 – Ditson Conductors Award from Columbia University 2010 – National Endowment for the Arts Opera Honoree 2010 – George Peabody Award from Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University 2010 – elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters In addition, his biography says Levine has received honorary doctorates from the University of Cincinnati, the New England Conservatory of Music, Northwestern University, the State University of New York, and the Juilliard School. On May 3, 2018, SUNY revoked Levine's honorary doctorate in response to the sexual abuse allegations against him. References External links 1943 births 2021 deaths 20th-century American conductors (music) 20th-century American pianists 20th-century American male musicians 20th-century classical pianists 21st-century American conductors (music) 21st-century American male musicians 21st-century American pianists 21st-century classical pianists American classical pianists American male conductors (music) American male pianists Aspen Music Festival and School alumni Conductors of the Metropolitan Opera Deutsche Grammophon artists Grammy Award winners Jewish American classical musicians Jewish classical pianists Juilliard School alumni Kennedy Center honorees Male classical pianists Metropolitan Opera people Music directors (opera) Musicians from Cincinnati Musicians from New York City Oehms Classics artists People stripped of honorary degrees People with Parkinson's disease United States National Medal of Arts recipients 21st-century American Jews

C_65204209c84c44cd9d64d3dbaa8b91fb_1

where was he born

Where was James Levine born?

James Levine

Levine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a Jewish, musical family. His maternal grandfather was a composer and a cantor in a synagogue, his father (Lawrence) was a violinist who led dance bands under the name "Larry Lee" before entering his father's clothing business, and his mother (Helen Goldstein Levine) was briefly an actress on Broadway, performing as "Helen Golden". He has a brother Tom who is two years younger, who followed him to New York City from Cincinnati in 1974, and with whom he is very close. He employs Tom as his business assistant (looking after all of his affairs, arranging his rehearsal schedules, fielding queries, scouting out where he will live, meeting with accountants, and accompanying Levine on trips to Europe), and his brother is a painter as well. He also has a younger sister, Janet, who is a marriage counselor. He began to play the piano as a small child. On February 21, 1954, at the age of 10, Levine made his concert debut as soloist playing Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2 at a youth concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in Ohio. Levine subsequently studied music with Walter Levin, first violinist in the LaSalle Quartet. In 1956 he took piano lessons with Rudolf Serkin at the Marlboro Music School, in Vermont. In the following year he began to study piano with Rosina Lhevinne at the Aspen Music School. He graduated from Walnut Hills High School, an acclaimed magnet school in Cincinnati. He entered the Juilliard School of Music in New York City in 1961, and took courses in conducting with Jean Morel. He graduated from the Juilliard School in 1964, and joined the American Conductors project connected with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Levine lives in The San Remo on Central Park West in New York City. CANNOTANSWER

Cincinnati, Ohio,

James Lawrence Levine (; June 23, 1943 – March 9, 2021) was an American conductor and pianist. He was music director of the Metropolitan Opera (the "Met") from 1976 to 2016. He was formally terminated from all his positions and affiliations with the Met on March 12, 2018, over sexual misconduct allegations, which he denied. Levine held leadership positions with the Ravinia Festival, the Munich Philharmonic, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 1980 he started the Lindemann Young Artists Development Program, and trained singers, conductors, and musicians for professional careers. After taking an almost two-year health-related hiatus from conducting from 2011 to 2013, during which time he held artistic and administrative planning sessions at the Met, and led training of the Lindemann Young Artists, Levine retired as the Met's full-time Music Director following the 2015–16 season to become Music Director Emeritus. Early years and personal life Levine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a Jewish, musical family. His maternal grandfather was a composer and a cantor in a synagogue; his father, Lawrence, was a violinist who led dance bands under the name "Larry Lee" before entering his father's clothing business; and his mother, Helen Goldstein Levine, was briefly an actress on Broadway, performing as "Helen Golden". He had a brother, Tom, who was two years younger, who followed him to New York City from Cincinnati in 1974, and with whom he was very close. He employed Tom as his business assistant, looking after his affairs, arranging his rehearsal schedules, fielding queries, scouting out places to live, meeting with accountants, and accompanying Levine on trips to Europe. Tom was also a painter. He also had a younger sister, Janet, who is a marriage counselor. He began to play the piano as a small child. On February 21, 1954, at age 10, Levine made his concert debut as soloist playing Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2 at a youth concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in Ohio. Levine subsequently studied music with Walter Levin, first violinist in the LaSalle Quartet. In 1956 he took piano lessons with Rudolf Serkin at the Marlboro Music School in Vermont. The next year he began to study piano with Rosina Lhévinne at the Aspen Music School. He graduated from Walnut Hills High School, a magnet school in Cincinnati. He entered the Juilliard School of Music in New York City in 1961, and took courses in conducting with Jean Morel. He graduated from Juilliard in 1964, and joined the American Conductors project connected with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Levine lived in The San Remo on Central Park West in New York City. Career Early career From 1964 to 1965, Levine served as an apprentice to George Szell with the Cleveland Orchestra. He then served as the Orchestra's assistant conductor until 1970. That year, he also made debuts as guest conductor with the Philadelphia Orchestra at its summer home at Robin Hood Dell, the Welsh National Opera, and the San Francisco Opera. From 1965 to 1972 he concurrently taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In the summers, he worked at the Meadow Brook School of Music in Michigan and at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. During that time, the charismatic Levine developed a devoted following of young musicians and music lovers. In June 1971, Levine was called in at the last moment to substitute for István Kertész, to lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Mahler's Second Symphony for the Ravinia Festival's opening concert of their 36th season. This concert began a long association with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. From 1973 to 1993 he was music director of the Ravinia Festival, succeeding the late Kertész. He made numerous recordings with the orchestra, including the symphonies and German Requiem of Johannes Brahms, and major works of Gershwin, Holst, Berg, Beethoven, Mozart, and others. In 1990, at the request of Roy E. Disney, he arranged the music and conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in the soundtrack of Fantasia 2000, released by Walt Disney Pictures. From 1974 to 1978, Levine also served as music director of the Cincinnati May Festival. Metropolitan Opera Levine made his Metropolitan Opera debut a few weeks before he turned 28, on June 5, 1971, leading a June Festival performance of Puccini's Tosca. After further appearances with the company, he was named its principal conductor in February 1972. He became its music director in 1975. In 1983, he served as conductor and musical director for the Franco Zeffirelli screen adaptation of Verdi's La Traviata, which featured the Met orchestra and chorus members. He became the company's first artistic director in 1986, and relinquished the title in 2004. In 2005, Levine's combined salary from the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Met made him the highest-paid conductor in the country, at $3.5 million. During Levine's tenure, the Metropolitan Opera orchestra expanded its activities into recording and concert series for the orchestra and chamber ensembles from the orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Levine led the Metropolitan Opera on many domestic and international tours. For the 25th anniversary of his Met debut, Levine conducted the world premiere of John Harbison's The Great Gatsby, commissioned for the occasion. On his appointment as general manager of the Met, Peter Gelb emphasized that Levine was welcome to remain as long as he wanted to direct music there. Levine was paid $2.1 million by the Met in 2010. Following a series of injuries that began with a fall, Levine's health problems led to his withdrawal from many Metropolitan Opera engagements. After a May 2011 performance of Wagner's Die Walküre, Levine formally withdrew from all engagements at the Met. After two years of physical therapy, he returned to conducting with a May 2013 concert with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. On September 25, 2013, Levine conducted his first Met performance since May 2011, in a revival production of Mozart's Così fan tutte. He was scheduled to conduct three productions at the opera house and three at Carnegie Hall in the 2013–14 season. On April 14, 2016, Met management announced that Levine would step down from his position as music director at the end of the 2015–16 season. Levine was paid $1.8 million by the Met for the 2015–16 season. He assumed the new title of Music Director Emeritus, which he held until December 2017, when in the wake of allegations that Levine had sexually abused four young men, the Met suspended its relationship with him and canceled all his scheduled performances with the company. Boston Symphony Orchestra Levine first conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) in April 1972. In October 2001, he was named its music director effective with the 2004–05 season, with an initial contract of five years, becoming the first American-born conductor to head the BSO. One unique condition that Levine negotiated was increased flexibility of the time allotted for rehearsal, allowing the orchestra additional time to prepare more challenging works. After the start of his tenure, the orchestra also established an "Artistic Initiative Fund" of about $40 million to fund the more expensive of his projects. One criticism of Levine during his BSO tenure is that he did not attend many orchestra auditions. A 2005 article reported that he had attended two out of 16 auditions during his tenure up to that time. Levine responded that he has the ability to provide input on musician tenure decisions after the initial probationary period, and that it is difficult to know how well a given player will fit the given position until that person has had a chance to work with the orchestra: "My message is the audition isn't everything." Another 2005 report stated that during Levine's first season as music director, the greater workload from the demands of playing more unfamiliar and contemporary music had increased physical stress on some of the BSO musicians. Levine and the players met to discuss this, and he agreed to program changes to lessen these demands. He received general critical praise for revitalizing the orchestra's quality and repertoire since the beginning of his tenure. Levine experienced ongoing health problems, starting with an onstage fall in 2006 that resulted in a torn rotator cuff and started discussion of how long Levine's tenure with the BSO would last. In April 2010, in the wake of his continuing health problems, it emerged that Levine had not officially signed a contract extension, so that he was the BSO's music director without a signed contract. On March 2, 2011, the BSO announced Levine's resignation as music director effective September 2011, after the Orchestra's Tanglewood season. Working on a commission from Levine and the BSO, the composer John Harbison dedicated his Symphony No. 6 "in friendship and gratitude" to him, whose premature departure from the orchestra prevented him from conducting the premiere. After allegations of his abusing a number of young men came out in December 2017 the BSO said Levine "will never be employed or contracted by the BSO at any time in the future". Conducting in Europe Levine's BSO contract limited his guest appearances with American orchestras, but he still conducted regularly in Europe, with the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, and at the Bayreuth Festival. Levine was a regular guest with the Philharmonia of London and the Staatskapelle Dresden. Beginning in 1975 he conducted regularly at the Salzburg Festival and the annual July Verbier Festival. From 1999 to 2004, he was chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, and was credited with improving the quality of instrumental ensemble during his tenure. Work with students Levine initiated the Lindemann Young Artists Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera in 1980, a professional training program for graduated singers with, today, many famous alumni. Levine was conductor of the UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra, the student resident orchestra at the annual summer music festival in Verbier, Switzerland, from 1999 through 2006. It was Levine's first long-term commitment to a student orchestra since becoming music director at the Met. After becoming music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Levine also served as music director of the Tanglewood Music Center, the BSO's acclaimed summer academy at Tanglewood for student instrumentalists, singers, composers, and conductors. There he conducted the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, directed fully staged opera performances with student singers, and gave master classes for singers and conductors. Levine said in an interview: At my age, you are naturally inclined towards teaching. You want to teach what you have learned to the next generation so that they don't have to spend time reinventing the wheel. I was lucky that I met the right mentors and teachers at the right moment. I love working with young musicians and singers, and those at the Tanglewood Music Center are unequivocally some of the finest and most talented in the world. He continued to work with young students even when his health issues kept him from conducting. He was awarded the Lotus Award ("for inspiration to young musicians") from Young Concert Artists. Anthony Tommasini wrote in The New York Times in 2016: "The aspiring singers in the Met's young artist development program, one of many important ventures Mr. Levine started, must understand how lucky they are to have, as a teacher and mentor, a musician who even in his 20s worked at the Met with giants like Jon Vickers and Renata Tebaldi." Health problems and death Levine experienced recurrent health issues beginning in 2006, including sciatica and what he called "intermittent tremors". On March 1, 2006, he tripped and fell onstage during a standing ovation after a performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and tore the rotator cuff in his right shoulder, leaving the remaining subscription concerts in Boston to his assistant conductor at the time. Later that month, Levine underwent surgery to repair the injury. He returned to the podium on July 7, 2006. Levine withdrew from the majority of the Tanglewood 2008 summer season because of surgery required to remove a kidney with a malignant cyst. He returned to the podium in Boston on September 24, 2008, at Symphony Hall. On September 29, 2009, it was announced that Levine would undergo emergency back surgery for a herniated disk. He missed three weeks of engagements. In March 2010, the BSO announced that Levine would miss the remainder of the Boston Symphony season because of back pain. The Met also announced, on April 4, 2010, that he was withdrawing from the remainder of his performances for the season. According to the Met, Levine was required to have "corrective surgery for an ongoing lower back problem". He returned to conducting at the Met and the BSO at the beginning of the 2010–11 season, but in February 2011 canceled his Boston engagements for the rest of the season. In the summer of 2011, Levine underwent further surgery on his back. In September 2011, after he fell down a flight of stairs, fractured his spine, and injured his back while on vacation in Vermont, the Met announced that he would not conduct at the Met at least for the rest of 2011. After two years of surgery and physical therapy, Levine returned to conducting for the first time on May 19, 2013, in a concert with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Levine conducted from a motorized wheelchair, with a special platform designed to accommodate it, which could rise and descend like an elevator. He returned to the Met on September 24, 2013. The same type of platform was present in the Met orchestra pit for his September 2013 return performance. For many years, both Levine and the Met denied as unfounded the rumors that Levine had Parkinson's disease. As New York magazine reported: "The conductor states flatly that the condition is not Parkinson's disease, as people had speculated in 'that silly Times piece.'" But in 2016 both he and the Met finally admitted that the rumors were true, and that Levine had in fact had the disease since 1994. The Washington Post noted: "It wasn't just the illnesses, but the constant alternation between concealment and an excess of revelation that kept so much attention focused on them and away from the music." Levine died in his Palm Springs home on March 9, 2021. Len Horovitz, his personal physician, announced Levine's death on March 17 and said that he had died of natural causes. Sexual assault allegations Four men accused Levine of sexually molesting them (starting when they were 16, 17, 17, and 20 years old), from the 1960s to the 1990s. On December 2, 2017, it was publicly revealed that an October 2016 police report detailed that Levine had allegedly sexually molested a male teenager for years. The alleged sexual abuse began while Levine was guest conductor at the Ravinia Festival, outside Chicago, where Levine was music director for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's summer residencies from 1973 to 1993. One accuser said that in the summer of 1968, when he was a 17-year-old high school student attending Meadow Brook School of Music in Michigan, Levine (then a 25-year-old faculty member) had sexual contact with a student. When he next saw Levine, the accuser told him that he would not repeat the sexual behavior, but asked if they could continue to make music as they had before; Levine said no. The accuser later played bass in the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra for decades and became a professor. A second accuser said that that same summer, Levine had sexual contact with a 17-year-old student and that Levine then initiated with the teenager a number of sexual encounters that have since haunted him. He said (and another male corroborated, on the condition of anonymity) that the next year, in Cleveland, where Levine was an assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, Levine on several occasions had sexual contact with that student and other students. A third accuser, a violinist and pianist who grew up in Illinois near the Ravinia Music Festival, a summer program for aspiring musicians of which Levine was music director from 1971 to 1993, said Levine sexually abused him beginning when the accuser was 16 years old (and Levine was in his 40s) in 1986. He had previously detailed his accusation in 2016 in a report to the Lake Forest Police Department in Illinois. On December 8, the department announced that Levine could not be charged criminally in Illinois because the accuser was 16 years old at the time, and while today a 16-year-old is not considered old enough to consent to such conduct in Illinois (he must be 17, or 18 in cases in which the suspect is in a position of trust, authority, or supervision in relation to the victim), at the time that was the statutory age of consent. The department noted: "we are bound to apply the law that was in effect at the time the allegations occurred rather than the law as it currently exists." On December 4, a fourth man, who later had a long career as a violinist in the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, said he had been abused by Levine beginning in 1968, when he was 20 years old and attending the Meadow Brook School of Music. Levine was a teacher in the summer program. Reactions The New York Times said that the Met had known of at least one sexual abuse allegation as early as 1979, but dismissed it as baseless. Furthermore, the Met (including its General Manager Peter Gelb, who was contacted directly by a police detective about the allegations in October 2016) had been aware of both the third accuser's abuse allegations since they were made in the 2016 police report, and of the attendant police investigation. But the Met did not suspend Levine or launch an investigation of its own until over a year later, in December 2017. In response to the December 2017 news article, the Met announced that it would investigate the sexual abuse allegations dating to the 1980s that were set forth in the 2016 police report. On December 3, after two additional males came forward with allegations of abuse, the Met suspended its ties with Levine, and canceled all upcoming engagements with him. A fourth accuser came forward the following day. For its part, the Ravinia Festival, in April 2017, six months after the criminal investigation of Levine began, created an honorific title for Levine—"Conductor Laureate"—and signed him to a five-year renewable contract to begin in 2018. On December 4, 2017, the Ravinia Festival severed all ties with Levine, and terminated his five-year contract to lead the Chicago Symphony there. The Boston Symphony Orchestra said Levine "will never be employed or contracted by the BSO at any time in the future". The Juilliard School, where Levine had studied, replaced him in a February 2018 performance where he was scheduled to lead the Juilliard Orchestra and singers from the Met's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. On December 5, the Cincinnati May Festival canceled Levine's appearance in May. On December 7, in New Plymouth, New Zealand, the cinema chain Event Cinemas abruptly cancelled the screening of a Met production of Levine conducting Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. On December 8, Fred Child, host of the classical music radio show Performance Today, wrote that Levine "is accused of inflicting grievous harm to living members of our musical community. Out of respect for these people and their wounds, I choose not to broadcast performances featuring Mr. Levine on the podium." Classical music blogger, former Village Voice music critic, and Juilliard School faculty member Greg Sandow said he had been contacted by three men over the years who said that Levine had abused them, and that reports of sexual abuse by Levine were "widely talked about" for 40 years. Sandow said further: "Everybody in the classical music business at least since the 1980s has talked about Levine as a sex abuser. The investigation should have been done decades ago." Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Justin Davidson mused on the culture website of New York magazine, "James Levine's career has clearly ended" and "I'm not sure the Met can survive Levine's disgrace." Similarly, drama critic Terry Teachout of The Wall Street Journal wrote an article called "The Levine Cataclysm; How allegations against James Levine of sexual misconduct with teenagers could topple the entire Metropolitan Opera". The Washington Post music critic Anne Midgette noted: "The Met has known about these allegations for at least a year, and are only investigating them now that they are public", and opined on her Facebook page that the Met has "quite probably spent years protecting its star conductor from just this kind of allegation". Music critic Tim Pfaff of the LGBT Bay Area Reporter wrote that The New York Times chief classical music critic Anthony Tommasini had the "weirdest" reaction, "lamenting the ugliness of it all under a...headline, 'Should I Put Away My James Levine Recordings?' His conclusion was that he and his husband...should move those recordings from their living room." The Met orchestra musicians applauded the courage of the four men who came forward with accusations that Levine had abused them. Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, which represents the Met's orchestra and Levine, said, "We are horrified and sickened by the recently reported allegations of sexual abuse by Mr. Levine." Five days after news of the accusations by the four men broke, Levine spoke about them for the first time, and called them "unfounded". The accusers stood by their claims, with one saying, "I will take a lie-detector test. Will he?" Six days later, music critic Arthur Kaptainis wrote in the Montreal Gazette that Levine's denial "had little effect". On March 12, 2018, the Met announced that it had fired Levine. Its investigation found Levine had "engaged in sexually abusive and harassing conduct towards vulnerable artists in the early stages of their careers". Levine sued the Metropolitan Opera in New York State Supreme Court for breach of contract and defamation on March 15, 2018, three days after the company fired him, seeking more than $5.8 million in damages. The Met denied Levine's allegations. A year later, a New York State Supreme Court judge dismissed most of Levine's claims, but ruled that the Met and its attorney had made defamatory statements. The Metropolitan Opera and Levine announced a settlement on undisclosed terms in August 2019. In September 2020, the size of the payout was indirectly exposed by annual disclosure statements required for nonprofits; Levine had received $3.5 million in the settlement. It is speculated that he was able to negotiate such a large settlement due to the lack of a morals clause in his contract with the Met. Recordings and film Levine made many audio and video recordings. He recorded extensively with many orchestras, and especially often with the Metropolitan Opera. His performance of Aida with Leontyne Price, her last in opera, was preserved on video and may be seen at the Met's own online archive of performances. Of particular note are his performances of Wagner's complete Der Ring des Nibelungen. A studio recording made for Deutsche Grammophon from 1987 to 1989 is on compact disc, and a 1989 live performance of the Ring is available on DVD. He also appears on several dozen albums as a pianist, collaborating with such singers as Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, Christa Ludwig, and Dawn Upshaw, as well as performing the chamber music of Franz Schubert and Francis Poulenc, among others. Levine was featured in the animated Disney film Fantasia 2000. He conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the soundtrack recordings of all the music in the film (with the exception of one segment from the original 1940 Fantasia). Levine is also seen in the film talking briefly with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, just as his predecessor Leopold Stokowski did in the original film. Discography Marilyn Horne: Divas in Song (1994), RCA Victor Red Seal CD, 09026-62547-2 Videography Mozart: Idomeneo (1982), Deutsche Grammophon DVD, 00440-073-4234 The Metropolitan Opera Centennial Gala (1983), Deutsche Grammophon DVD, 00440-073-4538 The Metropolitan Opera Gala 1991, Deutsche Grammophon DVD, 00440-073-4582 James Levine's 25th Anniversary Metropolitan Opera Gala (1996), Deutsche Grammophon DVD, B0004602-09 Honors Among the awards listed in his Met biography are: 1980 – Manhattan Cultural Award 1982 – first of eight Grammy Awards 1984 – Named "Musician of the Year" by Musical America 1986 – Smetana Medal (presented by the former Czechoslovakia) 1997 – National Medal of Arts 1999 – Wilhelm Furtwängler Prize from the Committee for Cultural Advancement of Baden-Baden, Germany 2003 – Kennedy Center Honors 2005 – Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts from the American Academy of Arts and Letters 2006 – Opera News Award 2009 – Award in the Vocal Arts from Bard College 2009 – Ditson Conductors Award from Columbia University 2010 – National Endowment for the Arts Opera Honoree 2010 – George Peabody Award from Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University 2010 – elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters In addition, his biography says Levine has received honorary doctorates from the University of Cincinnati, the New England Conservatory of Music, Northwestern University, the State University of New York, and the Juilliard School. On May 3, 2018, SUNY revoked Levine's honorary doctorate in response to the sexual abuse allegations against him. References External links 1943 births 2021 deaths 20th-century American conductors (music) 20th-century American pianists 20th-century American male musicians 20th-century classical pianists 21st-century American conductors (music) 21st-century American male musicians 21st-century American pianists 21st-century classical pianists American classical pianists American male conductors (music) American male pianists Aspen Music Festival and School alumni Conductors of the Metropolitan Opera Deutsche Grammophon artists Grammy Award winners Jewish American classical musicians Jewish classical pianists Juilliard School alumni Kennedy Center honorees Male classical pianists Metropolitan Opera people Music directors (opera) Musicians from Cincinnati Musicians from New York City Oehms Classics artists People stripped of honorary degrees People with Parkinson's disease United States National Medal of Arts recipients 21st-century American Jews

C_65204209c84c44cd9d64d3dbaa8b91fb_1

which school did he attended

Which school did James Levine attended?

James Levine

Levine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a Jewish, musical family. His maternal grandfather was a composer and a cantor in a synagogue, his father (Lawrence) was a violinist who led dance bands under the name "Larry Lee" before entering his father's clothing business, and his mother (Helen Goldstein Levine) was briefly an actress on Broadway, performing as "Helen Golden". He has a brother Tom who is two years younger, who followed him to New York City from Cincinnati in 1974, and with whom he is very close. He employs Tom as his business assistant (looking after all of his affairs, arranging his rehearsal schedules, fielding queries, scouting out where he will live, meeting with accountants, and accompanying Levine on trips to Europe), and his brother is a painter as well. He also has a younger sister, Janet, who is a marriage counselor. He began to play the piano as a small child. On February 21, 1954, at the age of 10, Levine made his concert debut as soloist playing Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2 at a youth concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in Ohio. Levine subsequently studied music with Walter Levin, first violinist in the LaSalle Quartet. In 1956 he took piano lessons with Rudolf Serkin at the Marlboro Music School, in Vermont. In the following year he began to study piano with Rosina Lhevinne at the Aspen Music School. He graduated from Walnut Hills High School, an acclaimed magnet school in Cincinnati. He entered the Juilliard School of Music in New York City in 1961, and took courses in conducting with Jean Morel. He graduated from the Juilliard School in 1964, and joined the American Conductors project connected with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Levine lives in The San Remo on Central Park West in New York City. CANNOTANSWER

Marlboro Music School,

James Lawrence Levine (; June 23, 1943 – March 9, 2021) was an American conductor and pianist. He was music director of the Metropolitan Opera (the "Met") from 1976 to 2016. He was formally terminated from all his positions and affiliations with the Met on March 12, 2018, over sexual misconduct allegations, which he denied. Levine held leadership positions with the Ravinia Festival, the Munich Philharmonic, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 1980 he started the Lindemann Young Artists Development Program, and trained singers, conductors, and musicians for professional careers. After taking an almost two-year health-related hiatus from conducting from 2011 to 2013, during which time he held artistic and administrative planning sessions at the Met, and led training of the Lindemann Young Artists, Levine retired as the Met's full-time Music Director following the 2015–16 season to become Music Director Emeritus. Early years and personal life Levine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a Jewish, musical family. His maternal grandfather was a composer and a cantor in a synagogue; his father, Lawrence, was a violinist who led dance bands under the name "Larry Lee" before entering his father's clothing business; and his mother, Helen Goldstein Levine, was briefly an actress on Broadway, performing as "Helen Golden". He had a brother, Tom, who was two years younger, who followed him to New York City from Cincinnati in 1974, and with whom he was very close. He employed Tom as his business assistant, looking after his affairs, arranging his rehearsal schedules, fielding queries, scouting out places to live, meeting with accountants, and accompanying Levine on trips to Europe. Tom was also a painter. He also had a younger sister, Janet, who is a marriage counselor. He began to play the piano as a small child. On February 21, 1954, at age 10, Levine made his concert debut as soloist playing Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2 at a youth concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in Ohio. Levine subsequently studied music with Walter Levin, first violinist in the LaSalle Quartet. In 1956 he took piano lessons with Rudolf Serkin at the Marlboro Music School in Vermont. The next year he began to study piano with Rosina Lhévinne at the Aspen Music School. He graduated from Walnut Hills High School, a magnet school in Cincinnati. He entered the Juilliard School of Music in New York City in 1961, and took courses in conducting with Jean Morel. He graduated from Juilliard in 1964, and joined the American Conductors project connected with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Levine lived in The San Remo on Central Park West in New York City. Career Early career From 1964 to 1965, Levine served as an apprentice to George Szell with the Cleveland Orchestra. He then served as the Orchestra's assistant conductor until 1970. That year, he also made debuts as guest conductor with the Philadelphia Orchestra at its summer home at Robin Hood Dell, the Welsh National Opera, and the San Francisco Opera. From 1965 to 1972 he concurrently taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In the summers, he worked at the Meadow Brook School of Music in Michigan and at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. During that time, the charismatic Levine developed a devoted following of young musicians and music lovers. In June 1971, Levine was called in at the last moment to substitute for István Kertész, to lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Mahler's Second Symphony for the Ravinia Festival's opening concert of their 36th season. This concert began a long association with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. From 1973 to 1993 he was music director of the Ravinia Festival, succeeding the late Kertész. He made numerous recordings with the orchestra, including the symphonies and German Requiem of Johannes Brahms, and major works of Gershwin, Holst, Berg, Beethoven, Mozart, and others. In 1990, at the request of Roy E. Disney, he arranged the music and conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in the soundtrack of Fantasia 2000, released by Walt Disney Pictures. From 1974 to 1978, Levine also served as music director of the Cincinnati May Festival. Metropolitan Opera Levine made his Metropolitan Opera debut a few weeks before he turned 28, on June 5, 1971, leading a June Festival performance of Puccini's Tosca. After further appearances with the company, he was named its principal conductor in February 1972. He became its music director in 1975. In 1983, he served as conductor and musical director for the Franco Zeffirelli screen adaptation of Verdi's La Traviata, which featured the Met orchestra and chorus members. He became the company's first artistic director in 1986, and relinquished the title in 2004. In 2005, Levine's combined salary from the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Met made him the highest-paid conductor in the country, at $3.5 million. During Levine's tenure, the Metropolitan Opera orchestra expanded its activities into recording and concert series for the orchestra and chamber ensembles from the orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Levine led the Metropolitan Opera on many domestic and international tours. For the 25th anniversary of his Met debut, Levine conducted the world premiere of John Harbison's The Great Gatsby, commissioned for the occasion. On his appointment as general manager of the Met, Peter Gelb emphasized that Levine was welcome to remain as long as he wanted to direct music there. Levine was paid $2.1 million by the Met in 2010. Following a series of injuries that began with a fall, Levine's health problems led to his withdrawal from many Metropolitan Opera engagements. After a May 2011 performance of Wagner's Die Walküre, Levine formally withdrew from all engagements at the Met. After two years of physical therapy, he returned to conducting with a May 2013 concert with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. On September 25, 2013, Levine conducted his first Met performance since May 2011, in a revival production of Mozart's Così fan tutte. He was scheduled to conduct three productions at the opera house and three at Carnegie Hall in the 2013–14 season. On April 14, 2016, Met management announced that Levine would step down from his position as music director at the end of the 2015–16 season. Levine was paid $1.8 million by the Met for the 2015–16 season. He assumed the new title of Music Director Emeritus, which he held until December 2017, when in the wake of allegations that Levine had sexually abused four young men, the Met suspended its relationship with him and canceled all his scheduled performances with the company. Boston Symphony Orchestra Levine first conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) in April 1972. In October 2001, he was named its music director effective with the 2004–05 season, with an initial contract of five years, becoming the first American-born conductor to head the BSO. One unique condition that Levine negotiated was increased flexibility of the time allotted for rehearsal, allowing the orchestra additional time to prepare more challenging works. After the start of his tenure, the orchestra also established an "Artistic Initiative Fund" of about $40 million to fund the more expensive of his projects. One criticism of Levine during his BSO tenure is that he did not attend many orchestra auditions. A 2005 article reported that he had attended two out of 16 auditions during his tenure up to that time. Levine responded that he has the ability to provide input on musician tenure decisions after the initial probationary period, and that it is difficult to know how well a given player will fit the given position until that person has had a chance to work with the orchestra: "My message is the audition isn't everything." Another 2005 report stated that during Levine's first season as music director, the greater workload from the demands of playing more unfamiliar and contemporary music had increased physical stress on some of the BSO musicians. Levine and the players met to discuss this, and he agreed to program changes to lessen these demands. He received general critical praise for revitalizing the orchestra's quality and repertoire since the beginning of his tenure. Levine experienced ongoing health problems, starting with an onstage fall in 2006 that resulted in a torn rotator cuff and started discussion of how long Levine's tenure with the BSO would last. In April 2010, in the wake of his continuing health problems, it emerged that Levine had not officially signed a contract extension, so that he was the BSO's music director without a signed contract. On March 2, 2011, the BSO announced Levine's resignation as music director effective September 2011, after the Orchestra's Tanglewood season. Working on a commission from Levine and the BSO, the composer John Harbison dedicated his Symphony No. 6 "in friendship and gratitude" to him, whose premature departure from the orchestra prevented him from conducting the premiere. After allegations of his abusing a number of young men came out in December 2017 the BSO said Levine "will never be employed or contracted by the BSO at any time in the future". Conducting in Europe Levine's BSO contract limited his guest appearances with American orchestras, but he still conducted regularly in Europe, with the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, and at the Bayreuth Festival. Levine was a regular guest with the Philharmonia of London and the Staatskapelle Dresden. Beginning in 1975 he conducted regularly at the Salzburg Festival and the annual July Verbier Festival. From 1999 to 2004, he was chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, and was credited with improving the quality of instrumental ensemble during his tenure. Work with students Levine initiated the Lindemann Young Artists Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera in 1980, a professional training program for graduated singers with, today, many famous alumni. Levine was conductor of the UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra, the student resident orchestra at the annual summer music festival in Verbier, Switzerland, from 1999 through 2006. It was Levine's first long-term commitment to a student orchestra since becoming music director at the Met. After becoming music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Levine also served as music director of the Tanglewood Music Center, the BSO's acclaimed summer academy at Tanglewood for student instrumentalists, singers, composers, and conductors. There he conducted the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, directed fully staged opera performances with student singers, and gave master classes for singers and conductors. Levine said in an interview: At my age, you are naturally inclined towards teaching. You want to teach what you have learned to the next generation so that they don't have to spend time reinventing the wheel. I was lucky that I met the right mentors and teachers at the right moment. I love working with young musicians and singers, and those at the Tanglewood Music Center are unequivocally some of the finest and most talented in the world. He continued to work with young students even when his health issues kept him from conducting. He was awarded the Lotus Award ("for inspiration to young musicians") from Young Concert Artists. Anthony Tommasini wrote in The New York Times in 2016: "The aspiring singers in the Met's young artist development program, one of many important ventures Mr. Levine started, must understand how lucky they are to have, as a teacher and mentor, a musician who even in his 20s worked at the Met with giants like Jon Vickers and Renata Tebaldi." Health problems and death Levine experienced recurrent health issues beginning in 2006, including sciatica and what he called "intermittent tremors". On March 1, 2006, he tripped and fell onstage during a standing ovation after a performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and tore the rotator cuff in his right shoulder, leaving the remaining subscription concerts in Boston to his assistant conductor at the time. Later that month, Levine underwent surgery to repair the injury. He returned to the podium on July 7, 2006. Levine withdrew from the majority of the Tanglewood 2008 summer season because of surgery required to remove a kidney with a malignant cyst. He returned to the podium in Boston on September 24, 2008, at Symphony Hall. On September 29, 2009, it was announced that Levine would undergo emergency back surgery for a herniated disk. He missed three weeks of engagements. In March 2010, the BSO announced that Levine would miss the remainder of the Boston Symphony season because of back pain. The Met also announced, on April 4, 2010, that he was withdrawing from the remainder of his performances for the season. According to the Met, Levine was required to have "corrective surgery for an ongoing lower back problem". He returned to conducting at the Met and the BSO at the beginning of the 2010–11 season, but in February 2011 canceled his Boston engagements for the rest of the season. In the summer of 2011, Levine underwent further surgery on his back. In September 2011, after he fell down a flight of stairs, fractured his spine, and injured his back while on vacation in Vermont, the Met announced that he would not conduct at the Met at least for the rest of 2011. After two years of surgery and physical therapy, Levine returned to conducting for the first time on May 19, 2013, in a concert with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Levine conducted from a motorized wheelchair, with a special platform designed to accommodate it, which could rise and descend like an elevator. He returned to the Met on September 24, 2013. The same type of platform was present in the Met orchestra pit for his September 2013 return performance. For many years, both Levine and the Met denied as unfounded the rumors that Levine had Parkinson's disease. As New York magazine reported: "The conductor states flatly that the condition is not Parkinson's disease, as people had speculated in 'that silly Times piece.'" But in 2016 both he and the Met finally admitted that the rumors were true, and that Levine had in fact had the disease since 1994. The Washington Post noted: "It wasn't just the illnesses, but the constant alternation between concealment and an excess of revelation that kept so much attention focused on them and away from the music." Levine died in his Palm Springs home on March 9, 2021. Len Horovitz, his personal physician, announced Levine's death on March 17 and said that he had died of natural causes. Sexual assault allegations Four men accused Levine of sexually molesting them (starting when they were 16, 17, 17, and 20 years old), from the 1960s to the 1990s. On December 2, 2017, it was publicly revealed that an October 2016 police report detailed that Levine had allegedly sexually molested a male teenager for years. The alleged sexual abuse began while Levine was guest conductor at the Ravinia Festival, outside Chicago, where Levine was music director for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's summer residencies from 1973 to 1993. One accuser said that in the summer of 1968, when he was a 17-year-old high school student attending Meadow Brook School of Music in Michigan, Levine (then a 25-year-old faculty member) had sexual contact with a student. When he next saw Levine, the accuser told him that he would not repeat the sexual behavior, but asked if they could continue to make music as they had before; Levine said no. The accuser later played bass in the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra for decades and became a professor. A second accuser said that that same summer, Levine had sexual contact with a 17-year-old student and that Levine then initiated with the teenager a number of sexual encounters that have since haunted him. He said (and another male corroborated, on the condition of anonymity) that the next year, in Cleveland, where Levine was an assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, Levine on several occasions had sexual contact with that student and other students. A third accuser, a violinist and pianist who grew up in Illinois near the Ravinia Music Festival, a summer program for aspiring musicians of which Levine was music director from 1971 to 1993, said Levine sexually abused him beginning when the accuser was 16 years old (and Levine was in his 40s) in 1986. He had previously detailed his accusation in 2016 in a report to the Lake Forest Police Department in Illinois. On December 8, the department announced that Levine could not be charged criminally in Illinois because the accuser was 16 years old at the time, and while today a 16-year-old is not considered old enough to consent to such conduct in Illinois (he must be 17, or 18 in cases in which the suspect is in a position of trust, authority, or supervision in relation to the victim), at the time that was the statutory age of consent. The department noted: "we are bound to apply the law that was in effect at the time the allegations occurred rather than the law as it currently exists." On December 4, a fourth man, who later had a long career as a violinist in the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, said he had been abused by Levine beginning in 1968, when he was 20 years old and attending the Meadow Brook School of Music. Levine was a teacher in the summer program. Reactions The New York Times said that the Met had known of at least one sexual abuse allegation as early as 1979, but dismissed it as baseless. Furthermore, the Met (including its General Manager Peter Gelb, who was contacted directly by a police detective about the allegations in October 2016) had been aware of both the third accuser's abuse allegations since they were made in the 2016 police report, and of the attendant police investigation. But the Met did not suspend Levine or launch an investigation of its own until over a year later, in December 2017. In response to the December 2017 news article, the Met announced that it would investigate the sexual abuse allegations dating to the 1980s that were set forth in the 2016 police report. On December 3, after two additional males came forward with allegations of abuse, the Met suspended its ties with Levine, and canceled all upcoming engagements with him. A fourth accuser came forward the following day. For its part, the Ravinia Festival, in April 2017, six months after the criminal investigation of Levine began, created an honorific title for Levine—"Conductor Laureate"—and signed him to a five-year renewable contract to begin in 2018. On December 4, 2017, the Ravinia Festival severed all ties with Levine, and terminated his five-year contract to lead the Chicago Symphony there. The Boston Symphony Orchestra said Levine "will never be employed or contracted by the BSO at any time in the future". The Juilliard School, where Levine had studied, replaced him in a February 2018 performance where he was scheduled to lead the Juilliard Orchestra and singers from the Met's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. On December 5, the Cincinnati May Festival canceled Levine's appearance in May. On December 7, in New Plymouth, New Zealand, the cinema chain Event Cinemas abruptly cancelled the screening of a Met production of Levine conducting Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. On December 8, Fred Child, host of the classical music radio show Performance Today, wrote that Levine "is accused of inflicting grievous harm to living members of our musical community. Out of respect for these people and their wounds, I choose not to broadcast performances featuring Mr. Levine on the podium." Classical music blogger, former Village Voice music critic, and Juilliard School faculty member Greg Sandow said he had been contacted by three men over the years who said that Levine had abused them, and that reports of sexual abuse by Levine were "widely talked about" for 40 years. Sandow said further: "Everybody in the classical music business at least since the 1980s has talked about Levine as a sex abuser. The investigation should have been done decades ago." Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Justin Davidson mused on the culture website of New York magazine, "James Levine's career has clearly ended" and "I'm not sure the Met can survive Levine's disgrace." Similarly, drama critic Terry Teachout of The Wall Street Journal wrote an article called "The Levine Cataclysm; How allegations against James Levine of sexual misconduct with teenagers could topple the entire Metropolitan Opera". The Washington Post music critic Anne Midgette noted: "The Met has known about these allegations for at least a year, and are only investigating them now that they are public", and opined on her Facebook page that the Met has "quite probably spent years protecting its star conductor from just this kind of allegation". Music critic Tim Pfaff of the LGBT Bay Area Reporter wrote that The New York Times chief classical music critic Anthony Tommasini had the "weirdest" reaction, "lamenting the ugliness of it all under a...headline, 'Should I Put Away My James Levine Recordings?' His conclusion was that he and his husband...should move those recordings from their living room." The Met orchestra musicians applauded the courage of the four men who came forward with accusations that Levine had abused them. Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, which represents the Met's orchestra and Levine, said, "We are horrified and sickened by the recently reported allegations of sexual abuse by Mr. Levine." Five days after news of the accusations by the four men broke, Levine spoke about them for the first time, and called them "unfounded". The accusers stood by their claims, with one saying, "I will take a lie-detector test. Will he?" Six days later, music critic Arthur Kaptainis wrote in the Montreal Gazette that Levine's denial "had little effect". On March 12, 2018, the Met announced that it had fired Levine. Its investigation found Levine had "engaged in sexually abusive and harassing conduct towards vulnerable artists in the early stages of their careers". Levine sued the Metropolitan Opera in New York State Supreme Court for breach of contract and defamation on March 15, 2018, three days after the company fired him, seeking more than $5.8 million in damages. The Met denied Levine's allegations. A year later, a New York State Supreme Court judge dismissed most of Levine's claims, but ruled that the Met and its attorney had made defamatory statements. The Metropolitan Opera and Levine announced a settlement on undisclosed terms in August 2019. In September 2020, the size of the payout was indirectly exposed by annual disclosure statements required for nonprofits; Levine had received $3.5 million in the settlement. It is speculated that he was able to negotiate such a large settlement due to the lack of a morals clause in his contract with the Met. Recordings and film Levine made many audio and video recordings. He recorded extensively with many orchestras, and especially often with the Metropolitan Opera. His performance of Aida with Leontyne Price, her last in opera, was preserved on video and may be seen at the Met's own online archive of performances. Of particular note are his performances of Wagner's complete Der Ring des Nibelungen. A studio recording made for Deutsche Grammophon from 1987 to 1989 is on compact disc, and a 1989 live performance of the Ring is available on DVD. He also appears on several dozen albums as a pianist, collaborating with such singers as Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, Christa Ludwig, and Dawn Upshaw, as well as performing the chamber music of Franz Schubert and Francis Poulenc, among others. Levine was featured in the animated Disney film Fantasia 2000. He conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the soundtrack recordings of all the music in the film (with the exception of one segment from the original 1940 Fantasia). Levine is also seen in the film talking briefly with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, just as his predecessor Leopold Stokowski did in the original film. Discography Marilyn Horne: Divas in Song (1994), RCA Victor Red Seal CD, 09026-62547-2 Videography Mozart: Idomeneo (1982), Deutsche Grammophon DVD, 00440-073-4234 The Metropolitan Opera Centennial Gala (1983), Deutsche Grammophon DVD, 00440-073-4538 The Metropolitan Opera Gala 1991, Deutsche Grammophon DVD, 00440-073-4582 James Levine's 25th Anniversary Metropolitan Opera Gala (1996), Deutsche Grammophon DVD, B0004602-09 Honors Among the awards listed in his Met biography are: 1980 – Manhattan Cultural Award 1982 – first of eight Grammy Awards 1984 – Named "Musician of the Year" by Musical America 1986 – Smetana Medal (presented by the former Czechoslovakia) 1997 – National Medal of Arts 1999 – Wilhelm Furtwängler Prize from the Committee for Cultural Advancement of Baden-Baden, Germany 2003 – Kennedy Center Honors 2005 – Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts from the American Academy of Arts and Letters 2006 – Opera News Award 2009 – Award in the Vocal Arts from Bard College 2009 – Ditson Conductors Award from Columbia University 2010 – National Endowment for the Arts Opera Honoree 2010 – George Peabody Award from Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University 2010 – elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters In addition, his biography says Levine has received honorary doctorates from the University of Cincinnati, the New England Conservatory of Music, Northwestern University, the State University of New York, and the Juilliard School. On May 3, 2018, SUNY revoked Levine's honorary doctorate in response to the sexual abuse allegations against him. References External links 1943 births 2021 deaths 20th-century American conductors (music) 20th-century American pianists 20th-century American male musicians 20th-century classical pianists 21st-century American conductors (music) 21st-century American male musicians 21st-century American pianists 21st-century classical pianists American classical pianists American male conductors (music) American male pianists Aspen Music Festival and School alumni Conductors of the Metropolitan Opera Deutsche Grammophon artists Grammy Award winners Jewish American classical musicians Jewish classical pianists Juilliard School alumni Kennedy Center honorees Male classical pianists Metropolitan Opera people Music directors (opera) Musicians from Cincinnati Musicians from New York City Oehms Classics artists People stripped of honorary degrees People with Parkinson's disease United States National Medal of Arts recipients 21st-century American Jews

C_65204209c84c44cd9d64d3dbaa8b91fb_1

where was his school located

Where was James Levine's school located?

James Levine

Levine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a Jewish, musical family. His maternal grandfather was a composer and a cantor in a synagogue, his father (Lawrence) was a violinist who led dance bands under the name "Larry Lee" before entering his father's clothing business, and his mother (Helen Goldstein Levine) was briefly an actress on Broadway, performing as "Helen Golden". He has a brother Tom who is two years younger, who followed him to New York City from Cincinnati in 1974, and with whom he is very close. He employs Tom as his business assistant (looking after all of his affairs, arranging his rehearsal schedules, fielding queries, scouting out where he will live, meeting with accountants, and accompanying Levine on trips to Europe), and his brother is a painter as well. He also has a younger sister, Janet, who is a marriage counselor. He began to play the piano as a small child. On February 21, 1954, at the age of 10, Levine made his concert debut as soloist playing Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2 at a youth concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in Ohio. Levine subsequently studied music with Walter Levin, first violinist in the LaSalle Quartet. In 1956 he took piano lessons with Rudolf Serkin at the Marlboro Music School, in Vermont. In the following year he began to study piano with Rosina Lhevinne at the Aspen Music School. He graduated from Walnut Hills High School, an acclaimed magnet school in Cincinnati. He entered the Juilliard School of Music in New York City in 1961, and took courses in conducting with Jean Morel. He graduated from the Juilliard School in 1964, and joined the American Conductors project connected with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Levine lives in The San Remo on Central Park West in New York City. CANNOTANSWER

Cincinnati.

James Lawrence Levine (; June 23, 1943 – March 9, 2021) was an American conductor and pianist. He was music director of the Metropolitan Opera (the "Met") from 1976 to 2016. He was formally terminated from all his positions and affiliations with the Met on March 12, 2018, over sexual misconduct allegations, which he denied. Levine held leadership positions with the Ravinia Festival, the Munich Philharmonic, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 1980 he started the Lindemann Young Artists Development Program, and trained singers, conductors, and musicians for professional careers. After taking an almost two-year health-related hiatus from conducting from 2011 to 2013, during which time he held artistic and administrative planning sessions at the Met, and led training of the Lindemann Young Artists, Levine retired as the Met's full-time Music Director following the 2015–16 season to become Music Director Emeritus. Early years and personal life Levine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a Jewish, musical family. His maternal grandfather was a composer and a cantor in a synagogue; his father, Lawrence, was a violinist who led dance bands under the name "Larry Lee" before entering his father's clothing business; and his mother, Helen Goldstein Levine, was briefly an actress on Broadway, performing as "Helen Golden". He had a brother, Tom, who was two years younger, who followed him to New York City from Cincinnati in 1974, and with whom he was very close. He employed Tom as his business assistant, looking after his affairs, arranging his rehearsal schedules, fielding queries, scouting out places to live, meeting with accountants, and accompanying Levine on trips to Europe. Tom was also a painter. He also had a younger sister, Janet, who is a marriage counselor. He began to play the piano as a small child. On February 21, 1954, at age 10, Levine made his concert debut as soloist playing Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2 at a youth concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in Ohio. Levine subsequently studied music with Walter Levin, first violinist in the LaSalle Quartet. In 1956 he took piano lessons with Rudolf Serkin at the Marlboro Music School in Vermont. The next year he began to study piano with Rosina Lhévinne at the Aspen Music School. He graduated from Walnut Hills High School, a magnet school in Cincinnati. He entered the Juilliard School of Music in New York City in 1961, and took courses in conducting with Jean Morel. He graduated from Juilliard in 1964, and joined the American Conductors project connected with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Levine lived in The San Remo on Central Park West in New York City. Career Early career From 1964 to 1965, Levine served as an apprentice to George Szell with the Cleveland Orchestra. He then served as the Orchestra's assistant conductor until 1970. That year, he also made debuts as guest conductor with the Philadelphia Orchestra at its summer home at Robin Hood Dell, the Welsh National Opera, and the San Francisco Opera. From 1965 to 1972 he concurrently taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In the summers, he worked at the Meadow Brook School of Music in Michigan and at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. During that time, the charismatic Levine developed a devoted following of young musicians and music lovers. In June 1971, Levine was called in at the last moment to substitute for István Kertész, to lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Mahler's Second Symphony for the Ravinia Festival's opening concert of their 36th season. This concert began a long association with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. From 1973 to 1993 he was music director of the Ravinia Festival, succeeding the late Kertész. He made numerous recordings with the orchestra, including the symphonies and German Requiem of Johannes Brahms, and major works of Gershwin, Holst, Berg, Beethoven, Mozart, and others. In 1990, at the request of Roy E. Disney, he arranged the music and conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in the soundtrack of Fantasia 2000, released by Walt Disney Pictures. From 1974 to 1978, Levine also served as music director of the Cincinnati May Festival. Metropolitan Opera Levine made his Metropolitan Opera debut a few weeks before he turned 28, on June 5, 1971, leading a June Festival performance of Puccini's Tosca. After further appearances with the company, he was named its principal conductor in February 1972. He became its music director in 1975. In 1983, he served as conductor and musical director for the Franco Zeffirelli screen adaptation of Verdi's La Traviata, which featured the Met orchestra and chorus members. He became the company's first artistic director in 1986, and relinquished the title in 2004. In 2005, Levine's combined salary from the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Met made him the highest-paid conductor in the country, at $3.5 million. During Levine's tenure, the Metropolitan Opera orchestra expanded its activities into recording and concert series for the orchestra and chamber ensembles from the orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Levine led the Metropolitan Opera on many domestic and international tours. For the 25th anniversary of his Met debut, Levine conducted the world premiere of John Harbison's The Great Gatsby, commissioned for the occasion. On his appointment as general manager of the Met, Peter Gelb emphasized that Levine was welcome to remain as long as he wanted to direct music there. Levine was paid $2.1 million by the Met in 2010. Following a series of injuries that began with a fall, Levine's health problems led to his withdrawal from many Metropolitan Opera engagements. After a May 2011 performance of Wagner's Die Walküre, Levine formally withdrew from all engagements at the Met. After two years of physical therapy, he returned to conducting with a May 2013 concert with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. On September 25, 2013, Levine conducted his first Met performance since May 2011, in a revival production of Mozart's Così fan tutte. He was scheduled to conduct three productions at the opera house and three at Carnegie Hall in the 2013–14 season. On April 14, 2016, Met management announced that Levine would step down from his position as music director at the end of the 2015–16 season. Levine was paid $1.8 million by the Met for the 2015–16 season. He assumed the new title of Music Director Emeritus, which he held until December 2017, when in the wake of allegations that Levine had sexually abused four young men, the Met suspended its relationship with him and canceled all his scheduled performances with the company. Boston Symphony Orchestra Levine first conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) in April 1972. In October 2001, he was named its music director effective with the 2004–05 season, with an initial contract of five years, becoming the first American-born conductor to head the BSO. One unique condition that Levine negotiated was increased flexibility of the time allotted for rehearsal, allowing the orchestra additional time to prepare more challenging works. After the start of his tenure, the orchestra also established an "Artistic Initiative Fund" of about $40 million to fund the more expensive of his projects. One criticism of Levine during his BSO tenure is that he did not attend many orchestra auditions. A 2005 article reported that he had attended two out of 16 auditions during his tenure up to that time. Levine responded that he has the ability to provide input on musician tenure decisions after the initial probationary period, and that it is difficult to know how well a given player will fit the given position until that person has had a chance to work with the orchestra: "My message is the audition isn't everything." Another 2005 report stated that during Levine's first season as music director, the greater workload from the demands of playing more unfamiliar and contemporary music had increased physical stress on some of the BSO musicians. Levine and the players met to discuss this, and he agreed to program changes to lessen these demands. He received general critical praise for revitalizing the orchestra's quality and repertoire since the beginning of his tenure. Levine experienced ongoing health problems, starting with an onstage fall in 2006 that resulted in a torn rotator cuff and started discussion of how long Levine's tenure with the BSO would last. In April 2010, in the wake of his continuing health problems, it emerged that Levine had not officially signed a contract extension, so that he was the BSO's music director without a signed contract. On March 2, 2011, the BSO announced Levine's resignation as music director effective September 2011, after the Orchestra's Tanglewood season. Working on a commission from Levine and the BSO, the composer John Harbison dedicated his Symphony No. 6 "in friendship and gratitude" to him, whose premature departure from the orchestra prevented him from conducting the premiere. After allegations of his abusing a number of young men came out in December 2017 the BSO said Levine "will never be employed or contracted by the BSO at any time in the future". Conducting in Europe Levine's BSO contract limited his guest appearances with American orchestras, but he still conducted regularly in Europe, with the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, and at the Bayreuth Festival. Levine was a regular guest with the Philharmonia of London and the Staatskapelle Dresden. Beginning in 1975 he conducted regularly at the Salzburg Festival and the annual July Verbier Festival. From 1999 to 2004, he was chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, and was credited with improving the quality of instrumental ensemble during his tenure. Work with students Levine initiated the Lindemann Young Artists Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera in 1980, a professional training program for graduated singers with, today, many famous alumni. Levine was conductor of the UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra, the student resident orchestra at the annual summer music festival in Verbier, Switzerland, from 1999 through 2006. It was Levine's first long-term commitment to a student orchestra since becoming music director at the Met. After becoming music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Levine also served as music director of the Tanglewood Music Center, the BSO's acclaimed summer academy at Tanglewood for student instrumentalists, singers, composers, and conductors. There he conducted the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, directed fully staged opera performances with student singers, and gave master classes for singers and conductors. Levine said in an interview: At my age, you are naturally inclined towards teaching. You want to teach what you have learned to the next generation so that they don't have to spend time reinventing the wheel. I was lucky that I met the right mentors and teachers at the right moment. I love working with young musicians and singers, and those at the Tanglewood Music Center are unequivocally some of the finest and most talented in the world. He continued to work with young students even when his health issues kept him from conducting. He was awarded the Lotus Award ("for inspiration to young musicians") from Young Concert Artists. Anthony Tommasini wrote in The New York Times in 2016: "The aspiring singers in the Met's young artist development program, one of many important ventures Mr. Levine started, must understand how lucky they are to have, as a teacher and mentor, a musician who even in his 20s worked at the Met with giants like Jon Vickers and Renata Tebaldi." Health problems and death Levine experienced recurrent health issues beginning in 2006, including sciatica and what he called "intermittent tremors". On March 1, 2006, he tripped and fell onstage during a standing ovation after a performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and tore the rotator cuff in his right shoulder, leaving the remaining subscription concerts in Boston to his assistant conductor at the time. Later that month, Levine underwent surgery to repair the injury. He returned to the podium on July 7, 2006. Levine withdrew from the majority of the Tanglewood 2008 summer season because of surgery required to remove a kidney with a malignant cyst. He returned to the podium in Boston on September 24, 2008, at Symphony Hall. On September 29, 2009, it was announced that Levine would undergo emergency back surgery for a herniated disk. He missed three weeks of engagements. In March 2010, the BSO announced that Levine would miss the remainder of the Boston Symphony season because of back pain. The Met also announced, on April 4, 2010, that he was withdrawing from the remainder of his performances for the season. According to the Met, Levine was required to have "corrective surgery for an ongoing lower back problem". He returned to conducting at the Met and the BSO at the beginning of the 2010–11 season, but in February 2011 canceled his Boston engagements for the rest of the season. In the summer of 2011, Levine underwent further surgery on his back. In September 2011, after he fell down a flight of stairs, fractured his spine, and injured his back while on vacation in Vermont, the Met announced that he would not conduct at the Met at least for the rest of 2011. After two years of surgery and physical therapy, Levine returned to conducting for the first time on May 19, 2013, in a concert with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Levine conducted from a motorized wheelchair, with a special platform designed to accommodate it, which could rise and descend like an elevator. He returned to the Met on September 24, 2013. The same type of platform was present in the Met orchestra pit for his September 2013 return performance. For many years, both Levine and the Met denied as unfounded the rumors that Levine had Parkinson's disease. As New York magazine reported: "The conductor states flatly that the condition is not Parkinson's disease, as people had speculated in 'that silly Times piece.'" But in 2016 both he and the Met finally admitted that the rumors were true, and that Levine had in fact had the disease since 1994. The Washington Post noted: "It wasn't just the illnesses, but the constant alternation between concealment and an excess of revelation that kept so much attention focused on them and away from the music." Levine died in his Palm Springs home on March 9, 2021. Len Horovitz, his personal physician, announced Levine's death on March 17 and said that he had died of natural causes. Sexual assault allegations Four men accused Levine of sexually molesting them (starting when they were 16, 17, 17, and 20 years old), from the 1960s to the 1990s. On December 2, 2017, it was publicly revealed that an October 2016 police report detailed that Levine had allegedly sexually molested a male teenager for years. The alleged sexual abuse began while Levine was guest conductor at the Ravinia Festival, outside Chicago, where Levine was music director for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's summer residencies from 1973 to 1993. One accuser said that in the summer of 1968, when he was a 17-year-old high school student attending Meadow Brook School of Music in Michigan, Levine (then a 25-year-old faculty member) had sexual contact with a student. When he next saw Levine, the accuser told him that he would not repeat the sexual behavior, but asked if they could continue to make music as they had before; Levine said no. The accuser later played bass in the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra for decades and became a professor. A second accuser said that that same summer, Levine had sexual contact with a 17-year-old student and that Levine then initiated with the teenager a number of sexual encounters that have since haunted him. He said (and another male corroborated, on the condition of anonymity) that the next year, in Cleveland, where Levine was an assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, Levine on several occasions had sexual contact with that student and other students. A third accuser, a violinist and pianist who grew up in Illinois near the Ravinia Music Festival, a summer program for aspiring musicians of which Levine was music director from 1971 to 1993, said Levine sexually abused him beginning when the accuser was 16 years old (and Levine was in his 40s) in 1986. He had previously detailed his accusation in 2016 in a report to the Lake Forest Police Department in Illinois. On December 8, the department announced that Levine could not be charged criminally in Illinois because the accuser was 16 years old at the time, and while today a 16-year-old is not considered old enough to consent to such conduct in Illinois (he must be 17, or 18 in cases in which the suspect is in a position of trust, authority, or supervision in relation to the victim), at the time that was the statutory age of consent. The department noted: "we are bound to apply the law that was in effect at the time the allegations occurred rather than the law as it currently exists." On December 4, a fourth man, who later had a long career as a violinist in the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, said he had been abused by Levine beginning in 1968, when he was 20 years old and attending the Meadow Brook School of Music. Levine was a teacher in the summer program. Reactions The New York Times said that the Met had known of at least one sexual abuse allegation as early as 1979, but dismissed it as baseless. Furthermore, the Met (including its General Manager Peter Gelb, who was contacted directly by a police detective about the allegations in October 2016) had been aware of both the third accuser's abuse allegations since they were made in the 2016 police report, and of the attendant police investigation. But the Met did not suspend Levine or launch an investigation of its own until over a year later, in December 2017. In response to the December 2017 news article, the Met announced that it would investigate the sexual abuse allegations dating to the 1980s that were set forth in the 2016 police report. On December 3, after two additional males came forward with allegations of abuse, the Met suspended its ties with Levine, and canceled all upcoming engagements with him. A fourth accuser came forward the following day. For its part, the Ravinia Festival, in April 2017, six months after the criminal investigation of Levine began, created an honorific title for Levine—"Conductor Laureate"—and signed him to a five-year renewable contract to begin in 2018. On December 4, 2017, the Ravinia Festival severed all ties with Levine, and terminated his five-year contract to lead the Chicago Symphony there. The Boston Symphony Orchestra said Levine "will never be employed or contracted by the BSO at any time in the future". The Juilliard School, where Levine had studied, replaced him in a February 2018 performance where he was scheduled to lead the Juilliard Orchestra and singers from the Met's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. On December 5, the Cincinnati May Festival canceled Levine's appearance in May. On December 7, in New Plymouth, New Zealand, the cinema chain Event Cinemas abruptly cancelled the screening of a Met production of Levine conducting Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. On December 8, Fred Child, host of the classical music radio show Performance Today, wrote that Levine "is accused of inflicting grievous harm to living members of our musical community. Out of respect for these people and their wounds, I choose not to broadcast performances featuring Mr. Levine on the podium." Classical music blogger, former Village Voice music critic, and Juilliard School faculty member Greg Sandow said he had been contacted by three men over the years who said that Levine had abused them, and that reports of sexual abuse by Levine were "widely talked about" for 40 years. Sandow said further: "Everybody in the classical music business at least since the 1980s has talked about Levine as a sex abuser. The investigation should have been done decades ago." Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Justin Davidson mused on the culture website of New York magazine, "James Levine's career has clearly ended" and "I'm not sure the Met can survive Levine's disgrace." Similarly, drama critic Terry Teachout of The Wall Street Journal wrote an article called "The Levine Cataclysm; How allegations against James Levine of sexual misconduct with teenagers could topple the entire Metropolitan Opera". The Washington Post music critic Anne Midgette noted: "The Met has known about these allegations for at least a year, and are only investigating them now that they are public", and opined on her Facebook page that the Met has "quite probably spent years protecting its star conductor from just this kind of allegation". Music critic Tim Pfaff of the LGBT Bay Area Reporter wrote that The New York Times chief classical music critic Anthony Tommasini had the "weirdest" reaction, "lamenting the ugliness of it all under a...headline, 'Should I Put Away My James Levine Recordings?' His conclusion was that he and his husband...should move those recordings from their living room." The Met orchestra musicians applauded the courage of the four men who came forward with accusations that Levine had abused them. Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, which represents the Met's orchestra and Levine, said, "We are horrified and sickened by the recently reported allegations of sexual abuse by Mr. Levine." Five days after news of the accusations by the four men broke, Levine spoke about them for the first time, and called them "unfounded". The accusers stood by their claims, with one saying, "I will take a lie-detector test. Will he?" Six days later, music critic Arthur Kaptainis wrote in the Montreal Gazette that Levine's denial "had little effect". On March 12, 2018, the Met announced that it had fired Levine. Its investigation found Levine had "engaged in sexually abusive and harassing conduct towards vulnerable artists in the early stages of their careers". Levine sued the Metropolitan Opera in New York State Supreme Court for breach of contract and defamation on March 15, 2018, three days after the company fired him, seeking more than $5.8 million in damages. The Met denied Levine's allegations. A year later, a New York State Supreme Court judge dismissed most of Levine's claims, but ruled that the Met and its attorney had made defamatory statements. The Metropolitan Opera and Levine announced a settlement on undisclosed terms in August 2019. In September 2020, the size of the payout was indirectly exposed by annual disclosure statements required for nonprofits; Levine had received $3.5 million in the settlement. It is speculated that he was able to negotiate such a large settlement due to the lack of a morals clause in his contract with the Met. Recordings and film Levine made many audio and video recordings. He recorded extensively with many orchestras, and especially often with the Metropolitan Opera. His performance of Aida with Leontyne Price, her last in opera, was preserved on video and may be seen at the Met's own online archive of performances. Of particular note are his performances of Wagner's complete Der Ring des Nibelungen. A studio recording made for Deutsche Grammophon from 1987 to 1989 is on compact disc, and a 1989 live performance of the Ring is available on DVD. He also appears on several dozen albums as a pianist, collaborating with such singers as Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, Christa Ludwig, and Dawn Upshaw, as well as performing the chamber music of Franz Schubert and Francis Poulenc, among others. Levine was featured in the animated Disney film Fantasia 2000. He conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the soundtrack recordings of all the music in the film (with the exception of one segment from the original 1940 Fantasia). Levine is also seen in the film talking briefly with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, just as his predecessor Leopold Stokowski did in the original film. Discography Marilyn Horne: Divas in Song (1994), RCA Victor Red Seal CD, 09026-62547-2 Videography Mozart: Idomeneo (1982), Deutsche Grammophon DVD, 00440-073-4234 The Metropolitan Opera Centennial Gala (1983), Deutsche Grammophon DVD, 00440-073-4538 The Metropolitan Opera Gala 1991, Deutsche Grammophon DVD, 00440-073-4582 James Levine's 25th Anniversary Metropolitan Opera Gala (1996), Deutsche Grammophon DVD, B0004602-09 Honors Among the awards listed in his Met biography are: 1980 – Manhattan Cultural Award 1982 – first of eight Grammy Awards 1984 – Named "Musician of the Year" by Musical America 1986 – Smetana Medal (presented by the former Czechoslovakia) 1997 – National Medal of Arts 1999 – Wilhelm Furtwängler Prize from the Committee for Cultural Advancement of Baden-Baden, Germany 2003 – Kennedy Center Honors 2005 – Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts from the American Academy of Arts and Letters 2006 – Opera News Award 2009 – Award in the Vocal Arts from Bard College 2009 – Ditson Conductors Award from Columbia University 2010 – National Endowment for the Arts Opera Honoree 2010 – George Peabody Award from Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University 2010 – elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters In addition, his biography says Levine has received honorary doctorates from the University of Cincinnati, the New England Conservatory of Music, Northwestern University, the State University of New York, and the Juilliard School. On May 3, 2018, SUNY revoked Levine's honorary doctorate in response to the sexual abuse allegations against him. References External links 1943 births 2021 deaths 20th-century American conductors (music) 20th-century American pianists 20th-century American male musicians 20th-century classical pianists 21st-century American conductors (music) 21st-century American male musicians 21st-century American pianists 21st-century classical pianists American classical pianists American male conductors (music) American male pianists Aspen Music Festival and School alumni Conductors of the Metropolitan Opera Deutsche Grammophon artists Grammy Award winners Jewish American classical musicians Jewish classical pianists Juilliard School alumni Kennedy Center honorees Male classical pianists Metropolitan Opera people Music directors (opera) Musicians from Cincinnati Musicians from New York City Oehms Classics artists People stripped of honorary degrees People with Parkinson's disease United States National Medal of Arts recipients 21st-century American Jews

C_65204209c84c44cd9d64d3dbaa8b91fb_1

did he has degree or masters

Did James Levine have degree or masters?

James Levine

Levine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a Jewish, musical family. His maternal grandfather was a composer and a cantor in a synagogue, his father (Lawrence) was a violinist who led dance bands under the name "Larry Lee" before entering his father's clothing business, and his mother (Helen Goldstein Levine) was briefly an actress on Broadway, performing as "Helen Golden". He has a brother Tom who is two years younger, who followed him to New York City from Cincinnati in 1974, and with whom he is very close. He employs Tom as his business assistant (looking after all of his affairs, arranging his rehearsal schedules, fielding queries, scouting out where he will live, meeting with accountants, and accompanying Levine on trips to Europe), and his brother is a painter as well. He also has a younger sister, Janet, who is a marriage counselor. He began to play the piano as a small child. On February 21, 1954, at the age of 10, Levine made his concert debut as soloist playing Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2 at a youth concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in Ohio. Levine subsequently studied music with Walter Levin, first violinist in the LaSalle Quartet. In 1956 he took piano lessons with Rudolf Serkin at the Marlboro Music School, in Vermont. In the following year he began to study piano with Rosina Lhevinne at the Aspen Music School. He graduated from Walnut Hills High School, an acclaimed magnet school in Cincinnati. He entered the Juilliard School of Music in New York City in 1961, and took courses in conducting with Jean Morel. He graduated from the Juilliard School in 1964, and joined the American Conductors project connected with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Levine lives in The San Remo on Central Park West in New York City. CANNOTANSWER

He graduated from the Juilliard School in 1964,

James Lawrence Levine (; June 23, 1943 – March 9, 2021) was an American conductor and pianist. He was music director of the Metropolitan Opera (the "Met") from 1976 to 2016. He was formally terminated from all his positions and affiliations with the Met on March 12, 2018, over sexual misconduct allegations, which he denied. Levine held leadership positions with the Ravinia Festival, the Munich Philharmonic, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 1980 he started the Lindemann Young Artists Development Program, and trained singers, conductors, and musicians for professional careers. After taking an almost two-year health-related hiatus from conducting from 2011 to 2013, during which time he held artistic and administrative planning sessions at the Met, and led training of the Lindemann Young Artists, Levine retired as the Met's full-time Music Director following the 2015–16 season to become Music Director Emeritus. Early years and personal life Levine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a Jewish, musical family. His maternal grandfather was a composer and a cantor in a synagogue; his father, Lawrence, was a violinist who led dance bands under the name "Larry Lee" before entering his father's clothing business; and his mother, Helen Goldstein Levine, was briefly an actress on Broadway, performing as "Helen Golden". He had a brother, Tom, who was two years younger, who followed him to New York City from Cincinnati in 1974, and with whom he was very close. He employed Tom as his business assistant, looking after his affairs, arranging his rehearsal schedules, fielding queries, scouting out places to live, meeting with accountants, and accompanying Levine on trips to Europe. Tom was also a painter. He also had a younger sister, Janet, who is a marriage counselor. He began to play the piano as a small child. On February 21, 1954, at age 10, Levine made his concert debut as soloist playing Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2 at a youth concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in Ohio. Levine subsequently studied music with Walter Levin, first violinist in the LaSalle Quartet. In 1956 he took piano lessons with Rudolf Serkin at the Marlboro Music School in Vermont. The next year he began to study piano with Rosina Lhévinne at the Aspen Music School. He graduated from Walnut Hills High School, a magnet school in Cincinnati. He entered the Juilliard School of Music in New York City in 1961, and took courses in conducting with Jean Morel. He graduated from Juilliard in 1964, and joined the American Conductors project connected with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Levine lived in The San Remo on Central Park West in New York City. Career Early career From 1964 to 1965, Levine served as an apprentice to George Szell with the Cleveland Orchestra. He then served as the Orchestra's assistant conductor until 1970. That year, he also made debuts as guest conductor with the Philadelphia Orchestra at its summer home at Robin Hood Dell, the Welsh National Opera, and the San Francisco Opera. From 1965 to 1972 he concurrently taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In the summers, he worked at the Meadow Brook School of Music in Michigan and at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. During that time, the charismatic Levine developed a devoted following of young musicians and music lovers. In June 1971, Levine was called in at the last moment to substitute for István Kertész, to lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Mahler's Second Symphony for the Ravinia Festival's opening concert of their 36th season. This concert began a long association with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. From 1973 to 1993 he was music director of the Ravinia Festival, succeeding the late Kertész. He made numerous recordings with the orchestra, including the symphonies and German Requiem of Johannes Brahms, and major works of Gershwin, Holst, Berg, Beethoven, Mozart, and others. In 1990, at the request of Roy E. Disney, he arranged the music and conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in the soundtrack of Fantasia 2000, released by Walt Disney Pictures. From 1974 to 1978, Levine also served as music director of the Cincinnati May Festival. Metropolitan Opera Levine made his Metropolitan Opera debut a few weeks before he turned 28, on June 5, 1971, leading a June Festival performance of Puccini's Tosca. After further appearances with the company, he was named its principal conductor in February 1972. He became its music director in 1975. In 1983, he served as conductor and musical director for the Franco Zeffirelli screen adaptation of Verdi's La Traviata, which featured the Met orchestra and chorus members. He became the company's first artistic director in 1986, and relinquished the title in 2004. In 2005, Levine's combined salary from the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Met made him the highest-paid conductor in the country, at $3.5 million. During Levine's tenure, the Metropolitan Opera orchestra expanded its activities into recording and concert series for the orchestra and chamber ensembles from the orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Levine led the Metropolitan Opera on many domestic and international tours. For the 25th anniversary of his Met debut, Levine conducted the world premiere of John Harbison's The Great Gatsby, commissioned for the occasion. On his appointment as general manager of the Met, Peter Gelb emphasized that Levine was welcome to remain as long as he wanted to direct music there. Levine was paid $2.1 million by the Met in 2010. Following a series of injuries that began with a fall, Levine's health problems led to his withdrawal from many Metropolitan Opera engagements. After a May 2011 performance of Wagner's Die Walküre, Levine formally withdrew from all engagements at the Met. After two years of physical therapy, he returned to conducting with a May 2013 concert with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. On September 25, 2013, Levine conducted his first Met performance since May 2011, in a revival production of Mozart's Così fan tutte. He was scheduled to conduct three productions at the opera house and three at Carnegie Hall in the 2013–14 season. On April 14, 2016, Met management announced that Levine would step down from his position as music director at the end of the 2015–16 season. Levine was paid $1.8 million by the Met for the 2015–16 season. He assumed the new title of Music Director Emeritus, which he held until December 2017, when in the wake of allegations that Levine had sexually abused four young men, the Met suspended its relationship with him and canceled all his scheduled performances with the company. Boston Symphony Orchestra Levine first conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) in April 1972. In October 2001, he was named its music director effective with the 2004–05 season, with an initial contract of five years, becoming the first American-born conductor to head the BSO. One unique condition that Levine negotiated was increased flexibility of the time allotted for rehearsal, allowing the orchestra additional time to prepare more challenging works. After the start of his tenure, the orchestra also established an "Artistic Initiative Fund" of about $40 million to fund the more expensive of his projects. One criticism of Levine during his BSO tenure is that he did not attend many orchestra auditions. A 2005 article reported that he had attended two out of 16 auditions during his tenure up to that time. Levine responded that he has the ability to provide input on musician tenure decisions after the initial probationary period, and that it is difficult to know how well a given player will fit the given position until that person has had a chance to work with the orchestra: "My message is the audition isn't everything." Another 2005 report stated that during Levine's first season as music director, the greater workload from the demands of playing more unfamiliar and contemporary music had increased physical stress on some of the BSO musicians. Levine and the players met to discuss this, and he agreed to program changes to lessen these demands. He received general critical praise for revitalizing the orchestra's quality and repertoire since the beginning of his tenure. Levine experienced ongoing health problems, starting with an onstage fall in 2006 that resulted in a torn rotator cuff and started discussion of how long Levine's tenure with the BSO would last. In April 2010, in the wake of his continuing health problems, it emerged that Levine had not officially signed a contract extension, so that he was the BSO's music director without a signed contract. On March 2, 2011, the BSO announced Levine's resignation as music director effective September 2011, after the Orchestra's Tanglewood season. Working on a commission from Levine and the BSO, the composer John Harbison dedicated his Symphony No. 6 "in friendship and gratitude" to him, whose premature departure from the orchestra prevented him from conducting the premiere. After allegations of his abusing a number of young men came out in December 2017 the BSO said Levine "will never be employed or contracted by the BSO at any time in the future". Conducting in Europe Levine's BSO contract limited his guest appearances with American orchestras, but he still conducted regularly in Europe, with the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, and at the Bayreuth Festival. Levine was a regular guest with the Philharmonia of London and the Staatskapelle Dresden. Beginning in 1975 he conducted regularly at the Salzburg Festival and the annual July Verbier Festival. From 1999 to 2004, he was chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, and was credited with improving the quality of instrumental ensemble during his tenure. Work with students Levine initiated the Lindemann Young Artists Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera in 1980, a professional training program for graduated singers with, today, many famous alumni. Levine was conductor of the UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra, the student resident orchestra at the annual summer music festival in Verbier, Switzerland, from 1999 through 2006. It was Levine's first long-term commitment to a student orchestra since becoming music director at the Met. After becoming music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Levine also served as music director of the Tanglewood Music Center, the BSO's acclaimed summer academy at Tanglewood for student instrumentalists, singers, composers, and conductors. There he conducted the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, directed fully staged opera performances with student singers, and gave master classes for singers and conductors. Levine said in an interview: At my age, you are naturally inclined towards teaching. You want to teach what you have learned to the next generation so that they don't have to spend time reinventing the wheel. I was lucky that I met the right mentors and teachers at the right moment. I love working with young musicians and singers, and those at the Tanglewood Music Center are unequivocally some of the finest and most talented in the world. He continued to work with young students even when his health issues kept him from conducting. He was awarded the Lotus Award ("for inspiration to young musicians") from Young Concert Artists. Anthony Tommasini wrote in The New York Times in 2016: "The aspiring singers in the Met's young artist development program, one of many important ventures Mr. Levine started, must understand how lucky they are to have, as a teacher and mentor, a musician who even in his 20s worked at the Met with giants like Jon Vickers and Renata Tebaldi." Health problems and death Levine experienced recurrent health issues beginning in 2006, including sciatica and what he called "intermittent tremors". On March 1, 2006, he tripped and fell onstage during a standing ovation after a performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and tore the rotator cuff in his right shoulder, leaving the remaining subscription concerts in Boston to his assistant conductor at the time. Later that month, Levine underwent surgery to repair the injury. He returned to the podium on July 7, 2006. Levine withdrew from the majority of the Tanglewood 2008 summer season because of surgery required to remove a kidney with a malignant cyst. He returned to the podium in Boston on September 24, 2008, at Symphony Hall. On September 29, 2009, it was announced that Levine would undergo emergency back surgery for a herniated disk. He missed three weeks of engagements. In March 2010, the BSO announced that Levine would miss the remainder of the Boston Symphony season because of back pain. The Met also announced, on April 4, 2010, that he was withdrawing from the remainder of his performances for the season. According to the Met, Levine was required to have "corrective surgery for an ongoing lower back problem". He returned to conducting at the Met and the BSO at the beginning of the 2010–11 season, but in February 2011 canceled his Boston engagements for the rest of the season. In the summer of 2011, Levine underwent further surgery on his back. In September 2011, after he fell down a flight of stairs, fractured his spine, and injured his back while on vacation in Vermont, the Met announced that he would not conduct at the Met at least for the rest of 2011. After two years of surgery and physical therapy, Levine returned to conducting for the first time on May 19, 2013, in a concert with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Levine conducted from a motorized wheelchair, with a special platform designed to accommodate it, which could rise and descend like an elevator. He returned to the Met on September 24, 2013. The same type of platform was present in the Met orchestra pit for his September 2013 return performance. For many years, both Levine and the Met denied as unfounded the rumors that Levine had Parkinson's disease. As New York magazine reported: "The conductor states flatly that the condition is not Parkinson's disease, as people had speculated in 'that silly Times piece.'" But in 2016 both he and the Met finally admitted that the rumors were true, and that Levine had in fact had the disease since 1994. The Washington Post noted: "It wasn't just the illnesses, but the constant alternation between concealment and an excess of revelation that kept so much attention focused on them and away from the music." Levine died in his Palm Springs home on March 9, 2021. Len Horovitz, his personal physician, announced Levine's death on March 17 and said that he had died of natural causes. Sexual assault allegations Four men accused Levine of sexually molesting them (starting when they were 16, 17, 17, and 20 years old), from the 1960s to the 1990s. On December 2, 2017, it was publicly revealed that an October 2016 police report detailed that Levine had allegedly sexually molested a male teenager for years. The alleged sexual abuse began while Levine was guest conductor at the Ravinia Festival, outside Chicago, where Levine was music director for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's summer residencies from 1973 to 1993. One accuser said that in the summer of 1968, when he was a 17-year-old high school student attending Meadow Brook School of Music in Michigan, Levine (then a 25-year-old faculty member) had sexual contact with a student. When he next saw Levine, the accuser told him that he would not repeat the sexual behavior, but asked if they could continue to make music as they had before; Levine said no. The accuser later played bass in the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra for decades and became a professor. A second accuser said that that same summer, Levine had sexual contact with a 17-year-old student and that Levine then initiated with the teenager a number of sexual encounters that have since haunted him. He said (and another male corroborated, on the condition of anonymity) that the next year, in Cleveland, where Levine was an assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, Levine on several occasions had sexual contact with that student and other students. A third accuser, a violinist and pianist who grew up in Illinois near the Ravinia Music Festival, a summer program for aspiring musicians of which Levine was music director from 1971 to 1993, said Levine sexually abused him beginning when the accuser was 16 years old (and Levine was in his 40s) in 1986. He had previously detailed his accusation in 2016 in a report to the Lake Forest Police Department in Illinois. On December 8, the department announced that Levine could not be charged criminally in Illinois because the accuser was 16 years old at the time, and while today a 16-year-old is not considered old enough to consent to such conduct in Illinois (he must be 17, or 18 in cases in which the suspect is in a position of trust, authority, or supervision in relation to the victim), at the time that was the statutory age of consent. The department noted: "we are bound to apply the law that was in effect at the time the allegations occurred rather than the law as it currently exists." On December 4, a fourth man, who later had a long career as a violinist in the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, said he had been abused by Levine beginning in 1968, when he was 20 years old and attending the Meadow Brook School of Music. Levine was a teacher in the summer program. Reactions The New York Times said that the Met had known of at least one sexual abuse allegation as early as 1979, but dismissed it as baseless. Furthermore, the Met (including its General Manager Peter Gelb, who was contacted directly by a police detective about the allegations in October 2016) had been aware of both the third accuser's abuse allegations since they were made in the 2016 police report, and of the attendant police investigation. But the Met did not suspend Levine or launch an investigation of its own until over a year later, in December 2017. In response to the December 2017 news article, the Met announced that it would investigate the sexual abuse allegations dating to the 1980s that were set forth in the 2016 police report. On December 3, after two additional males came forward with allegations of abuse, the Met suspended its ties with Levine, and canceled all upcoming engagements with him. A fourth accuser came forward the following day. For its part, the Ravinia Festival, in April 2017, six months after the criminal investigation of Levine began, created an honorific title for Levine—"Conductor Laureate"—and signed him to a five-year renewable contract to begin in 2018. On December 4, 2017, the Ravinia Festival severed all ties with Levine, and terminated his five-year contract to lead the Chicago Symphony there. The Boston Symphony Orchestra said Levine "will never be employed or contracted by the BSO at any time in the future". The Juilliard School, where Levine had studied, replaced him in a February 2018 performance where he was scheduled to lead the Juilliard Orchestra and singers from the Met's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. On December 5, the Cincinnati May Festival canceled Levine's appearance in May. On December 7, in New Plymouth, New Zealand, the cinema chain Event Cinemas abruptly cancelled the screening of a Met production of Levine conducting Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. On December 8, Fred Child, host of the classical music radio show Performance Today, wrote that Levine "is accused of inflicting grievous harm to living members of our musical community. Out of respect for these people and their wounds, I choose not to broadcast performances featuring Mr. Levine on the podium." Classical music blogger, former Village Voice music critic, and Juilliard School faculty member Greg Sandow said he had been contacted by three men over the years who said that Levine had abused them, and that reports of sexual abuse by Levine were "widely talked about" for 40 years. Sandow said further: "Everybody in the classical music business at least since the 1980s has talked about Levine as a sex abuser. The investigation should have been done decades ago." Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Justin Davidson mused on the culture website of New York magazine, "James Levine's career has clearly ended" and "I'm not sure the Met can survive Levine's disgrace." Similarly, drama critic Terry Teachout of The Wall Street Journal wrote an article called "The Levine Cataclysm; How allegations against James Levine of sexual misconduct with teenagers could topple the entire Metropolitan Opera". The Washington Post music critic Anne Midgette noted: "The Met has known about these allegations for at least a year, and are only investigating them now that they are public", and opined on her Facebook page that the Met has "quite probably spent years protecting its star conductor from just this kind of allegation". Music critic Tim Pfaff of the LGBT Bay Area Reporter wrote that The New York Times chief classical music critic Anthony Tommasini had the "weirdest" reaction, "lamenting the ugliness of it all under a...headline, 'Should I Put Away My James Levine Recordings?' His conclusion was that he and his husband...should move those recordings from their living room." The Met orchestra musicians applauded the courage of the four men who came forward with accusations that Levine had abused them. Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, which represents the Met's orchestra and Levine, said, "We are horrified and sickened by the recently reported allegations of sexual abuse by Mr. Levine." Five days after news of the accusations by the four men broke, Levine spoke about them for the first time, and called them "unfounded". The accusers stood by their claims, with one saying, "I will take a lie-detector test. Will he?" Six days later, music critic Arthur Kaptainis wrote in the Montreal Gazette that Levine's denial "had little effect". On March 12, 2018, the Met announced that it had fired Levine. Its investigation found Levine had "engaged in sexually abusive and harassing conduct towards vulnerable artists in the early stages of their careers". Levine sued the Metropolitan Opera in New York State Supreme Court for breach of contract and defamation on March 15, 2018, three days after the company fired him, seeking more than $5.8 million in damages. The Met denied Levine's allegations. A year later, a New York State Supreme Court judge dismissed most of Levine's claims, but ruled that the Met and its attorney had made defamatory statements. The Metropolitan Opera and Levine announced a settlement on undisclosed terms in August 2019. In September 2020, the size of the payout was indirectly exposed by annual disclosure statements required for nonprofits; Levine had received $3.5 million in the settlement. It is speculated that he was able to negotiate such a large settlement due to the lack of a morals clause in his contract with the Met. Recordings and film Levine made many audio and video recordings. He recorded extensively with many orchestras, and especially often with the Metropolitan Opera. His performance of Aida with Leontyne Price, her last in opera, was preserved on video and may be seen at the Met's own online archive of performances. Of particular note are his performances of Wagner's complete Der Ring des Nibelungen. A studio recording made for Deutsche Grammophon from 1987 to 1989 is on compact disc, and a 1989 live performance of the Ring is available on DVD. He also appears on several dozen albums as a pianist, collaborating with such singers as Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, Christa Ludwig, and Dawn Upshaw, as well as performing the chamber music of Franz Schubert and Francis Poulenc, among others. Levine was featured in the animated Disney film Fantasia 2000. He conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the soundtrack recordings of all the music in the film (with the exception of one segment from the original 1940 Fantasia). Levine is also seen in the film talking briefly with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, just as his predecessor Leopold Stokowski did in the original film. Discography Marilyn Horne: Divas in Song (1994), RCA Victor Red Seal CD, 09026-62547-2 Videography Mozart: Idomeneo (1982), Deutsche Grammophon DVD, 00440-073-4234 The Metropolitan Opera Centennial Gala (1983), Deutsche Grammophon DVD, 00440-073-4538 The Metropolitan Opera Gala 1991, Deutsche Grammophon DVD, 00440-073-4582 James Levine's 25th Anniversary Metropolitan Opera Gala (1996), Deutsche Grammophon DVD, B0004602-09 Honors Among the awards listed in his Met biography are: 1980 – Manhattan Cultural Award 1982 – first of eight Grammy Awards 1984 – Named "Musician of the Year" by Musical America 1986 – Smetana Medal (presented by the former Czechoslovakia) 1997 – National Medal of Arts 1999 – Wilhelm Furtwängler Prize from the Committee for Cultural Advancement of Baden-Baden, Germany 2003 – Kennedy Center Honors 2005 – Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts from the American Academy of Arts and Letters 2006 – Opera News Award 2009 – Award in the Vocal Arts from Bard College 2009 – Ditson Conductors Award from Columbia University 2010 – National Endowment for the Arts Opera Honoree 2010 – George Peabody Award from Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University 2010 – elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters In addition, his biography says Levine has received honorary doctorates from the University of Cincinnati, the New England Conservatory of Music, Northwestern University, the State University of New York, and the Juilliard School. On May 3, 2018, SUNY revoked Levine's honorary doctorate in response to the sexual abuse allegations against him. References External links 1943 births 2021 deaths 20th-century American conductors (music) 20th-century American pianists 20th-century American male musicians 20th-century classical pianists 21st-century American conductors (music) 21st-century American male musicians 21st-century American pianists 21st-century classical pianists American classical pianists American male conductors (music) American male pianists Aspen Music Festival and School alumni Conductors of the Metropolitan Opera Deutsche Grammophon artists Grammy Award winners Jewish American classical musicians Jewish classical pianists Juilliard School alumni Kennedy Center honorees Male classical pianists Metropolitan Opera people Music directors (opera) Musicians from Cincinnati Musicians from New York City Oehms Classics artists People stripped of honorary degrees People with Parkinson's disease United States National Medal of Arts recipients 21st-century American Jews

C_65204209c84c44cd9d64d3dbaa8b91fb_1

what did he study in school

What did James Levine study in Juilliard School?

James Levine

Levine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a Jewish, musical family. His maternal grandfather was a composer and a cantor in a synagogue, his father (Lawrence) was a violinist who led dance bands under the name "Larry Lee" before entering his father's clothing business, and his mother (Helen Goldstein Levine) was briefly an actress on Broadway, performing as "Helen Golden". He has a brother Tom who is two years younger, who followed him to New York City from Cincinnati in 1974, and with whom he is very close. He employs Tom as his business assistant (looking after all of his affairs, arranging his rehearsal schedules, fielding queries, scouting out where he will live, meeting with accountants, and accompanying Levine on trips to Europe), and his brother is a painter as well. He also has a younger sister, Janet, who is a marriage counselor. He began to play the piano as a small child. On February 21, 1954, at the age of 10, Levine made his concert debut as soloist playing Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2 at a youth concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in Ohio. Levine subsequently studied music with Walter Levin, first violinist in the LaSalle Quartet. In 1956 he took piano lessons with Rudolf Serkin at the Marlboro Music School, in Vermont. In the following year he began to study piano with Rosina Lhevinne at the Aspen Music School. He graduated from Walnut Hills High School, an acclaimed magnet school in Cincinnati. He entered the Juilliard School of Music in New York City in 1961, and took courses in conducting with Jean Morel. He graduated from the Juilliard School in 1964, and joined the American Conductors project connected with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Levine lives in The San Remo on Central Park West in New York City. CANNOTANSWER

conducting

James Lawrence Levine (; June 23, 1943 – March 9, 2021) was an American conductor and pianist. He was music director of the Metropolitan Opera (the "Met") from 1976 to 2016. He was formally terminated from all his positions and affiliations with the Met on March 12, 2018, over sexual misconduct allegations, which he denied. Levine held leadership positions with the Ravinia Festival, the Munich Philharmonic, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 1980 he started the Lindemann Young Artists Development Program, and trained singers, conductors, and musicians for professional careers. After taking an almost two-year health-related hiatus from conducting from 2011 to 2013, during which time he held artistic and administrative planning sessions at the Met, and led training of the Lindemann Young Artists, Levine retired as the Met's full-time Music Director following the 2015–16 season to become Music Director Emeritus. Early years and personal life Levine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a Jewish, musical family. His maternal grandfather was a composer and a cantor in a synagogue; his father, Lawrence, was a violinist who led dance bands under the name "Larry Lee" before entering his father's clothing business; and his mother, Helen Goldstein Levine, was briefly an actress on Broadway, performing as "Helen Golden". He had a brother, Tom, who was two years younger, who followed him to New York City from Cincinnati in 1974, and with whom he was very close. He employed Tom as his business assistant, looking after his affairs, arranging his rehearsal schedules, fielding queries, scouting out places to live, meeting with accountants, and accompanying Levine on trips to Europe. Tom was also a painter. He also had a younger sister, Janet, who is a marriage counselor. He began to play the piano as a small child. On February 21, 1954, at age 10, Levine made his concert debut as soloist playing Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2 at a youth concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in Ohio. Levine subsequently studied music with Walter Levin, first violinist in the LaSalle Quartet. In 1956 he took piano lessons with Rudolf Serkin at the Marlboro Music School in Vermont. The next year he began to study piano with Rosina Lhévinne at the Aspen Music School. He graduated from Walnut Hills High School, a magnet school in Cincinnati. He entered the Juilliard School of Music in New York City in 1961, and took courses in conducting with Jean Morel. He graduated from Juilliard in 1964, and joined the American Conductors project connected with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Levine lived in The San Remo on Central Park West in New York City. Career Early career From 1964 to 1965, Levine served as an apprentice to George Szell with the Cleveland Orchestra. He then served as the Orchestra's assistant conductor until 1970. That year, he also made debuts as guest conductor with the Philadelphia Orchestra at its summer home at Robin Hood Dell, the Welsh National Opera, and the San Francisco Opera. From 1965 to 1972 he concurrently taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In the summers, he worked at the Meadow Brook School of Music in Michigan and at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. During that time, the charismatic Levine developed a devoted following of young musicians and music lovers. In June 1971, Levine was called in at the last moment to substitute for István Kertész, to lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Mahler's Second Symphony for the Ravinia Festival's opening concert of their 36th season. This concert began a long association with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. From 1973 to 1993 he was music director of the Ravinia Festival, succeeding the late Kertész. He made numerous recordings with the orchestra, including the symphonies and German Requiem of Johannes Brahms, and major works of Gershwin, Holst, Berg, Beethoven, Mozart, and others. In 1990, at the request of Roy E. Disney, he arranged the music and conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in the soundtrack of Fantasia 2000, released by Walt Disney Pictures. From 1974 to 1978, Levine also served as music director of the Cincinnati May Festival. Metropolitan Opera Levine made his Metropolitan Opera debut a few weeks before he turned 28, on June 5, 1971, leading a June Festival performance of Puccini's Tosca. After further appearances with the company, he was named its principal conductor in February 1972. He became its music director in 1975. In 1983, he served as conductor and musical director for the Franco Zeffirelli screen adaptation of Verdi's La Traviata, which featured the Met orchestra and chorus members. He became the company's first artistic director in 1986, and relinquished the title in 2004. In 2005, Levine's combined salary from the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Met made him the highest-paid conductor in the country, at $3.5 million. During Levine's tenure, the Metropolitan Opera orchestra expanded its activities into recording and concert series for the orchestra and chamber ensembles from the orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Levine led the Metropolitan Opera on many domestic and international tours. For the 25th anniversary of his Met debut, Levine conducted the world premiere of John Harbison's The Great Gatsby, commissioned for the occasion. On his appointment as general manager of the Met, Peter Gelb emphasized that Levine was welcome to remain as long as he wanted to direct music there. Levine was paid $2.1 million by the Met in 2010. Following a series of injuries that began with a fall, Levine's health problems led to his withdrawal from many Metropolitan Opera engagements. After a May 2011 performance of Wagner's Die Walküre, Levine formally withdrew from all engagements at the Met. After two years of physical therapy, he returned to conducting with a May 2013 concert with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. On September 25, 2013, Levine conducted his first Met performance since May 2011, in a revival production of Mozart's Così fan tutte. He was scheduled to conduct three productions at the opera house and three at Carnegie Hall in the 2013–14 season. On April 14, 2016, Met management announced that Levine would step down from his position as music director at the end of the 2015–16 season. Levine was paid $1.8 million by the Met for the 2015–16 season. He assumed the new title of Music Director Emeritus, which he held until December 2017, when in the wake of allegations that Levine had sexually abused four young men, the Met suspended its relationship with him and canceled all his scheduled performances with the company. Boston Symphony Orchestra Levine first conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) in April 1972. In October 2001, he was named its music director effective with the 2004–05 season, with an initial contract of five years, becoming the first American-born conductor to head the BSO. One unique condition that Levine negotiated was increased flexibility of the time allotted for rehearsal, allowing the orchestra additional time to prepare more challenging works. After the start of his tenure, the orchestra also established an "Artistic Initiative Fund" of about $40 million to fund the more expensive of his projects. One criticism of Levine during his BSO tenure is that he did not attend many orchestra auditions. A 2005 article reported that he had attended two out of 16 auditions during his tenure up to that time. Levine responded that he has the ability to provide input on musician tenure decisions after the initial probationary period, and that it is difficult to know how well a given player will fit the given position until that person has had a chance to work with the orchestra: "My message is the audition isn't everything." Another 2005 report stated that during Levine's first season as music director, the greater workload from the demands of playing more unfamiliar and contemporary music had increased physical stress on some of the BSO musicians. Levine and the players met to discuss this, and he agreed to program changes to lessen these demands. He received general critical praise for revitalizing the orchestra's quality and repertoire since the beginning of his tenure. Levine experienced ongoing health problems, starting with an onstage fall in 2006 that resulted in a torn rotator cuff and started discussion of how long Levine's tenure with the BSO would last. In April 2010, in the wake of his continuing health problems, it emerged that Levine had not officially signed a contract extension, so that he was the BSO's music director without a signed contract. On March 2, 2011, the BSO announced Levine's resignation as music director effective September 2011, after the Orchestra's Tanglewood season. Working on a commission from Levine and the BSO, the composer John Harbison dedicated his Symphony No. 6 "in friendship and gratitude" to him, whose premature departure from the orchestra prevented him from conducting the premiere. After allegations of his abusing a number of young men came out in December 2017 the BSO said Levine "will never be employed or contracted by the BSO at any time in the future". Conducting in Europe Levine's BSO contract limited his guest appearances with American orchestras, but he still conducted regularly in Europe, with the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, and at the Bayreuth Festival. Levine was a regular guest with the Philharmonia of London and the Staatskapelle Dresden. Beginning in 1975 he conducted regularly at the Salzburg Festival and the annual July Verbier Festival. From 1999 to 2004, he was chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, and was credited with improving the quality of instrumental ensemble during his tenure. Work with students Levine initiated the Lindemann Young Artists Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera in 1980, a professional training program for graduated singers with, today, many famous alumni. Levine was conductor of the UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra, the student resident orchestra at the annual summer music festival in Verbier, Switzerland, from 1999 through 2006. It was Levine's first long-term commitment to a student orchestra since becoming music director at the Met. After becoming music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Levine also served as music director of the Tanglewood Music Center, the BSO's acclaimed summer academy at Tanglewood for student instrumentalists, singers, composers, and conductors. There he conducted the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, directed fully staged opera performances with student singers, and gave master classes for singers and conductors. Levine said in an interview: At my age, you are naturally inclined towards teaching. You want to teach what you have learned to the next generation so that they don't have to spend time reinventing the wheel. I was lucky that I met the right mentors and teachers at the right moment. I love working with young musicians and singers, and those at the Tanglewood Music Center are unequivocally some of the finest and most talented in the world. He continued to work with young students even when his health issues kept him from conducting. He was awarded the Lotus Award ("for inspiration to young musicians") from Young Concert Artists. Anthony Tommasini wrote in The New York Times in 2016: "The aspiring singers in the Met's young artist development program, one of many important ventures Mr. Levine started, must understand how lucky they are to have, as a teacher and mentor, a musician who even in his 20s worked at the Met with giants like Jon Vickers and Renata Tebaldi." Health problems and death Levine experienced recurrent health issues beginning in 2006, including sciatica and what he called "intermittent tremors". On March 1, 2006, he tripped and fell onstage during a standing ovation after a performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and tore the rotator cuff in his right shoulder, leaving the remaining subscription concerts in Boston to his assistant conductor at the time. Later that month, Levine underwent surgery to repair the injury. He returned to the podium on July 7, 2006. Levine withdrew from the majority of the Tanglewood 2008 summer season because of surgery required to remove a kidney with a malignant cyst. He returned to the podium in Boston on September 24, 2008, at Symphony Hall. On September 29, 2009, it was announced that Levine would undergo emergency back surgery for a herniated disk. He missed three weeks of engagements. In March 2010, the BSO announced that Levine would miss the remainder of the Boston Symphony season because of back pain. The Met also announced, on April 4, 2010, that he was withdrawing from the remainder of his performances for the season. According to the Met, Levine was required to have "corrective surgery for an ongoing lower back problem". He returned to conducting at the Met and the BSO at the beginning of the 2010–11 season, but in February 2011 canceled his Boston engagements for the rest of the season. In the summer of 2011, Levine underwent further surgery on his back. In September 2011, after he fell down a flight of stairs, fractured his spine, and injured his back while on vacation in Vermont, the Met announced that he would not conduct at the Met at least for the rest of 2011. After two years of surgery and physical therapy, Levine returned to conducting for the first time on May 19, 2013, in a concert with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Levine conducted from a motorized wheelchair, with a special platform designed to accommodate it, which could rise and descend like an elevator. He returned to the Met on September 24, 2013. The same type of platform was present in the Met orchestra pit for his September 2013 return performance. For many years, both Levine and the Met denied as unfounded the rumors that Levine had Parkinson's disease. As New York magazine reported: "The conductor states flatly that the condition is not Parkinson's disease, as people had speculated in 'that silly Times piece.'" But in 2016 both he and the Met finally admitted that the rumors were true, and that Levine had in fact had the disease since 1994. The Washington Post noted: "It wasn't just the illnesses, but the constant alternation between concealment and an excess of revelation that kept so much attention focused on them and away from the music." Levine died in his Palm Springs home on March 9, 2021. Len Horovitz, his personal physician, announced Levine's death on March 17 and said that he had died of natural causes. Sexual assault allegations Four men accused Levine of sexually molesting them (starting when they were 16, 17, 17, and 20 years old), from the 1960s to the 1990s. On December 2, 2017, it was publicly revealed that an October 2016 police report detailed that Levine had allegedly sexually molested a male teenager for years. The alleged sexual abuse began while Levine was guest conductor at the Ravinia Festival, outside Chicago, where Levine was music director for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's summer residencies from 1973 to 1993. One accuser said that in the summer of 1968, when he was a 17-year-old high school student attending Meadow Brook School of Music in Michigan, Levine (then a 25-year-old faculty member) had sexual contact with a student. When he next saw Levine, the accuser told him that he would not repeat the sexual behavior, but asked if they could continue to make music as they had before; Levine said no. The accuser later played bass in the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra for decades and became a professor. A second accuser said that that same summer, Levine had sexual contact with a 17-year-old student and that Levine then initiated with the teenager a number of sexual encounters that have since haunted him. He said (and another male corroborated, on the condition of anonymity) that the next year, in Cleveland, where Levine was an assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, Levine on several occasions had sexual contact with that student and other students. A third accuser, a violinist and pianist who grew up in Illinois near the Ravinia Music Festival, a summer program for aspiring musicians of which Levine was music director from 1971 to 1993, said Levine sexually abused him beginning when the accuser was 16 years old (and Levine was in his 40s) in 1986. He had previously detailed his accusation in 2016 in a report to the Lake Forest Police Department in Illinois. On December 8, the department announced that Levine could not be charged criminally in Illinois because the accuser was 16 years old at the time, and while today a 16-year-old is not considered old enough to consent to such conduct in Illinois (he must be 17, or 18 in cases in which the suspect is in a position of trust, authority, or supervision in relation to the victim), at the time that was the statutory age of consent. The department noted: "we are bound to apply the law that was in effect at the time the allegations occurred rather than the law as it currently exists." On December 4, a fourth man, who later had a long career as a violinist in the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, said he had been abused by Levine beginning in 1968, when he was 20 years old and attending the Meadow Brook School of Music. Levine was a teacher in the summer program. Reactions The New York Times said that the Met had known of at least one sexual abuse allegation as early as 1979, but dismissed it as baseless. Furthermore, the Met (including its General Manager Peter Gelb, who was contacted directly by a police detective about the allegations in October 2016) had been aware of both the third accuser's abuse allegations since they were made in the 2016 police report, and of the attendant police investigation. But the Met did not suspend Levine or launch an investigation of its own until over a year later, in December 2017. In response to the December 2017 news article, the Met announced that it would investigate the sexual abuse allegations dating to the 1980s that were set forth in the 2016 police report. On December 3, after two additional males came forward with allegations of abuse, the Met suspended its ties with Levine, and canceled all upcoming engagements with him. A fourth accuser came forward the following day. For its part, the Ravinia Festival, in April 2017, six months after the criminal investigation of Levine began, created an honorific title for Levine—"Conductor Laureate"—and signed him to a five-year renewable contract to begin in 2018. On December 4, 2017, the Ravinia Festival severed all ties with Levine, and terminated his five-year contract to lead the Chicago Symphony there. The Boston Symphony Orchestra said Levine "will never be employed or contracted by the BSO at any time in the future". The Juilliard School, where Levine had studied, replaced him in a February 2018 performance where he was scheduled to lead the Juilliard Orchestra and singers from the Met's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. On December 5, the Cincinnati May Festival canceled Levine's appearance in May. On December 7, in New Plymouth, New Zealand, the cinema chain Event Cinemas abruptly cancelled the screening of a Met production of Levine conducting Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. On December 8, Fred Child, host of the classical music radio show Performance Today, wrote that Levine "is accused of inflicting grievous harm to living members of our musical community. Out of respect for these people and their wounds, I choose not to broadcast performances featuring Mr. Levine on the podium." Classical music blogger, former Village Voice music critic, and Juilliard School faculty member Greg Sandow said he had been contacted by three men over the years who said that Levine had abused them, and that reports of sexual abuse by Levine were "widely talked about" for 40 years. Sandow said further: "Everybody in the classical music business at least since the 1980s has talked about Levine as a sex abuser. The investigation should have been done decades ago." Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Justin Davidson mused on the culture website of New York magazine, "James Levine's career has clearly ended" and "I'm not sure the Met can survive Levine's disgrace." Similarly, drama critic Terry Teachout of The Wall Street Journal wrote an article called "The Levine Cataclysm; How allegations against James Levine of sexual misconduct with teenagers could topple the entire Metropolitan Opera". The Washington Post music critic Anne Midgette noted: "The Met has known about these allegations for at least a year, and are only investigating them now that they are public", and opined on her Facebook page that the Met has "quite probably spent years protecting its star conductor from just this kind of allegation". Music critic Tim Pfaff of the LGBT Bay Area Reporter wrote that The New York Times chief classical music critic Anthony Tommasini had the "weirdest" reaction, "lamenting the ugliness of it all under a...headline, 'Should I Put Away My James Levine Recordings?' His conclusion was that he and his husband...should move those recordings from their living room." The Met orchestra musicians applauded the courage of the four men who came forward with accusations that Levine had abused them. Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, which represents the Met's orchestra and Levine, said, "We are horrified and sickened by the recently reported allegations of sexual abuse by Mr. Levine." Five days after news of the accusations by the four men broke, Levine spoke about them for the first time, and called them "unfounded". The accusers stood by their claims, with one saying, "I will take a lie-detector test. Will he?" Six days later, music critic Arthur Kaptainis wrote in the Montreal Gazette that Levine's denial "had little effect". On March 12, 2018, the Met announced that it had fired Levine. Its investigation found Levine had "engaged in sexually abusive and harassing conduct towards vulnerable artists in the early stages of their careers". Levine sued the Metropolitan Opera in New York State Supreme Court for breach of contract and defamation on March 15, 2018, three days after the company fired him, seeking more than $5.8 million in damages. The Met denied Levine's allegations. A year later, a New York State Supreme Court judge dismissed most of Levine's claims, but ruled that the Met and its attorney had made defamatory statements. The Metropolitan Opera and Levine announced a settlement on undisclosed terms in August 2019. In September 2020, the size of the payout was indirectly exposed by annual disclosure statements required for nonprofits; Levine had received $3.5 million in the settlement. It is speculated that he was able to negotiate such a large settlement due to the lack of a morals clause in his contract with the Met. Recordings and film Levine made many audio and video recordings. He recorded extensively with many orchestras, and especially often with the Metropolitan Opera. His performance of Aida with Leontyne Price, her last in opera, was preserved on video and may be seen at the Met's own online archive of performances. Of particular note are his performances of Wagner's complete Der Ring des Nibelungen. A studio recording made for Deutsche Grammophon from 1987 to 1989 is on compact disc, and a 1989 live performance of the Ring is available on DVD. He also appears on several dozen albums as a pianist, collaborating with such singers as Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, Christa Ludwig, and Dawn Upshaw, as well as performing the chamber music of Franz Schubert and Francis Poulenc, among others. Levine was featured in the animated Disney film Fantasia 2000. He conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the soundtrack recordings of all the music in the film (with the exception of one segment from the original 1940 Fantasia). Levine is also seen in the film talking briefly with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, just as his predecessor Leopold Stokowski did in the original film. Discography Marilyn Horne: Divas in Song (1994), RCA Victor Red Seal CD, 09026-62547-2 Videography Mozart: Idomeneo (1982), Deutsche Grammophon DVD, 00440-073-4234 The Metropolitan Opera Centennial Gala (1983), Deutsche Grammophon DVD, 00440-073-4538 The Metropolitan Opera Gala 1991, Deutsche Grammophon DVD, 00440-073-4582 James Levine's 25th Anniversary Metropolitan Opera Gala (1996), Deutsche Grammophon DVD, B0004602-09 Honors Among the awards listed in his Met biography are: 1980 – Manhattan Cultural Award 1982 – first of eight Grammy Awards 1984 – Named "Musician of the Year" by Musical America 1986 – Smetana Medal (presented by the former Czechoslovakia) 1997 – National Medal of Arts 1999 – Wilhelm Furtwängler Prize from the Committee for Cultural Advancement of Baden-Baden, Germany 2003 – Kennedy Center Honors 2005 – Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts from the American Academy of Arts and Letters 2006 – Opera News Award 2009 – Award in the Vocal Arts from Bard College 2009 – Ditson Conductors Award from Columbia University 2010 – National Endowment for the Arts Opera Honoree 2010 – George Peabody Award from Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University 2010 – elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters In addition, his biography says Levine has received honorary doctorates from the University of Cincinnati, the New England Conservatory of Music, Northwestern University, the State University of New York, and the Juilliard School. On May 3, 2018, SUNY revoked Levine's honorary doctorate in response to the sexual abuse allegations against him. References External links 1943 births 2021 deaths 20th-century American conductors (music) 20th-century American pianists 20th-century American male musicians 20th-century classical pianists 21st-century American conductors (music) 21st-century American male musicians 21st-century American pianists 21st-century classical pianists American classical pianists American male conductors (music) American male pianists Aspen Music Festival and School alumni Conductors of the Metropolitan Opera Deutsche Grammophon artists Grammy Award winners Jewish American classical musicians Jewish classical pianists Juilliard School alumni Kennedy Center honorees Male classical pianists Metropolitan Opera people Music directors (opera) Musicians from Cincinnati Musicians from New York City Oehms Classics artists People stripped of honorary degrees People with Parkinson's disease United States National Medal of Arts recipients 21st-century American Jews

C_65204209c84c44cd9d64d3dbaa8b91fb_1

did he has any injury

Did James Levine have any injury?

James Levine

Levine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a Jewish, musical family. His maternal grandfather was a composer and a cantor in a synagogue, his father (Lawrence) was a violinist who led dance bands under the name "Larry Lee" before entering his father's clothing business, and his mother (Helen Goldstein Levine) was briefly an actress on Broadway, performing as "Helen Golden". He has a brother Tom who is two years younger, who followed him to New York City from Cincinnati in 1974, and with whom he is very close. He employs Tom as his business assistant (looking after all of his affairs, arranging his rehearsal schedules, fielding queries, scouting out where he will live, meeting with accountants, and accompanying Levine on trips to Europe), and his brother is a painter as well. He also has a younger sister, Janet, who is a marriage counselor. He began to play the piano as a small child. On February 21, 1954, at the age of 10, Levine made his concert debut as soloist playing Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2 at a youth concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in Ohio. Levine subsequently studied music with Walter Levin, first violinist in the LaSalle Quartet. In 1956 he took piano lessons with Rudolf Serkin at the Marlboro Music School, in Vermont. In the following year he began to study piano with Rosina Lhevinne at the Aspen Music School. He graduated from Walnut Hills High School, an acclaimed magnet school in Cincinnati. He entered the Juilliard School of Music in New York City in 1961, and took courses in conducting with Jean Morel. He graduated from the Juilliard School in 1964, and joined the American Conductors project connected with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Levine lives in The San Remo on Central Park West in New York City. CANNOTANSWER

CANNOTANSWER

James Lawrence Levine (; June 23, 1943 – March 9, 2021) was an American conductor and pianist. He was music director of the Metropolitan Opera (the "Met") from 1976 to 2016. He was formally terminated from all his positions and affiliations with the Met on March 12, 2018, over sexual misconduct allegations, which he denied. Levine held leadership positions with the Ravinia Festival, the Munich Philharmonic, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 1980 he started the Lindemann Young Artists Development Program, and trained singers, conductors, and musicians for professional careers. After taking an almost two-year health-related hiatus from conducting from 2011 to 2013, during which time he held artistic and administrative planning sessions at the Met, and led training of the Lindemann Young Artists, Levine retired as the Met's full-time Music Director following the 2015–16 season to become Music Director Emeritus. Early years and personal life Levine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a Jewish, musical family. His maternal grandfather was a composer and a cantor in a synagogue; his father, Lawrence, was a violinist who led dance bands under the name "Larry Lee" before entering his father's clothing business; and his mother, Helen Goldstein Levine, was briefly an actress on Broadway, performing as "Helen Golden". He had a brother, Tom, who was two years younger, who followed him to New York City from Cincinnati in 1974, and with whom he was very close. He employed Tom as his business assistant, looking after his affairs, arranging his rehearsal schedules, fielding queries, scouting out places to live, meeting with accountants, and accompanying Levine on trips to Europe. Tom was also a painter. He also had a younger sister, Janet, who is a marriage counselor. He began to play the piano as a small child. On February 21, 1954, at age 10, Levine made his concert debut as soloist playing Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2 at a youth concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in Ohio. Levine subsequently studied music with Walter Levin, first violinist in the LaSalle Quartet. In 1956 he took piano lessons with Rudolf Serkin at the Marlboro Music School in Vermont. The next year he began to study piano with Rosina Lhévinne at the Aspen Music School. He graduated from Walnut Hills High School, a magnet school in Cincinnati. He entered the Juilliard School of Music in New York City in 1961, and took courses in conducting with Jean Morel. He graduated from Juilliard in 1964, and joined the American Conductors project connected with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Levine lived in The San Remo on Central Park West in New York City. Career Early career From 1964 to 1965, Levine served as an apprentice to George Szell with the Cleveland Orchestra. He then served as the Orchestra's assistant conductor until 1970. That year, he also made debuts as guest conductor with the Philadelphia Orchestra at its summer home at Robin Hood Dell, the Welsh National Opera, and the San Francisco Opera. From 1965 to 1972 he concurrently taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In the summers, he worked at the Meadow Brook School of Music in Michigan and at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. During that time, the charismatic Levine developed a devoted following of young musicians and music lovers. In June 1971, Levine was called in at the last moment to substitute for István Kertész, to lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Mahler's Second Symphony for the Ravinia Festival's opening concert of their 36th season. This concert began a long association with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. From 1973 to 1993 he was music director of the Ravinia Festival, succeeding the late Kertész. He made numerous recordings with the orchestra, including the symphonies and German Requiem of Johannes Brahms, and major works of Gershwin, Holst, Berg, Beethoven, Mozart, and others. In 1990, at the request of Roy E. Disney, he arranged the music and conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in the soundtrack of Fantasia 2000, released by Walt Disney Pictures. From 1974 to 1978, Levine also served as music director of the Cincinnati May Festival. Metropolitan Opera Levine made his Metropolitan Opera debut a few weeks before he turned 28, on June 5, 1971, leading a June Festival performance of Puccini's Tosca. After further appearances with the company, he was named its principal conductor in February 1972. He became its music director in 1975. In 1983, he served as conductor and musical director for the Franco Zeffirelli screen adaptation of Verdi's La Traviata, which featured the Met orchestra and chorus members. He became the company's first artistic director in 1986, and relinquished the title in 2004. In 2005, Levine's combined salary from the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Met made him the highest-paid conductor in the country, at $3.5 million. During Levine's tenure, the Metropolitan Opera orchestra expanded its activities into recording and concert series for the orchestra and chamber ensembles from the orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Levine led the Metropolitan Opera on many domestic and international tours. For the 25th anniversary of his Met debut, Levine conducted the world premiere of John Harbison's The Great Gatsby, commissioned for the occasion. On his appointment as general manager of the Met, Peter Gelb emphasized that Levine was welcome to remain as long as he wanted to direct music there. Levine was paid $2.1 million by the Met in 2010. Following a series of injuries that began with a fall, Levine's health problems led to his withdrawal from many Metropolitan Opera engagements. After a May 2011 performance of Wagner's Die Walküre, Levine formally withdrew from all engagements at the Met. After two years of physical therapy, he returned to conducting with a May 2013 concert with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. On September 25, 2013, Levine conducted his first Met performance since May 2011, in a revival production of Mozart's Così fan tutte. He was scheduled to conduct three productions at the opera house and three at Carnegie Hall in the 2013–14 season. On April 14, 2016, Met management announced that Levine would step down from his position as music director at the end of the 2015–16 season. Levine was paid $1.8 million by the Met for the 2015–16 season. He assumed the new title of Music Director Emeritus, which he held until December 2017, when in the wake of allegations that Levine had sexually abused four young men, the Met suspended its relationship with him and canceled all his scheduled performances with the company. Boston Symphony Orchestra Levine first conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) in April 1972. In October 2001, he was named its music director effective with the 2004–05 season, with an initial contract of five years, becoming the first American-born conductor to head the BSO. One unique condition that Levine negotiated was increased flexibility of the time allotted for rehearsal, allowing the orchestra additional time to prepare more challenging works. After the start of his tenure, the orchestra also established an "Artistic Initiative Fund" of about $40 million to fund the more expensive of his projects. One criticism of Levine during his BSO tenure is that he did not attend many orchestra auditions. A 2005 article reported that he had attended two out of 16 auditions during his tenure up to that time. Levine responded that he has the ability to provide input on musician tenure decisions after the initial probationary period, and that it is difficult to know how well a given player will fit the given position until that person has had a chance to work with the orchestra: "My message is the audition isn't everything." Another 2005 report stated that during Levine's first season as music director, the greater workload from the demands of playing more unfamiliar and contemporary music had increased physical stress on some of the BSO musicians. Levine and the players met to discuss this, and he agreed to program changes to lessen these demands. He received general critical praise for revitalizing the orchestra's quality and repertoire since the beginning of his tenure. Levine experienced ongoing health problems, starting with an onstage fall in 2006 that resulted in a torn rotator cuff and started discussion of how long Levine's tenure with the BSO would last. In April 2010, in the wake of his continuing health problems, it emerged that Levine had not officially signed a contract extension, so that he was the BSO's music director without a signed contract. On March 2, 2011, the BSO announced Levine's resignation as music director effective September 2011, after the Orchestra's Tanglewood season. Working on a commission from Levine and the BSO, the composer John Harbison dedicated his Symphony No. 6 "in friendship and gratitude" to him, whose premature departure from the orchestra prevented him from conducting the premiere. After allegations of his abusing a number of young men came out in December 2017 the BSO said Levine "will never be employed or contracted by the BSO at any time in the future". Conducting in Europe Levine's BSO contract limited his guest appearances with American orchestras, but he still conducted regularly in Europe, with the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, and at the Bayreuth Festival. Levine was a regular guest with the Philharmonia of London and the Staatskapelle Dresden. Beginning in 1975 he conducted regularly at the Salzburg Festival and the annual July Verbier Festival. From 1999 to 2004, he was chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, and was credited with improving the quality of instrumental ensemble during his tenure. Work with students Levine initiated the Lindemann Young Artists Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera in 1980, a professional training program for graduated singers with, today, many famous alumni. Levine was conductor of the UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra, the student resident orchestra at the annual summer music festival in Verbier, Switzerland, from 1999 through 2006. It was Levine's first long-term commitment to a student orchestra since becoming music director at the Met. After becoming music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Levine also served as music director of the Tanglewood Music Center, the BSO's acclaimed summer academy at Tanglewood for student instrumentalists, singers, composers, and conductors. There he conducted the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, directed fully staged opera performances with student singers, and gave master classes for singers and conductors. Levine said in an interview: At my age, you are naturally inclined towards teaching. You want to teach what you have learned to the next generation so that they don't have to spend time reinventing the wheel. I was lucky that I met the right mentors and teachers at the right moment. I love working with young musicians and singers, and those at the Tanglewood Music Center are unequivocally some of the finest and most talented in the world. He continued to work with young students even when his health issues kept him from conducting. He was awarded the Lotus Award ("for inspiration to young musicians") from Young Concert Artists. Anthony Tommasini wrote in The New York Times in 2016: "The aspiring singers in the Met's young artist development program, one of many important ventures Mr. Levine started, must understand how lucky they are to have, as a teacher and mentor, a musician who even in his 20s worked at the Met with giants like Jon Vickers and Renata Tebaldi." Health problems and death Levine experienced recurrent health issues beginning in 2006, including sciatica and what he called "intermittent tremors". On March 1, 2006, he tripped and fell onstage during a standing ovation after a performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and tore the rotator cuff in his right shoulder, leaving the remaining subscription concerts in Boston to his assistant conductor at the time. Later that month, Levine underwent surgery to repair the injury. He returned to the podium on July 7, 2006. Levine withdrew from the majority of the Tanglewood 2008 summer season because of surgery required to remove a kidney with a malignant cyst. He returned to the podium in Boston on September 24, 2008, at Symphony Hall. On September 29, 2009, it was announced that Levine would undergo emergency back surgery for a herniated disk. He missed three weeks of engagements. In March 2010, the BSO announced that Levine would miss the remainder of the Boston Symphony season because of back pain. The Met also announced, on April 4, 2010, that he was withdrawing from the remainder of his performances for the season. According to the Met, Levine was required to have "corrective surgery for an ongoing lower back problem". He returned to conducting at the Met and the BSO at the beginning of the 2010–11 season, but in February 2011 canceled his Boston engagements for the rest of the season. In the summer of 2011, Levine underwent further surgery on his back. In September 2011, after he fell down a flight of stairs, fractured his spine, and injured his back while on vacation in Vermont, the Met announced that he would not conduct at the Met at least for the rest of 2011. After two years of surgery and physical therapy, Levine returned to conducting for the first time on May 19, 2013, in a concert with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Levine conducted from a motorized wheelchair, with a special platform designed to accommodate it, which could rise and descend like an elevator. He returned to the Met on September 24, 2013. The same type of platform was present in the Met orchestra pit for his September 2013 return performance. For many years, both Levine and the Met denied as unfounded the rumors that Levine had Parkinson's disease. As New York magazine reported: "The conductor states flatly that the condition is not Parkinson's disease, as people had speculated in 'that silly Times piece.'" But in 2016 both he and the Met finally admitted that the rumors were true, and that Levine had in fact had the disease since 1994. The Washington Post noted: "It wasn't just the illnesses, but the constant alternation between concealment and an excess of revelation that kept so much attention focused on them and away from the music." Levine died in his Palm Springs home on March 9, 2021. Len Horovitz, his personal physician, announced Levine's death on March 17 and said that he had died of natural causes. Sexual assault allegations Four men accused Levine of sexually molesting them (starting when they were 16, 17, 17, and 20 years old), from the 1960s to the 1990s. On December 2, 2017, it was publicly revealed that an October 2016 police report detailed that Levine had allegedly sexually molested a male teenager for years. The alleged sexual abuse began while Levine was guest conductor at the Ravinia Festival, outside Chicago, where Levine was music director for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's summer residencies from 1973 to 1993. One accuser said that in the summer of 1968, when he was a 17-year-old high school student attending Meadow Brook School of Music in Michigan, Levine (then a 25-year-old faculty member) had sexual contact with a student. When he next saw Levine, the accuser told him that he would not repeat the sexual behavior, but asked if they could continue to make music as they had before; Levine said no. The accuser later played bass in the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra for decades and became a professor. A second accuser said that that same summer, Levine had sexual contact with a 17-year-old student and that Levine then initiated with the teenager a number of sexual encounters that have since haunted him. He said (and another male corroborated, on the condition of anonymity) that the next year, in Cleveland, where Levine was an assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, Levine on several occasions had sexual contact with that student and other students. A third accuser, a violinist and pianist who grew up in Illinois near the Ravinia Music Festival, a summer program for aspiring musicians of which Levine was music director from 1971 to 1993, said Levine sexually abused him beginning when the accuser was 16 years old (and Levine was in his 40s) in 1986. He had previously detailed his accusation in 2016 in a report to the Lake Forest Police Department in Illinois. On December 8, the department announced that Levine could not be charged criminally in Illinois because the accuser was 16 years old at the time, and while today a 16-year-old is not considered old enough to consent to such conduct in Illinois (he must be 17, or 18 in cases in which the suspect is in a position of trust, authority, or supervision in relation to the victim), at the time that was the statutory age of consent. The department noted: "we are bound to apply the law that was in effect at the time the allegations occurred rather than the law as it currently exists." On December 4, a fourth man, who later had a long career as a violinist in the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, said he had been abused by Levine beginning in 1968, when he was 20 years old and attending the Meadow Brook School of Music. Levine was a teacher in the summer program. Reactions The New York Times said that the Met had known of at least one sexual abuse allegation as early as 1979, but dismissed it as baseless. Furthermore, the Met (including its General Manager Peter Gelb, who was contacted directly by a police detective about the allegations in October 2016) had been aware of both the third accuser's abuse allegations since they were made in the 2016 police report, and of the attendant police investigation. But the Met did not suspend Levine or launch an investigation of its own until over a year later, in December 2017. In response to the December 2017 news article, the Met announced that it would investigate the sexual abuse allegations dating to the 1980s that were set forth in the 2016 police report. On December 3, after two additional males came forward with allegations of abuse, the Met suspended its ties with Levine, and canceled all upcoming engagements with him. A fourth accuser came forward the following day. For its part, the Ravinia Festival, in April 2017, six months after the criminal investigation of Levine began, created an honorific title for Levine—"Conductor Laureate"—and signed him to a five-year renewable contract to begin in 2018. On December 4, 2017, the Ravinia Festival severed all ties with Levine, and terminated his five-year contract to lead the Chicago Symphony there. The Boston Symphony Orchestra said Levine "will never be employed or contracted by the BSO at any time in the future". The Juilliard School, where Levine had studied, replaced him in a February 2018 performance where he was scheduled to lead the Juilliard Orchestra and singers from the Met's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. On December 5, the Cincinnati May Festival canceled Levine's appearance in May. On December 7, in New Plymouth, New Zealand, the cinema chain Event Cinemas abruptly cancelled the screening of a Met production of Levine conducting Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. On December 8, Fred Child, host of the classical music radio show Performance Today, wrote that Levine "is accused of inflicting grievous harm to living members of our musical community. Out of respect for these people and their wounds, I choose not to broadcast performances featuring Mr. Levine on the podium." Classical music blogger, former Village Voice music critic, and Juilliard School faculty member Greg Sandow said he had been contacted by three men over the years who said that Levine had abused them, and that reports of sexual abuse by Levine were "widely talked about" for 40 years. Sandow said further: "Everybody in the classical music business at least since the 1980s has talked about Levine as a sex abuser. The investigation should have been done decades ago." Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Justin Davidson mused on the culture website of New York magazine, "James Levine's career has clearly ended" and "I'm not sure the Met can survive Levine's disgrace." Similarly, drama critic Terry Teachout of The Wall Street Journal wrote an article called "The Levine Cataclysm; How allegations against James Levine of sexual misconduct with teenagers could topple the entire Metropolitan Opera". The Washington Post music critic Anne Midgette noted: "The Met has known about these allegations for at least a year, and are only investigating them now that they are public", and opined on her Facebook page that the Met has "quite probably spent years protecting its star conductor from just this kind of allegation". Music critic Tim Pfaff of the LGBT Bay Area Reporter wrote that The New York Times chief classical music critic Anthony Tommasini had the "weirdest" reaction, "lamenting the ugliness of it all under a...headline, 'Should I Put Away My James Levine Recordings?' His conclusion was that he and his husband...should move those recordings from their living room." The Met orchestra musicians applauded the courage of the four men who came forward with accusations that Levine had abused them. Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, which represents the Met's orchestra and Levine, said, "We are horrified and sickened by the recently reported allegations of sexual abuse by Mr. Levine." Five days after news of the accusations by the four men broke, Levine spoke about them for the first time, and called them "unfounded". The accusers stood by their claims, with one saying, "I will take a lie-detector test. Will he?" Six days later, music critic Arthur Kaptainis wrote in the Montreal Gazette that Levine's denial "had little effect". On March 12, 2018, the Met announced that it had fired Levine. Its investigation found Levine had "engaged in sexually abusive and harassing conduct towards vulnerable artists in the early stages of their careers". Levine sued the Metropolitan Opera in New York State Supreme Court for breach of contract and defamation on March 15, 2018, three days after the company fired him, seeking more than $5.8 million in damages. The Met denied Levine's allegations. A year later, a New York State Supreme Court judge dismissed most of Levine's claims, but ruled that the Met and its attorney had made defamatory statements. The Metropolitan Opera and Levine announced a settlement on undisclosed terms in August 2019. In September 2020, the size of the payout was indirectly exposed by annual disclosure statements required for nonprofits; Levine had received $3.5 million in the settlement. It is speculated that he was able to negotiate such a large settlement due to the lack of a morals clause in his contract with the Met. Recordings and film Levine made many audio and video recordings. He recorded extensively with many orchestras, and especially often with the Metropolitan Opera. His performance of Aida with Leontyne Price, her last in opera, was preserved on video and may be seen at the Met's own online archive of performances. Of particular note are his performances of Wagner's complete Der Ring des Nibelungen. A studio recording made for Deutsche Grammophon from 1987 to 1989 is on compact disc, and a 1989 live performance of the Ring is available on DVD. He also appears on several dozen albums as a pianist, collaborating with such singers as Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, Christa Ludwig, and Dawn Upshaw, as well as performing the chamber music of Franz Schubert and Francis Poulenc, among others. Levine was featured in the animated Disney film Fantasia 2000. He conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the soundtrack recordings of all the music in the film (with the exception of one segment from the original 1940 Fantasia). Levine is also seen in the film talking briefly with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, just as his predecessor Leopold Stokowski did in the original film. Discography Marilyn Horne: Divas in Song (1994), RCA Victor Red Seal CD, 09026-62547-2 Videography Mozart: Idomeneo (1982), Deutsche Grammophon DVD, 00440-073-4234 The Metropolitan Opera Centennial Gala (1983), Deutsche Grammophon DVD, 00440-073-4538 The Metropolitan Opera Gala 1991, Deutsche Grammophon DVD, 00440-073-4582 James Levine's 25th Anniversary Metropolitan Opera Gala (1996), Deutsche Grammophon DVD, B0004602-09 Honors Among the awards listed in his Met biography are: 1980 – Manhattan Cultural Award 1982 – first of eight Grammy Awards 1984 – Named "Musician of the Year" by Musical America 1986 – Smetana Medal (presented by the former Czechoslovakia) 1997 – National Medal of Arts 1999 – Wilhelm Furtwängler Prize from the Committee for Cultural Advancement of Baden-Baden, Germany 2003 – Kennedy Center Honors 2005 – Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts from the American Academy of Arts and Letters 2006 – Opera News Award 2009 – Award in the Vocal Arts from Bard College 2009 – Ditson Conductors Award from Columbia University 2010 – National Endowment for the Arts Opera Honoree 2010 – George Peabody Award from Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University 2010 – elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters In addition, his biography says Levine has received honorary doctorates from the University of Cincinnati, the New England Conservatory of Music, Northwestern University, the State University of New York, and the Juilliard School. On May 3, 2018, SUNY revoked Levine's honorary doctorate in response to the sexual abuse allegations against him. References External links 1943 births 2021 deaths 20th-century American conductors (music) 20th-century American pianists 20th-century American male musicians 20th-century classical pianists 21st-century American conductors (music) 21st-century American male musicians 21st-century American pianists 21st-century classical pianists American classical pianists American male conductors (music) American male pianists Aspen Music Festival and School alumni Conductors of the Metropolitan Opera Deutsche Grammophon artists Grammy Award winners Jewish American classical musicians Jewish classical pianists Juilliard School alumni Kennedy Center honorees Male classical pianists Metropolitan Opera people Music directors (opera) Musicians from Cincinnati Musicians from New York City Oehms Classics artists People stripped of honorary degrees People with Parkinson's disease United States National Medal of Arts recipients 21st-century American Jews

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did he serve at any place

Did James Levine serve at any place?

James Levine

Levine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a Jewish, musical family. His maternal grandfather was a composer and a cantor in a synagogue, his father (Lawrence) was a violinist who led dance bands under the name "Larry Lee" before entering his father's clothing business, and his mother (Helen Goldstein Levine) was briefly an actress on Broadway, performing as "Helen Golden". He has a brother Tom who is two years younger, who followed him to New York City from Cincinnati in 1974, and with whom he is very close. He employs Tom as his business assistant (looking after all of his affairs, arranging his rehearsal schedules, fielding queries, scouting out where he will live, meeting with accountants, and accompanying Levine on trips to Europe), and his brother is a painter as well. He also has a younger sister, Janet, who is a marriage counselor. He began to play the piano as a small child. On February 21, 1954, at the age of 10, Levine made his concert debut as soloist playing Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2 at a youth concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in Ohio. Levine subsequently studied music with Walter Levin, first violinist in the LaSalle Quartet. In 1956 he took piano lessons with Rudolf Serkin at the Marlboro Music School, in Vermont. In the following year he began to study piano with Rosina Lhevinne at the Aspen Music School. He graduated from Walnut Hills High School, an acclaimed magnet school in Cincinnati. He entered the Juilliard School of Music in New York City in 1961, and took courses in conducting with Jean Morel. He graduated from the Juilliard School in 1964, and joined the American Conductors project connected with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Levine lives in The San Remo on Central Park West in New York City. CANNOTANSWER

Levine made his concert debut as soloist playing Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2 at a youth concert

James Lawrence Levine (; June 23, 1943 – March 9, 2021) was an American conductor and pianist. He was music director of the Metropolitan Opera (the "Met") from 1976 to 2016. He was formally terminated from all his positions and affiliations with the Met on March 12, 2018, over sexual misconduct allegations, which he denied. Levine held leadership positions with the Ravinia Festival, the Munich Philharmonic, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 1980 he started the Lindemann Young Artists Development Program, and trained singers, conductors, and musicians for professional careers. After taking an almost two-year health-related hiatus from conducting from 2011 to 2013, during which time he held artistic and administrative planning sessions at the Met, and led training of the Lindemann Young Artists, Levine retired as the Met's full-time Music Director following the 2015–16 season to become Music Director Emeritus. Early years and personal life Levine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a Jewish, musical family. His maternal grandfather was a composer and a cantor in a synagogue; his father, Lawrence, was a violinist who led dance bands under the name "Larry Lee" before entering his father's clothing business; and his mother, Helen Goldstein Levine, was briefly an actress on Broadway, performing as "Helen Golden". He had a brother, Tom, who was two years younger, who followed him to New York City from Cincinnati in 1974, and with whom he was very close. He employed Tom as his business assistant, looking after his affairs, arranging his rehearsal schedules, fielding queries, scouting out places to live, meeting with accountants, and accompanying Levine on trips to Europe. Tom was also a painter. He also had a younger sister, Janet, who is a marriage counselor. He began to play the piano as a small child. On February 21, 1954, at age 10, Levine made his concert debut as soloist playing Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2 at a youth concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in Ohio. Levine subsequently studied music with Walter Levin, first violinist in the LaSalle Quartet. In 1956 he took piano lessons with Rudolf Serkin at the Marlboro Music School in Vermont. The next year he began to study piano with Rosina Lhévinne at the Aspen Music School. He graduated from Walnut Hills High School, a magnet school in Cincinnati. He entered the Juilliard School of Music in New York City in 1961, and took courses in conducting with Jean Morel. He graduated from Juilliard in 1964, and joined the American Conductors project connected with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Levine lived in The San Remo on Central Park West in New York City. Career Early career From 1964 to 1965, Levine served as an apprentice to George Szell with the Cleveland Orchestra. He then served as the Orchestra's assistant conductor until 1970. That year, he also made debuts as guest conductor with the Philadelphia Orchestra at its summer home at Robin Hood Dell, the Welsh National Opera, and the San Francisco Opera. From 1965 to 1972 he concurrently taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In the summers, he worked at the Meadow Brook School of Music in Michigan and at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. During that time, the charismatic Levine developed a devoted following of young musicians and music lovers. In June 1971, Levine was called in at the last moment to substitute for István Kertész, to lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Mahler's Second Symphony for the Ravinia Festival's opening concert of their 36th season. This concert began a long association with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. From 1973 to 1993 he was music director of the Ravinia Festival, succeeding the late Kertész. He made numerous recordings with the orchestra, including the symphonies and German Requiem of Johannes Brahms, and major works of Gershwin, Holst, Berg, Beethoven, Mozart, and others. In 1990, at the request of Roy E. Disney, he arranged the music and conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in the soundtrack of Fantasia 2000, released by Walt Disney Pictures. From 1974 to 1978, Levine also served as music director of the Cincinnati May Festival. Metropolitan Opera Levine made his Metropolitan Opera debut a few weeks before he turned 28, on June 5, 1971, leading a June Festival performance of Puccini's Tosca. After further appearances with the company, he was named its principal conductor in February 1972. He became its music director in 1975. In 1983, he served as conductor and musical director for the Franco Zeffirelli screen adaptation of Verdi's La Traviata, which featured the Met orchestra and chorus members. He became the company's first artistic director in 1986, and relinquished the title in 2004. In 2005, Levine's combined salary from the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Met made him the highest-paid conductor in the country, at $3.5 million. During Levine's tenure, the Metropolitan Opera orchestra expanded its activities into recording and concert series for the orchestra and chamber ensembles from the orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Levine led the Metropolitan Opera on many domestic and international tours. For the 25th anniversary of his Met debut, Levine conducted the world premiere of John Harbison's The Great Gatsby, commissioned for the occasion. On his appointment as general manager of the Met, Peter Gelb emphasized that Levine was welcome to remain as long as he wanted to direct music there. Levine was paid $2.1 million by the Met in 2010. Following a series of injuries that began with a fall, Levine's health problems led to his withdrawal from many Metropolitan Opera engagements. After a May 2011 performance of Wagner's Die Walküre, Levine formally withdrew from all engagements at the Met. After two years of physical therapy, he returned to conducting with a May 2013 concert with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. On September 25, 2013, Levine conducted his first Met performance since May 2011, in a revival production of Mozart's Così fan tutte. He was scheduled to conduct three productions at the opera house and three at Carnegie Hall in the 2013–14 season. On April 14, 2016, Met management announced that Levine would step down from his position as music director at the end of the 2015–16 season. Levine was paid $1.8 million by the Met for the 2015–16 season. He assumed the new title of Music Director Emeritus, which he held until December 2017, when in the wake of allegations that Levine had sexually abused four young men, the Met suspended its relationship with him and canceled all his scheduled performances with the company. Boston Symphony Orchestra Levine first conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) in April 1972. In October 2001, he was named its music director effective with the 2004–05 season, with an initial contract of five years, becoming the first American-born conductor to head the BSO. One unique condition that Levine negotiated was increased flexibility of the time allotted for rehearsal, allowing the orchestra additional time to prepare more challenging works. After the start of his tenure, the orchestra also established an "Artistic Initiative Fund" of about $40 million to fund the more expensive of his projects. One criticism of Levine during his BSO tenure is that he did not attend many orchestra auditions. A 2005 article reported that he had attended two out of 16 auditions during his tenure up to that time. Levine responded that he has the ability to provide input on musician tenure decisions after the initial probationary period, and that it is difficult to know how well a given player will fit the given position until that person has had a chance to work with the orchestra: "My message is the audition isn't everything." Another 2005 report stated that during Levine's first season as music director, the greater workload from the demands of playing more unfamiliar and contemporary music had increased physical stress on some of the BSO musicians. Levine and the players met to discuss this, and he agreed to program changes to lessen these demands. He received general critical praise for revitalizing the orchestra's quality and repertoire since the beginning of his tenure. Levine experienced ongoing health problems, starting with an onstage fall in 2006 that resulted in a torn rotator cuff and started discussion of how long Levine's tenure with the BSO would last. In April 2010, in the wake of his continuing health problems, it emerged that Levine had not officially signed a contract extension, so that he was the BSO's music director without a signed contract. On March 2, 2011, the BSO announced Levine's resignation as music director effective September 2011, after the Orchestra's Tanglewood season. Working on a commission from Levine and the BSO, the composer John Harbison dedicated his Symphony No. 6 "in friendship and gratitude" to him, whose premature departure from the orchestra prevented him from conducting the premiere. After allegations of his abusing a number of young men came out in December 2017 the BSO said Levine "will never be employed or contracted by the BSO at any time in the future". Conducting in Europe Levine's BSO contract limited his guest appearances with American orchestras, but he still conducted regularly in Europe, with the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, and at the Bayreuth Festival. Levine was a regular guest with the Philharmonia of London and the Staatskapelle Dresden. Beginning in 1975 he conducted regularly at the Salzburg Festival and the annual July Verbier Festival. From 1999 to 2004, he was chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, and was credited with improving the quality of instrumental ensemble during his tenure. Work with students Levine initiated the Lindemann Young Artists Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera in 1980, a professional training program for graduated singers with, today, many famous alumni. Levine was conductor of the UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra, the student resident orchestra at the annual summer music festival in Verbier, Switzerland, from 1999 through 2006. It was Levine's first long-term commitment to a student orchestra since becoming music director at the Met. After becoming music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Levine also served as music director of the Tanglewood Music Center, the BSO's acclaimed summer academy at Tanglewood for student instrumentalists, singers, composers, and conductors. There he conducted the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, directed fully staged opera performances with student singers, and gave master classes for singers and conductors. Levine said in an interview: At my age, you are naturally inclined towards teaching. You want to teach what you have learned to the next generation so that they don't have to spend time reinventing the wheel. I was lucky that I met the right mentors and teachers at the right moment. I love working with young musicians and singers, and those at the Tanglewood Music Center are unequivocally some of the finest and most talented in the world. He continued to work with young students even when his health issues kept him from conducting. He was awarded the Lotus Award ("for inspiration to young musicians") from Young Concert Artists. Anthony Tommasini wrote in The New York Times in 2016: "The aspiring singers in the Met's young artist development program, one of many important ventures Mr. Levine started, must understand how lucky they are to have, as a teacher and mentor, a musician who even in his 20s worked at the Met with giants like Jon Vickers and Renata Tebaldi." Health problems and death Levine experienced recurrent health issues beginning in 2006, including sciatica and what he called "intermittent tremors". On March 1, 2006, he tripped and fell onstage during a standing ovation after a performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and tore the rotator cuff in his right shoulder, leaving the remaining subscription concerts in Boston to his assistant conductor at the time. Later that month, Levine underwent surgery to repair the injury. He returned to the podium on July 7, 2006. Levine withdrew from the majority of the Tanglewood 2008 summer season because of surgery required to remove a kidney with a malignant cyst. He returned to the podium in Boston on September 24, 2008, at Symphony Hall. On September 29, 2009, it was announced that Levine would undergo emergency back surgery for a herniated disk. He missed three weeks of engagements. In March 2010, the BSO announced that Levine would miss the remainder of the Boston Symphony season because of back pain. The Met also announced, on April 4, 2010, that he was withdrawing from the remainder of his performances for the season. According to the Met, Levine was required to have "corrective surgery for an ongoing lower back problem". He returned to conducting at the Met and the BSO at the beginning of the 2010–11 season, but in February 2011 canceled his Boston engagements for the rest of the season. In the summer of 2011, Levine underwent further surgery on his back. In September 2011, after he fell down a flight of stairs, fractured his spine, and injured his back while on vacation in Vermont, the Met announced that he would not conduct at the Met at least for the rest of 2011. After two years of surgery and physical therapy, Levine returned to conducting for the first time on May 19, 2013, in a concert with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Levine conducted from a motorized wheelchair, with a special platform designed to accommodate it, which could rise and descend like an elevator. He returned to the Met on September 24, 2013. The same type of platform was present in the Met orchestra pit for his September 2013 return performance. For many years, both Levine and the Met denied as unfounded the rumors that Levine had Parkinson's disease. As New York magazine reported: "The conductor states flatly that the condition is not Parkinson's disease, as people had speculated in 'that silly Times piece.'" But in 2016 both he and the Met finally admitted that the rumors were true, and that Levine had in fact had the disease since 1994. The Washington Post noted: "It wasn't just the illnesses, but the constant alternation between concealment and an excess of revelation that kept so much attention focused on them and away from the music." Levine died in his Palm Springs home on March 9, 2021. Len Horovitz, his personal physician, announced Levine's death on March 17 and said that he had died of natural causes. Sexual assault allegations Four men accused Levine of sexually molesting them (starting when they were 16, 17, 17, and 20 years old), from the 1960s to the 1990s. On December 2, 2017, it was publicly revealed that an October 2016 police report detailed that Levine had allegedly sexually molested a male teenager for years. The alleged sexual abuse began while Levine was guest conductor at the Ravinia Festival, outside Chicago, where Levine was music director for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's summer residencies from 1973 to 1993. One accuser said that in the summer of 1968, when he was a 17-year-old high school student attending Meadow Brook School of Music in Michigan, Levine (then a 25-year-old faculty member) had sexual contact with a student. When he next saw Levine, the accuser told him that he would not repeat the sexual behavior, but asked if they could continue to make music as they had before; Levine said no. The accuser later played bass in the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra for decades and became a professor. A second accuser said that that same summer, Levine had sexual contact with a 17-year-old student and that Levine then initiated with the teenager a number of sexual encounters that have since haunted him. He said (and another male corroborated, on the condition of anonymity) that the next year, in Cleveland, where Levine was an assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, Levine on several occasions had sexual contact with that student and other students. A third accuser, a violinist and pianist who grew up in Illinois near the Ravinia Music Festival, a summer program for aspiring musicians of which Levine was music director from 1971 to 1993, said Levine sexually abused him beginning when the accuser was 16 years old (and Levine was in his 40s) in 1986. He had previously detailed his accusation in 2016 in a report to the Lake Forest Police Department in Illinois. On December 8, the department announced that Levine could not be charged criminally in Illinois because the accuser was 16 years old at the time, and while today a 16-year-old is not considered old enough to consent to such conduct in Illinois (he must be 17, or 18 in cases in which the suspect is in a position of trust, authority, or supervision in relation to the victim), at the time that was the statutory age of consent. The department noted: "we are bound to apply the law that was in effect at the time the allegations occurred rather than the law as it currently exists." On December 4, a fourth man, who later had a long career as a violinist in the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, said he had been abused by Levine beginning in 1968, when he was 20 years old and attending the Meadow Brook School of Music. Levine was a teacher in the summer program. Reactions The New York Times said that the Met had known of at least one sexual abuse allegation as early as 1979, but dismissed it as baseless. Furthermore, the Met (including its General Manager Peter Gelb, who was contacted directly by a police detective about the allegations in October 2016) had been aware of both the third accuser's abuse allegations since they were made in the 2016 police report, and of the attendant police investigation. But the Met did not suspend Levine or launch an investigation of its own until over a year later, in December 2017. In response to the December 2017 news article, the Met announced that it would investigate the sexual abuse allegations dating to the 1980s that were set forth in the 2016 police report. On December 3, after two additional males came forward with allegations of abuse, the Met suspended its ties with Levine, and canceled all upcoming engagements with him. A fourth accuser came forward the following day. For its part, the Ravinia Festival, in April 2017, six months after the criminal investigation of Levine began, created an honorific title for Levine—"Conductor Laureate"—and signed him to a five-year renewable contract to begin in 2018. On December 4, 2017, the Ravinia Festival severed all ties with Levine, and terminated his five-year contract to lead the Chicago Symphony there. The Boston Symphony Orchestra said Levine "will never be employed or contracted by the BSO at any time in the future". The Juilliard School, where Levine had studied, replaced him in a February 2018 performance where he was scheduled to lead the Juilliard Orchestra and singers from the Met's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. On December 5, the Cincinnati May Festival canceled Levine's appearance in May. On December 7, in New Plymouth, New Zealand, the cinema chain Event Cinemas abruptly cancelled the screening of a Met production of Levine conducting Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. On December 8, Fred Child, host of the classical music radio show Performance Today, wrote that Levine "is accused of inflicting grievous harm to living members of our musical community. Out of respect for these people and their wounds, I choose not to broadcast performances featuring Mr. Levine on the podium." Classical music blogger, former Village Voice music critic, and Juilliard School faculty member Greg Sandow said he had been contacted by three men over the years who said that Levine had abused them, and that reports of sexual abuse by Levine were "widely talked about" for 40 years. Sandow said further: "Everybody in the classical music business at least since the 1980s has talked about Levine as a sex abuser. The investigation should have been done decades ago." Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Justin Davidson mused on the culture website of New York magazine, "James Levine's career has clearly ended" and "I'm not sure the Met can survive Levine's disgrace." Similarly, drama critic Terry Teachout of The Wall Street Journal wrote an article called "The Levine Cataclysm; How allegations against James Levine of sexual misconduct with teenagers could topple the entire Metropolitan Opera". The Washington Post music critic Anne Midgette noted: "The Met has known about these allegations for at least a year, and are only investigating them now that they are public", and opined on her Facebook page that the Met has "quite probably spent years protecting its star conductor from just this kind of allegation". Music critic Tim Pfaff of the LGBT Bay Area Reporter wrote that The New York Times chief classical music critic Anthony Tommasini had the "weirdest" reaction, "lamenting the ugliness of it all under a...headline, 'Should I Put Away My James Levine Recordings?' His conclusion was that he and his husband...should move those recordings from their living room." The Met orchestra musicians applauded the courage of the four men who came forward with accusations that Levine had abused them. Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, which represents the Met's orchestra and Levine, said, "We are horrified and sickened by the recently reported allegations of sexual abuse by Mr. Levine." Five days after news of the accusations by the four men broke, Levine spoke about them for the first time, and called them "unfounded". The accusers stood by their claims, with one saying, "I will take a lie-detector test. Will he?" Six days later, music critic Arthur Kaptainis wrote in the Montreal Gazette that Levine's denial "had little effect". On March 12, 2018, the Met announced that it had fired Levine. Its investigation found Levine had "engaged in sexually abusive and harassing conduct towards vulnerable artists in the early stages of their careers". Levine sued the Metropolitan Opera in New York State Supreme Court for breach of contract and defamation on March 15, 2018, three days after the company fired him, seeking more than $5.8 million in damages. The Met denied Levine's allegations. A year later, a New York State Supreme Court judge dismissed most of Levine's claims, but ruled that the Met and its attorney had made defamatory statements. The Metropolitan Opera and Levine announced a settlement on undisclosed terms in August 2019. In September 2020, the size of the payout was indirectly exposed by annual disclosure statements required for nonprofits; Levine had received $3.5 million in the settlement. It is speculated that he was able to negotiate such a large settlement due to the lack of a morals clause in his contract with the Met. Recordings and film Levine made many audio and video recordings. He recorded extensively with many orchestras, and especially often with the Metropolitan Opera. His performance of Aida with Leontyne Price, her last in opera, was preserved on video and may be seen at the Met's own online archive of performances. Of particular note are his performances of Wagner's complete Der Ring des Nibelungen. A studio recording made for Deutsche Grammophon from 1987 to 1989 is on compact disc, and a 1989 live performance of the Ring is available on DVD. He also appears on several dozen albums as a pianist, collaborating with such singers as Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, Christa Ludwig, and Dawn Upshaw, as well as performing the chamber music of Franz Schubert and Francis Poulenc, among others. Levine was featured in the animated Disney film Fantasia 2000. He conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the soundtrack recordings of all the music in the film (with the exception of one segment from the original 1940 Fantasia). Levine is also seen in the film talking briefly with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, just as his predecessor Leopold Stokowski did in the original film. Discography Marilyn Horne: Divas in Song (1994), RCA Victor Red Seal CD, 09026-62547-2 Videography Mozart: Idomeneo (1982), Deutsche Grammophon DVD, 00440-073-4234 The Metropolitan Opera Centennial Gala (1983), Deutsche Grammophon DVD, 00440-073-4538 The Metropolitan Opera Gala 1991, Deutsche Grammophon DVD, 00440-073-4582 James Levine's 25th Anniversary Metropolitan Opera Gala (1996), Deutsche Grammophon DVD, B0004602-09 Honors Among the awards listed in his Met biography are: 1980 – Manhattan Cultural Award 1982 – first of eight Grammy Awards 1984 – Named "Musician of the Year" by Musical America 1986 – Smetana Medal (presented by the former Czechoslovakia) 1997 – National Medal of Arts 1999 – Wilhelm Furtwängler Prize from the Committee for Cultural Advancement of Baden-Baden, Germany 2003 – Kennedy Center Honors 2005 – Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts from the American Academy of Arts and Letters 2006 – Opera News Award 2009 – Award in the Vocal Arts from Bard College 2009 – Ditson Conductors Award from Columbia University 2010 – National Endowment for the Arts Opera Honoree 2010 – George Peabody Award from Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University 2010 – elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters In addition, his biography says Levine has received honorary doctorates from the University of Cincinnati, the New England Conservatory of Music, Northwestern University, the State University of New York, and the Juilliard School. On May 3, 2018, SUNY revoked Levine's honorary doctorate in response to the sexual abuse allegations against him. References External links 1943 births 2021 deaths 20th-century American conductors (music) 20th-century American pianists 20th-century American male musicians 20th-century classical pianists 21st-century American conductors (music) 21st-century American male musicians 21st-century American pianists 21st-century classical pianists American classical pianists American male conductors (music) American male pianists Aspen Music Festival and School alumni Conductors of the Metropolitan Opera Deutsche Grammophon artists Grammy Award winners Jewish American classical musicians Jewish classical pianists Juilliard School alumni Kennedy Center honorees Male classical pianists Metropolitan Opera people Music directors (opera) Musicians from Cincinnati Musicians from New York City Oehms Classics artists People stripped of honorary degrees People with Parkinson's disease United States National Medal of Arts recipients 21st-century American Jews

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What is The Apples?

What is The Apples?

The Apples in Stereo

In late 1991, Robert Schneider met Jim McIntyre on a commuter bus in Denver, Colorado. Schneider had recently moved to Colorado from Ruston, Louisiana, and often initiated conversations with McIntyre. When Schneider asked McIntyre what his music interests were, McIntyre named his favorite band: The Beach Boys -- a band Schneider was particularly fond of. Realizing that they shared many musical interests, McIntyre introduced Schneider to Hilarie Sidney. McIntyre already had a band called Von Hemmling in which McIntyre played bass and Sidney played drums. With Schneider, they discussed the idea of starting a band and perhaps a recording label. Schneider later met Chris Parfitt, who was also already in a band at the time that Schneider unsuccessfully auditioned for on bass. Schneider and Parfitt also became friends, however, and toyed with the idea of having a rock band similar to The Velvet Underground or Black Sabbath, with production qualities similar to that of The Beach Boys. Schneider then spent two weeks in Athens, Georgia recording music and spending time with his childhood friends Will Cullen Hart, Bill Doss and Jeff Mangum. He discussed the idea of starting a record label with them (which soon became The Elephant 6 Recording Company). It was also at this time that the name "The Apples" came about, inspired by the Pink Floyd song "Apples and Oranges". The earliest incarnation of the band began to form in 1992 upon Schneider's return to Denver, first between Schneider and Parfitt, both of whom played guitar. The two recruited McIntyre and Sidney during the autumn of that year, practicing material through the winter. Their first few live shows took place the following January, many of which were with the band Felt Pilotes. From February to April 1993, the band recorded their debut 7" EP, Tidal Wave, and released it in June as the first record ever to bear the Elephant 6 logo. CANNOTANSWER

Robert Schneider met Jim McIntyre

The Apples in Stereo, styled as The Apples in stereo, are an American rock band associated with Elephant Six Collective, a group of bands also including Neutral Milk Hotel, The Olivia Tremor Control, Elf Power, Of Montreal, and Circulatory System. The band is largely a product of lead vocalist/guitarist/producer Robert Schneider, who writes the majority of the band's music and lyrics. Currently, The Apples in Stereo also includes longstanding members John Hill (rhythm guitar) and Eric Allen (bass), as well as more recent members John Dufilho (drums), John Ferguson (keyboards), and Ben Phelan (keyboards/guitar/trumpet). The band's sound draws comparisons to the psychedelic rock of The Beatles and The Beach Boys during the 1960s, as well as to bands such as Electric Light Orchestra and Pavement, and also draws from lo-fi, garage rock, new wave, R&B, bubblegum pop, power pop, punk, electro-pop and experimental music. The band is also well known for their appearance in a The Powerpuff Girls music video performing the song "Signal in the Sky (Let's Go)". It aired immediately after the show's seventh episode of season 4, "Superfriends", which was based on the song's lyrics. The band has appeared widely in television and film, including performances on The Colbert Report, Late Night with Conan O'Brien and Last Call with Carson Daly, guest hosting on MTV, song placements in numerous television shows, commercials and motion pictures, the performance of the single "Energy" by the contestants on American Idol, and a song recorded for children's show Yo Gabba Gabba. Band history 1991–1993: The Apples In late 1991, Robert Schneider met Jim McIntyre on a commuter bus in Denver, Colorado. Schneider had recently moved to Colorado from Ruston, Louisiana, and often initiated conversations with McIntyre. When Schneider asked McIntyre what his music interests were, McIntyre named his favorite band: The Beach Boys — a band Schneider was particularly fond of. Realizing that they shared many musical interests, McIntyre introduced Schneider to Hilarie Sidney. McIntyre already had a band called Von Hemmling in which McIntyre played bass and Sidney played drums. With Schneider, they discussed the idea of starting a band and perhaps a recording label. Schneider later met Chris Parfitt, who at the time was also already in a band (which Schneider unsuccessfully auditioned for on bass). Schneider and Parfitt also became friends, however, and toyed with the idea of having a rock band similar to The Velvet Underground or Black Sabbath, with production qualities similar to that of The Beach Boys. Schneider then spent two weeks in Athens, Georgia recording music and spending time with his childhood friends Will Cullen Hart, Bill Doss and Jeff Mangum. He discussed the idea of starting a record label with them (which soon became The Elephant 6 Recording Company). It was also at this time that the name "The Apples" came about, inspired by the Pink Floyd song "Apples and Oranges". The earliest incarnation of the band began to form in 1992 upon Schneider's return to Denver, first between Schneider and Parfitt, both of whom played guitar. The two recruited McIntyre and Sidney during the autumn of that year, practicing material through the winter. Their first few live shows took place the following January, many of which were with the band Felt Pilotes. From February to April 1993, the band recorded their debut 7" EP, Tidal Wave, and released it in June as the first record ever to bear the Elephant 6 logo. 1994–1995: Hypnotic Suggestion and Fun Trick Noisemaker Several conflicts would lead Parfitt to leave the band in early 1994. John Hill, a former bandmate of McIntyre's, would join the band as a rhythm guitarist while Schneider began to grow more comfortable playing lead guitar. It was also at this time that Schneider began to take stronger creative control of the band, shifting its sound from its stronger rock qualities to a spacier pop sound. The band started work on a debut album, but it instead became Hypnotic Suggestion, a second EP. However, after SpinART Records offered to buy the band an 8-track in return for an album, new plans for an LP arose. In mid-1994, after Hypnotic Suggestion, McIntyre would be the second to leave the band, due to a number of personal distresses as well as stylistic changes that arose with Parfitt's departure. Having great difficulty finding a new permanent bassist, the band would rotate a number of frequent bass contributors, including Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel, Kurt Heasley of The Lilys, Kyle Jones, Joel Richardson, and Joel Evans. Jim McIntyre would also occasionally guest on bass. This continued to be the makeup of the band as they toured the country in late 1994, recording the first half of their new album in Glendora, California. In early 1995, the band finished the album, Fun Trick Noisemaker, at Kyle Jones's house (the birthplace of Schneider's Pet Sounds Studio). Now with a LP to support, the band began touring again. Eric Allen, whom the band had previously auditioned as a guitarist after the departure of Chris Parfitt, joined the band as a much welcomed permanent bassist. Late 1995, Schneider relocated Pet Sounds Studio to Jim McIntyre's house. McIntyre continued to be involved in the recording and engineering of the band's albums until the mid-2000s. A significantly different band from the original 1992 four-piece, the official name of the band gradually became "The Apples in Stereo", with the "in stereo" usually somewhat under-emphasized, whether in lower-case or in parentheses. Schneider described this in an interview: "It's very clearcut, actually: we're The Apples, the music's in stereo. It's not actually the band name – it's a step back from it, a band name once removed. We're The Apples, in stereo. Kind of like a TV show, 'in stereo!' That always seemed to be a really big deal, that it was in stereo." McIntyre later remarked, "It's cool the name changed cause the Apples and the Apples in Stereo were really two different entities." 1996–2005: Tone Soul Evolution to Velocity of Sound The band continued touring through 1996, playing in Japan for the first time. Several early recording sessions were held at Pet Sounds for the band's second album, Tone Soul Evolution, but the members were dissatisfied with the quality of the recordings. The majority of the album's songs were re-recorded at Studio .45 in Hartford, Connecticut before the album's release. In 1998, Chris McDuffie joined the band, playing various instruments including organs, synthesizers and assorted percussion. He would leave the band before Velocity of Sound was released in 2002. Several more albums were released by the band through the years, including the psychedelic "concept EP", Her Wallpaper Reverie, The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone and Velocity of Sound; both of the latter of which were progressively aimed at capturing the live sound of the band, which continued to tighten as they continued to perform hundreds of live shows (about 100 a year). In particular, the 2002 album Velocity of Sound rejects most of the psych-pop production sensibilities that would come to be associated with the band, instead featuring stripped-down production and sparse, rock instrumentation. The band members would also continue to pursue careers in side bands and solo projects, with Schneider producing several albums for Elephant 6 artists. Schneider and drummer Hilarie Sidney were married for a time, with a son Max born in 2000. They have since been divorced. The band went on a brief hiatus during 2004 as Schneider released the debut album from a new band called Ulysses and Sidney released the debut album from her new band The High Water Marks; both were released on Eenie Meenie Records. In 2005, The Apples in Stereo contributed "Liza Jane" to the Eenie Meenie compilation, Dimension Mix. It was also around this time that news began to circulate among various websites concerning the band's next studio album. 2006–2008: New Magnetic Wonder and evolving lineup In August 2006, longtime drummer Hilarie Sidney officially announced her departure from the band during the band's closing set at the Athens Popfest music festival in Athens, Georgia. Her replacement, John Dufilho, lead singer and principal songwriter of The Deathray Davies, was announced in October 2006. 2006 touring member Bill Doss of The Olivia Tremor Control also quietly joined the band "officially" as its new keyboardist. John Ferguson of Big Fresh and Ulysses joined the Apples in 2007, also playing keyboards, and wearing a Doctor Who-esque space suit on stage. In December 2006, Robert Schneider appeared on the popular television show The Colbert Report singing the song "Stephen Stephen" recorded by The Apples in Stereo to glorify the show's host Stephen Colbert, to kick off a guitar solo contest between Colbert and Chris Funk of The Decemberists. On February 6, 2007, The Apples in Stereo released their sixth studio LP, New Magnetic Wonder. Finishing a ten-year deal with spinART Records, New Magnetic Wonder was the premiere release on Simian Records, a newly formed record label founded by Elijah Wood. This was followed by a long-awaited b-sides and rarities compilation titled Electronic Projects for Musicians, released on April 1. In 2008, spinART Records went out of business. Rights for all major releases by The Apples in Stereo on the label were subsequently acquired by One Little Indian Records, and have since reverted to the band. In a recent interview, Schneider noted that the band's EPs have yet to have been re-released, but will likely be collected for another compilation. Such a compilation would probably include the re-releases of Look Away + 4, Let's Go! and a number of non-album songs released alongside New Magnetic Wonder. On August 4, 2008, the band appeared again on The Colbert Report. They performed their song Can You Feel It? to promote the release of the Japanese picture disc. In early 2008, their song "Same Old Drag" won in The 7th Annual Independent Music Awards for Best Pop/Rock Song. The same year Apples in Stereo were nominated for Independent Music Awards Pop/Rock Album of the Year. The band members also joined the 9th annual Independent Music Awards judging panel to assist independent musicians' careers. 2009–2011: #1 Hits Explosion and Travellers in Space and Time Yep Roc released #1 Hits Explosion, an Apples in Stereo best-of album, on September 1, 2009. In late 2008, PepsiCo released an advertisement with their song "Energy" off of their album New Magnetic Wonder. In early 2009, Robert appeared on ABC News's segment called "amplified" and gave some short performances of songs from New Magnetic Wonder and a song from his project "Robert Bobbert and the bubble machine" and he described the album as sounding like early 1970s R&B as it would sound played by aliens and emanating from an alien spaceship.He also confirmed that the band was recording their new album at Trout Recording in Brooklyn, New York. In interviews in Billboard magazine and other press outlets, In April 2009, the single "Energy" from New Magnetic Wonder was performed by the contestants on the television show American Idol. The result was the band's seventh album Travellers in Space and Time, released on April 20, 2010 on Simian Records. Described by Schneider as a "retro-futuristic" concept album intended as a time capsule for listeners of the future, Travellers has drawn comparisons to the style of Electric Light Orchestra. The record is the first Apples in Stereo album without Hilarie Sidney, making Schneider the last founding member remaining in the group, although John Hill joined before "in stereo" was added to the name. The band was invited by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival that he curated in March 2012 in Minehead, England. Schneider announced in May 2012 that The Apples in Stereo had begun work on a new album, described as being "a very, very different sort of album." In recent years, Schneider has explored a number of experimental music projects, such as the Teletron mind-controlled synthesizer and Non-Pythagorean scale of his own invention. 2012–present: Death of Bill Doss, hiatus and future The death of Bill Doss, the band's keyboardist as well as the co-founder of fellow Elephant 6 band The Olivia Tremor Control, was announced on July 31, 2012. The cause of death was an aneurysm. Schneider released a statement saying, "I am heartbroken by the loss of my life-long friend, collaborator and band-mate. My world will never be the same without the wonderful, funny, supremely creative Bill Doss." The band went into hiatus in the fall of 2012, after Doss' death and Schneider's acceptance into the PhD program in Mathematics at Emory University. In 2013, Phish started covering the Apples in Stereo song "Energy." In early 2017, Schneider hinted at a new album called The Bicycle Day. He stated on Facebook that "Apples are working on a concept record called The Bicycle Day but it is too deep of a task to finish while I'm in graduate school... it isn't a pop record though ... (Air-Sea Dolphin and my band Spaceflyte with John Ferguson are the new pop projects though)". On August 10, 2017, the Apples played their first show since 2012 as a headlining act at the Athens Popfest music festival in Athens, Georgia with Marshmallow Coast, Antlered Auntlord, and Waxahatchee as prior performers. In 2018, Schneider received a PhD in mathematics from Emory. Band members Current members Robert Schneider - guitar, French horn, lead vocals (1992–present) John Hill - guitar, xylophone (1994–present) Eric Allen - bass, harmonica (1995–present) John Dufilho - drums, harp (2006–present) John Ferguson - vocals, keyboards, panflute (2007–present) Former members Hilarie Sidney - drums, vocals (1992-2006) Jim McIntyre - bass (1992-1994) Chris Parfitt - guitar (1992-1994) Chris McDuffie - keyboards (1998-2002) Bill Doss - vocals, keyboards, ukulele (2006-2012; died 2012) Timeline Selected discography Fun Trick Noisemaker (1995) Science Faire (1996) Tone Soul Evolution (1997) Her Wallpaper Reverie (1999) The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone (2000) Velocity of Sound (2002) New Magnetic Wonder (2007) Electronic Projects for Musicians (2008) Travellers in Space and Time (2010) References External links The Apples in Stereo at Elephant6.com Tractor Beam Management Apples in Stereo entry at Trouser Press The Apples in Stereo at Live Music Archive Interview with the Cornell Daily Sun Step Through the Portal The Elephant 6 Recording Company artists Musical groups from Denver Lo-fi music groups Musical groups established in 1992 Independent Music Awards winners Indie pop groups from Colorado Indie rock musical groups from Colorado Psychedelic pop music groups American power pop groups SpinART Records artists Yep Roc Records artists

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What did the two do together?

What did Robert Schneider and Jim McIntyre do together?

The Apples in Stereo

In late 1991, Robert Schneider met Jim McIntyre on a commuter bus in Denver, Colorado. Schneider had recently moved to Colorado from Ruston, Louisiana, and often initiated conversations with McIntyre. When Schneider asked McIntyre what his music interests were, McIntyre named his favorite band: The Beach Boys -- a band Schneider was particularly fond of. Realizing that they shared many musical interests, McIntyre introduced Schneider to Hilarie Sidney. McIntyre already had a band called Von Hemmling in which McIntyre played bass and Sidney played drums. With Schneider, they discussed the idea of starting a band and perhaps a recording label. Schneider later met Chris Parfitt, who was also already in a band at the time that Schneider unsuccessfully auditioned for on bass. Schneider and Parfitt also became friends, however, and toyed with the idea of having a rock band similar to The Velvet Underground or Black Sabbath, with production qualities similar to that of The Beach Boys. Schneider then spent two weeks in Athens, Georgia recording music and spending time with his childhood friends Will Cullen Hart, Bill Doss and Jeff Mangum. He discussed the idea of starting a record label with them (which soon became The Elephant 6 Recording Company). It was also at this time that the name "The Apples" came about, inspired by the Pink Floyd song "Apples and Oranges". The earliest incarnation of the band began to form in 1992 upon Schneider's return to Denver, first between Schneider and Parfitt, both of whom played guitar. The two recruited McIntyre and Sidney during the autumn of that year, practicing material through the winter. Their first few live shows took place the following January, many of which were with the band Felt Pilotes. From February to April 1993, the band recorded their debut 7" EP, Tidal Wave, and released it in June as the first record ever to bear the Elephant 6 logo. CANNOTANSWER

they discussed the idea of starting a band

The Apples in Stereo, styled as The Apples in stereo, are an American rock band associated with Elephant Six Collective, a group of bands also including Neutral Milk Hotel, The Olivia Tremor Control, Elf Power, Of Montreal, and Circulatory System. The band is largely a product of lead vocalist/guitarist/producer Robert Schneider, who writes the majority of the band's music and lyrics. Currently, The Apples in Stereo also includes longstanding members John Hill (rhythm guitar) and Eric Allen (bass), as well as more recent members John Dufilho (drums), John Ferguson (keyboards), and Ben Phelan (keyboards/guitar/trumpet). The band's sound draws comparisons to the psychedelic rock of The Beatles and The Beach Boys during the 1960s, as well as to bands such as Electric Light Orchestra and Pavement, and also draws from lo-fi, garage rock, new wave, R&B, bubblegum pop, power pop, punk, electro-pop and experimental music. The band is also well known for their appearance in a The Powerpuff Girls music video performing the song "Signal in the Sky (Let's Go)". It aired immediately after the show's seventh episode of season 4, "Superfriends", which was based on the song's lyrics. The band has appeared widely in television and film, including performances on The Colbert Report, Late Night with Conan O'Brien and Last Call with Carson Daly, guest hosting on MTV, song placements in numerous television shows, commercials and motion pictures, the performance of the single "Energy" by the contestants on American Idol, and a song recorded for children's show Yo Gabba Gabba. Band history 1991–1993: The Apples In late 1991, Robert Schneider met Jim McIntyre on a commuter bus in Denver, Colorado. Schneider had recently moved to Colorado from Ruston, Louisiana, and often initiated conversations with McIntyre. When Schneider asked McIntyre what his music interests were, McIntyre named his favorite band: The Beach Boys — a band Schneider was particularly fond of. Realizing that they shared many musical interests, McIntyre introduced Schneider to Hilarie Sidney. McIntyre already had a band called Von Hemmling in which McIntyre played bass and Sidney played drums. With Schneider, they discussed the idea of starting a band and perhaps a recording label. Schneider later met Chris Parfitt, who at the time was also already in a band (which Schneider unsuccessfully auditioned for on bass). Schneider and Parfitt also became friends, however, and toyed with the idea of having a rock band similar to The Velvet Underground or Black Sabbath, with production qualities similar to that of The Beach Boys. Schneider then spent two weeks in Athens, Georgia recording music and spending time with his childhood friends Will Cullen Hart, Bill Doss and Jeff Mangum. He discussed the idea of starting a record label with them (which soon became The Elephant 6 Recording Company). It was also at this time that the name "The Apples" came about, inspired by the Pink Floyd song "Apples and Oranges". The earliest incarnation of the band began to form in 1992 upon Schneider's return to Denver, first between Schneider and Parfitt, both of whom played guitar. The two recruited McIntyre and Sidney during the autumn of that year, practicing material through the winter. Their first few live shows took place the following January, many of which were with the band Felt Pilotes. From February to April 1993, the band recorded their debut 7" EP, Tidal Wave, and released it in June as the first record ever to bear the Elephant 6 logo. 1994–1995: Hypnotic Suggestion and Fun Trick Noisemaker Several conflicts would lead Parfitt to leave the band in early 1994. John Hill, a former bandmate of McIntyre's, would join the band as a rhythm guitarist while Schneider began to grow more comfortable playing lead guitar. It was also at this time that Schneider began to take stronger creative control of the band, shifting its sound from its stronger rock qualities to a spacier pop sound. The band started work on a debut album, but it instead became Hypnotic Suggestion, a second EP. However, after SpinART Records offered to buy the band an 8-track in return for an album, new plans for an LP arose. In mid-1994, after Hypnotic Suggestion, McIntyre would be the second to leave the band, due to a number of personal distresses as well as stylistic changes that arose with Parfitt's departure. Having great difficulty finding a new permanent bassist, the band would rotate a number of frequent bass contributors, including Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel, Kurt Heasley of The Lilys, Kyle Jones, Joel Richardson, and Joel Evans. Jim McIntyre would also occasionally guest on bass. This continued to be the makeup of the band as they toured the country in late 1994, recording the first half of their new album in Glendora, California. In early 1995, the band finished the album, Fun Trick Noisemaker, at Kyle Jones's house (the birthplace of Schneider's Pet Sounds Studio). Now with a LP to support, the band began touring again. Eric Allen, whom the band had previously auditioned as a guitarist after the departure of Chris Parfitt, joined the band as a much welcomed permanent bassist. Late 1995, Schneider relocated Pet Sounds Studio to Jim McIntyre's house. McIntyre continued to be involved in the recording and engineering of the band's albums until the mid-2000s. A significantly different band from the original 1992 four-piece, the official name of the band gradually became "The Apples in Stereo", with the "in stereo" usually somewhat under-emphasized, whether in lower-case or in parentheses. Schneider described this in an interview: "It's very clearcut, actually: we're The Apples, the music's in stereo. It's not actually the band name – it's a step back from it, a band name once removed. We're The Apples, in stereo. Kind of like a TV show, 'in stereo!' That always seemed to be a really big deal, that it was in stereo." McIntyre later remarked, "It's cool the name changed cause the Apples and the Apples in Stereo were really two different entities." 1996–2005: Tone Soul Evolution to Velocity of Sound The band continued touring through 1996, playing in Japan for the first time. Several early recording sessions were held at Pet Sounds for the band's second album, Tone Soul Evolution, but the members were dissatisfied with the quality of the recordings. The majority of the album's songs were re-recorded at Studio .45 in Hartford, Connecticut before the album's release. In 1998, Chris McDuffie joined the band, playing various instruments including organs, synthesizers and assorted percussion. He would leave the band before Velocity of Sound was released in 2002. Several more albums were released by the band through the years, including the psychedelic "concept EP", Her Wallpaper Reverie, The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone and Velocity of Sound; both of the latter of which were progressively aimed at capturing the live sound of the band, which continued to tighten as they continued to perform hundreds of live shows (about 100 a year). In particular, the 2002 album Velocity of Sound rejects most of the psych-pop production sensibilities that would come to be associated with the band, instead featuring stripped-down production and sparse, rock instrumentation. The band members would also continue to pursue careers in side bands and solo projects, with Schneider producing several albums for Elephant 6 artists. Schneider and drummer Hilarie Sidney were married for a time, with a son Max born in 2000. They have since been divorced. The band went on a brief hiatus during 2004 as Schneider released the debut album from a new band called Ulysses and Sidney released the debut album from her new band The High Water Marks; both were released on Eenie Meenie Records. In 2005, The Apples in Stereo contributed "Liza Jane" to the Eenie Meenie compilation, Dimension Mix. It was also around this time that news began to circulate among various websites concerning the band's next studio album. 2006–2008: New Magnetic Wonder and evolving lineup In August 2006, longtime drummer Hilarie Sidney officially announced her departure from the band during the band's closing set at the Athens Popfest music festival in Athens, Georgia. Her replacement, John Dufilho, lead singer and principal songwriter of The Deathray Davies, was announced in October 2006. 2006 touring member Bill Doss of The Olivia Tremor Control also quietly joined the band "officially" as its new keyboardist. John Ferguson of Big Fresh and Ulysses joined the Apples in 2007, also playing keyboards, and wearing a Doctor Who-esque space suit on stage. In December 2006, Robert Schneider appeared on the popular television show The Colbert Report singing the song "Stephen Stephen" recorded by The Apples in Stereo to glorify the show's host Stephen Colbert, to kick off a guitar solo contest between Colbert and Chris Funk of The Decemberists. On February 6, 2007, The Apples in Stereo released their sixth studio LP, New Magnetic Wonder. Finishing a ten-year deal with spinART Records, New Magnetic Wonder was the premiere release on Simian Records, a newly formed record label founded by Elijah Wood. This was followed by a long-awaited b-sides and rarities compilation titled Electronic Projects for Musicians, released on April 1. In 2008, spinART Records went out of business. Rights for all major releases by The Apples in Stereo on the label were subsequently acquired by One Little Indian Records, and have since reverted to the band. In a recent interview, Schneider noted that the band's EPs have yet to have been re-released, but will likely be collected for another compilation. Such a compilation would probably include the re-releases of Look Away + 4, Let's Go! and a number of non-album songs released alongside New Magnetic Wonder. On August 4, 2008, the band appeared again on The Colbert Report. They performed their song Can You Feel It? to promote the release of the Japanese picture disc. In early 2008, their song "Same Old Drag" won in The 7th Annual Independent Music Awards for Best Pop/Rock Song. The same year Apples in Stereo were nominated for Independent Music Awards Pop/Rock Album of the Year. The band members also joined the 9th annual Independent Music Awards judging panel to assist independent musicians' careers. 2009–2011: #1 Hits Explosion and Travellers in Space and Time Yep Roc released #1 Hits Explosion, an Apples in Stereo best-of album, on September 1, 2009. In late 2008, PepsiCo released an advertisement with their song "Energy" off of their album New Magnetic Wonder. In early 2009, Robert appeared on ABC News's segment called "amplified" and gave some short performances of songs from New Magnetic Wonder and a song from his project "Robert Bobbert and the bubble machine" and he described the album as sounding like early 1970s R&B as it would sound played by aliens and emanating from an alien spaceship.He also confirmed that the band was recording their new album at Trout Recording in Brooklyn, New York. In interviews in Billboard magazine and other press outlets, In April 2009, the single "Energy" from New Magnetic Wonder was performed by the contestants on the television show American Idol. The result was the band's seventh album Travellers in Space and Time, released on April 20, 2010 on Simian Records. Described by Schneider as a "retro-futuristic" concept album intended as a time capsule for listeners of the future, Travellers has drawn comparisons to the style of Electric Light Orchestra. The record is the first Apples in Stereo album without Hilarie Sidney, making Schneider the last founding member remaining in the group, although John Hill joined before "in stereo" was added to the name. The band was invited by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival that he curated in March 2012 in Minehead, England. Schneider announced in May 2012 that The Apples in Stereo had begun work on a new album, described as being "a very, very different sort of album." In recent years, Schneider has explored a number of experimental music projects, such as the Teletron mind-controlled synthesizer and Non-Pythagorean scale of his own invention. 2012–present: Death of Bill Doss, hiatus and future The death of Bill Doss, the band's keyboardist as well as the co-founder of fellow Elephant 6 band The Olivia Tremor Control, was announced on July 31, 2012. The cause of death was an aneurysm. Schneider released a statement saying, "I am heartbroken by the loss of my life-long friend, collaborator and band-mate. My world will never be the same without the wonderful, funny, supremely creative Bill Doss." The band went into hiatus in the fall of 2012, after Doss' death and Schneider's acceptance into the PhD program in Mathematics at Emory University. In 2013, Phish started covering the Apples in Stereo song "Energy." In early 2017, Schneider hinted at a new album called The Bicycle Day. He stated on Facebook that "Apples are working on a concept record called The Bicycle Day but it is too deep of a task to finish while I'm in graduate school... it isn't a pop record though ... (Air-Sea Dolphin and my band Spaceflyte with John Ferguson are the new pop projects though)". On August 10, 2017, the Apples played their first show since 2012 as a headlining act at the Athens Popfest music festival in Athens, Georgia with Marshmallow Coast, Antlered Auntlord, and Waxahatchee as prior performers. In 2018, Schneider received a PhD in mathematics from Emory. Band members Current members Robert Schneider - guitar, French horn, lead vocals (1992–present) John Hill - guitar, xylophone (1994–present) Eric Allen - bass, harmonica (1995–present) John Dufilho - drums, harp (2006–present) John Ferguson - vocals, keyboards, panflute (2007–present) Former members Hilarie Sidney - drums, vocals (1992-2006) Jim McIntyre - bass (1992-1994) Chris Parfitt - guitar (1992-1994) Chris McDuffie - keyboards (1998-2002) Bill Doss - vocals, keyboards, ukulele (2006-2012; died 2012) Timeline Selected discography Fun Trick Noisemaker (1995) Science Faire (1996) Tone Soul Evolution (1997) Her Wallpaper Reverie (1999) The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone (2000) Velocity of Sound (2002) New Magnetic Wonder (2007) Electronic Projects for Musicians (2008) Travellers in Space and Time (2010) References External links The Apples in Stereo at Elephant6.com Tractor Beam Management Apples in Stereo entry at Trouser Press The Apples in Stereo at Live Music Archive Interview with the Cornell Daily Sun Step Through the Portal The Elephant 6 Recording Company artists Musical groups from Denver Lo-fi music groups Musical groups established in 1992 Independent Music Awards winners Indie pop groups from Colorado Indie rock musical groups from Colorado Psychedelic pop music groups American power pop groups SpinART Records artists Yep Roc Records artists

C_bb5692211f37444eb499f77b75cc7155_1

What band did they start?

What band did Robert Schneider and Jim McIntyre start?

The Apples in Stereo

In late 1991, Robert Schneider met Jim McIntyre on a commuter bus in Denver, Colorado. Schneider had recently moved to Colorado from Ruston, Louisiana, and often initiated conversations with McIntyre. When Schneider asked McIntyre what his music interests were, McIntyre named his favorite band: The Beach Boys -- a band Schneider was particularly fond of. Realizing that they shared many musical interests, McIntyre introduced Schneider to Hilarie Sidney. McIntyre already had a band called Von Hemmling in which McIntyre played bass and Sidney played drums. With Schneider, they discussed the idea of starting a band and perhaps a recording label. Schneider later met Chris Parfitt, who was also already in a band at the time that Schneider unsuccessfully auditioned for on bass. Schneider and Parfitt also became friends, however, and toyed with the idea of having a rock band similar to The Velvet Underground or Black Sabbath, with production qualities similar to that of The Beach Boys. Schneider then spent two weeks in Athens, Georgia recording music and spending time with his childhood friends Will Cullen Hart, Bill Doss and Jeff Mangum. He discussed the idea of starting a record label with them (which soon became The Elephant 6 Recording Company). It was also at this time that the name "The Apples" came about, inspired by the Pink Floyd song "Apples and Oranges". The earliest incarnation of the band began to form in 1992 upon Schneider's return to Denver, first between Schneider and Parfitt, both of whom played guitar. The two recruited McIntyre and Sidney during the autumn of that year, practicing material through the winter. Their first few live shows took place the following January, many of which were with the band Felt Pilotes. From February to April 1993, the band recorded their debut 7" EP, Tidal Wave, and released it in June as the first record ever to bear the Elephant 6 logo. CANNOTANSWER

The Apples

The Apples in Stereo, styled as The Apples in stereo, are an American rock band associated with Elephant Six Collective, a group of bands also including Neutral Milk Hotel, The Olivia Tremor Control, Elf Power, Of Montreal, and Circulatory System. The band is largely a product of lead vocalist/guitarist/producer Robert Schneider, who writes the majority of the band's music and lyrics. Currently, The Apples in Stereo also includes longstanding members John Hill (rhythm guitar) and Eric Allen (bass), as well as more recent members John Dufilho (drums), John Ferguson (keyboards), and Ben Phelan (keyboards/guitar/trumpet). The band's sound draws comparisons to the psychedelic rock of The Beatles and The Beach Boys during the 1960s, as well as to bands such as Electric Light Orchestra and Pavement, and also draws from lo-fi, garage rock, new wave, R&B, bubblegum pop, power pop, punk, electro-pop and experimental music. The band is also well known for their appearance in a The Powerpuff Girls music video performing the song "Signal in the Sky (Let's Go)". It aired immediately after the show's seventh episode of season 4, "Superfriends", which was based on the song's lyrics. The band has appeared widely in television and film, including performances on The Colbert Report, Late Night with Conan O'Brien and Last Call with Carson Daly, guest hosting on MTV, song placements in numerous television shows, commercials and motion pictures, the performance of the single "Energy" by the contestants on American Idol, and a song recorded for children's show Yo Gabba Gabba. Band history 1991–1993: The Apples In late 1991, Robert Schneider met Jim McIntyre on a commuter bus in Denver, Colorado. Schneider had recently moved to Colorado from Ruston, Louisiana, and often initiated conversations with McIntyre. When Schneider asked McIntyre what his music interests were, McIntyre named his favorite band: The Beach Boys — a band Schneider was particularly fond of. Realizing that they shared many musical interests, McIntyre introduced Schneider to Hilarie Sidney. McIntyre already had a band called Von Hemmling in which McIntyre played bass and Sidney played drums. With Schneider, they discussed the idea of starting a band and perhaps a recording label. Schneider later met Chris Parfitt, who at the time was also already in a band (which Schneider unsuccessfully auditioned for on bass). Schneider and Parfitt also became friends, however, and toyed with the idea of having a rock band similar to The Velvet Underground or Black Sabbath, with production qualities similar to that of The Beach Boys. Schneider then spent two weeks in Athens, Georgia recording music and spending time with his childhood friends Will Cullen Hart, Bill Doss and Jeff Mangum. He discussed the idea of starting a record label with them (which soon became The Elephant 6 Recording Company). It was also at this time that the name "The Apples" came about, inspired by the Pink Floyd song "Apples and Oranges". The earliest incarnation of the band began to form in 1992 upon Schneider's return to Denver, first between Schneider and Parfitt, both of whom played guitar. The two recruited McIntyre and Sidney during the autumn of that year, practicing material through the winter. Their first few live shows took place the following January, many of which were with the band Felt Pilotes. From February to April 1993, the band recorded their debut 7" EP, Tidal Wave, and released it in June as the first record ever to bear the Elephant 6 logo. 1994–1995: Hypnotic Suggestion and Fun Trick Noisemaker Several conflicts would lead Parfitt to leave the band in early 1994. John Hill, a former bandmate of McIntyre's, would join the band as a rhythm guitarist while Schneider began to grow more comfortable playing lead guitar. It was also at this time that Schneider began to take stronger creative control of the band, shifting its sound from its stronger rock qualities to a spacier pop sound. The band started work on a debut album, but it instead became Hypnotic Suggestion, a second EP. However, after SpinART Records offered to buy the band an 8-track in return for an album, new plans for an LP arose. In mid-1994, after Hypnotic Suggestion, McIntyre would be the second to leave the band, due to a number of personal distresses as well as stylistic changes that arose with Parfitt's departure. Having great difficulty finding a new permanent bassist, the band would rotate a number of frequent bass contributors, including Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel, Kurt Heasley of The Lilys, Kyle Jones, Joel Richardson, and Joel Evans. Jim McIntyre would also occasionally guest on bass. This continued to be the makeup of the band as they toured the country in late 1994, recording the first half of their new album in Glendora, California. In early 1995, the band finished the album, Fun Trick Noisemaker, at Kyle Jones's house (the birthplace of Schneider's Pet Sounds Studio). Now with a LP to support, the band began touring again. Eric Allen, whom the band had previously auditioned as a guitarist after the departure of Chris Parfitt, joined the band as a much welcomed permanent bassist. Late 1995, Schneider relocated Pet Sounds Studio to Jim McIntyre's house. McIntyre continued to be involved in the recording and engineering of the band's albums until the mid-2000s. A significantly different band from the original 1992 four-piece, the official name of the band gradually became "The Apples in Stereo", with the "in stereo" usually somewhat under-emphasized, whether in lower-case or in parentheses. Schneider described this in an interview: "It's very clearcut, actually: we're The Apples, the music's in stereo. It's not actually the band name – it's a step back from it, a band name once removed. We're The Apples, in stereo. Kind of like a TV show, 'in stereo!' That always seemed to be a really big deal, that it was in stereo." McIntyre later remarked, "It's cool the name changed cause the Apples and the Apples in Stereo were really two different entities." 1996–2005: Tone Soul Evolution to Velocity of Sound The band continued touring through 1996, playing in Japan for the first time. Several early recording sessions were held at Pet Sounds for the band's second album, Tone Soul Evolution, but the members were dissatisfied with the quality of the recordings. The majority of the album's songs were re-recorded at Studio .45 in Hartford, Connecticut before the album's release. In 1998, Chris McDuffie joined the band, playing various instruments including organs, synthesizers and assorted percussion. He would leave the band before Velocity of Sound was released in 2002. Several more albums were released by the band through the years, including the psychedelic "concept EP", Her Wallpaper Reverie, The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone and Velocity of Sound; both of the latter of which were progressively aimed at capturing the live sound of the band, which continued to tighten as they continued to perform hundreds of live shows (about 100 a year). In particular, the 2002 album Velocity of Sound rejects most of the psych-pop production sensibilities that would come to be associated with the band, instead featuring stripped-down production and sparse, rock instrumentation. The band members would also continue to pursue careers in side bands and solo projects, with Schneider producing several albums for Elephant 6 artists. Schneider and drummer Hilarie Sidney were married for a time, with a son Max born in 2000. They have since been divorced. The band went on a brief hiatus during 2004 as Schneider released the debut album from a new band called Ulysses and Sidney released the debut album from her new band The High Water Marks; both were released on Eenie Meenie Records. In 2005, The Apples in Stereo contributed "Liza Jane" to the Eenie Meenie compilation, Dimension Mix. It was also around this time that news began to circulate among various websites concerning the band's next studio album. 2006–2008: New Magnetic Wonder and evolving lineup In August 2006, longtime drummer Hilarie Sidney officially announced her departure from the band during the band's closing set at the Athens Popfest music festival in Athens, Georgia. Her replacement, John Dufilho, lead singer and principal songwriter of The Deathray Davies, was announced in October 2006. 2006 touring member Bill Doss of The Olivia Tremor Control also quietly joined the band "officially" as its new keyboardist. John Ferguson of Big Fresh and Ulysses joined the Apples in 2007, also playing keyboards, and wearing a Doctor Who-esque space suit on stage. In December 2006, Robert Schneider appeared on the popular television show The Colbert Report singing the song "Stephen Stephen" recorded by The Apples in Stereo to glorify the show's host Stephen Colbert, to kick off a guitar solo contest between Colbert and Chris Funk of The Decemberists. On February 6, 2007, The Apples in Stereo released their sixth studio LP, New Magnetic Wonder. Finishing a ten-year deal with spinART Records, New Magnetic Wonder was the premiere release on Simian Records, a newly formed record label founded by Elijah Wood. This was followed by a long-awaited b-sides and rarities compilation titled Electronic Projects for Musicians, released on April 1. In 2008, spinART Records went out of business. Rights for all major releases by The Apples in Stereo on the label were subsequently acquired by One Little Indian Records, and have since reverted to the band. In a recent interview, Schneider noted that the band's EPs have yet to have been re-released, but will likely be collected for another compilation. Such a compilation would probably include the re-releases of Look Away + 4, Let's Go! and a number of non-album songs released alongside New Magnetic Wonder. On August 4, 2008, the band appeared again on The Colbert Report. They performed their song Can You Feel It? to promote the release of the Japanese picture disc. In early 2008, their song "Same Old Drag" won in The 7th Annual Independent Music Awards for Best Pop/Rock Song. The same year Apples in Stereo were nominated for Independent Music Awards Pop/Rock Album of the Year. The band members also joined the 9th annual Independent Music Awards judging panel to assist independent musicians' careers. 2009–2011: #1 Hits Explosion and Travellers in Space and Time Yep Roc released #1 Hits Explosion, an Apples in Stereo best-of album, on September 1, 2009. In late 2008, PepsiCo released an advertisement with their song "Energy" off of their album New Magnetic Wonder. In early 2009, Robert appeared on ABC News's segment called "amplified" and gave some short performances of songs from New Magnetic Wonder and a song from his project "Robert Bobbert and the bubble machine" and he described the album as sounding like early 1970s R&B as it would sound played by aliens and emanating from an alien spaceship.He also confirmed that the band was recording their new album at Trout Recording in Brooklyn, New York. In interviews in Billboard magazine and other press outlets, In April 2009, the single "Energy" from New Magnetic Wonder was performed by the contestants on the television show American Idol. The result was the band's seventh album Travellers in Space and Time, released on April 20, 2010 on Simian Records. Described by Schneider as a "retro-futuristic" concept album intended as a time capsule for listeners of the future, Travellers has drawn comparisons to the style of Electric Light Orchestra. The record is the first Apples in Stereo album without Hilarie Sidney, making Schneider the last founding member remaining in the group, although John Hill joined before "in stereo" was added to the name. The band was invited by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival that he curated in March 2012 in Minehead, England. Schneider announced in May 2012 that The Apples in Stereo had begun work on a new album, described as being "a very, very different sort of album." In recent years, Schneider has explored a number of experimental music projects, such as the Teletron mind-controlled synthesizer and Non-Pythagorean scale of his own invention. 2012–present: Death of Bill Doss, hiatus and future The death of Bill Doss, the band's keyboardist as well as the co-founder of fellow Elephant 6 band The Olivia Tremor Control, was announced on July 31, 2012. The cause of death was an aneurysm. Schneider released a statement saying, "I am heartbroken by the loss of my life-long friend, collaborator and band-mate. My world will never be the same without the wonderful, funny, supremely creative Bill Doss." The band went into hiatus in the fall of 2012, after Doss' death and Schneider's acceptance into the PhD program in Mathematics at Emory University. In 2013, Phish started covering the Apples in Stereo song "Energy." In early 2017, Schneider hinted at a new album called The Bicycle Day. He stated on Facebook that "Apples are working on a concept record called The Bicycle Day but it is too deep of a task to finish while I'm in graduate school... it isn't a pop record though ... (Air-Sea Dolphin and my band Spaceflyte with John Ferguson are the new pop projects though)". On August 10, 2017, the Apples played their first show since 2012 as a headlining act at the Athens Popfest music festival in Athens, Georgia with Marshmallow Coast, Antlered Auntlord, and Waxahatchee as prior performers. In 2018, Schneider received a PhD in mathematics from Emory. Band members Current members Robert Schneider - guitar, French horn, lead vocals (1992–present) John Hill - guitar, xylophone (1994–present) Eric Allen - bass, harmonica (1995–present) John Dufilho - drums, harp (2006–present) John Ferguson - vocals, keyboards, panflute (2007–present) Former members Hilarie Sidney - drums, vocals (1992-2006) Jim McIntyre - bass (1992-1994) Chris Parfitt - guitar (1992-1994) Chris McDuffie - keyboards (1998-2002) Bill Doss - vocals, keyboards, ukulele (2006-2012; died 2012) Timeline Selected discography Fun Trick Noisemaker (1995) Science Faire (1996) Tone Soul Evolution (1997) Her Wallpaper Reverie (1999) The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone (2000) Velocity of Sound (2002) New Magnetic Wonder (2007) Electronic Projects for Musicians (2008) Travellers in Space and Time (2010) References External links The Apples in Stereo at Elephant6.com Tractor Beam Management Apples in Stereo entry at Trouser Press The Apples in Stereo at Live Music Archive Interview with the Cornell Daily Sun Step Through the Portal The Elephant 6 Recording Company artists Musical groups from Denver Lo-fi music groups Musical groups established in 1992 Independent Music Awards winners Indie pop groups from Colorado Indie rock musical groups from Colorado Psychedelic pop music groups American power pop groups SpinART Records artists Yep Roc Records artists

C_bb5692211f37444eb499f77b75cc7155_1

Was this band successful?

Were The Apples successful?

The Apples in Stereo

In late 1991, Robert Schneider met Jim McIntyre on a commuter bus in Denver, Colorado. Schneider had recently moved to Colorado from Ruston, Louisiana, and often initiated conversations with McIntyre. When Schneider asked McIntyre what his music interests were, McIntyre named his favorite band: The Beach Boys -- a band Schneider was particularly fond of. Realizing that they shared many musical interests, McIntyre introduced Schneider to Hilarie Sidney. McIntyre already had a band called Von Hemmling in which McIntyre played bass and Sidney played drums. With Schneider, they discussed the idea of starting a band and perhaps a recording label. Schneider later met Chris Parfitt, who was also already in a band at the time that Schneider unsuccessfully auditioned for on bass. Schneider and Parfitt also became friends, however, and toyed with the idea of having a rock band similar to The Velvet Underground or Black Sabbath, with production qualities similar to that of The Beach Boys. Schneider then spent two weeks in Athens, Georgia recording music and spending time with his childhood friends Will Cullen Hart, Bill Doss and Jeff Mangum. He discussed the idea of starting a record label with them (which soon became The Elephant 6 Recording Company). It was also at this time that the name "The Apples" came about, inspired by the Pink Floyd song "Apples and Oranges". The earliest incarnation of the band began to form in 1992 upon Schneider's return to Denver, first between Schneider and Parfitt, both of whom played guitar. The two recruited McIntyre and Sidney during the autumn of that year, practicing material through the winter. Their first few live shows took place the following January, many of which were with the band Felt Pilotes. From February to April 1993, the band recorded their debut 7" EP, Tidal Wave, and released it in June as the first record ever to bear the Elephant 6 logo. CANNOTANSWER

From February to April 1993, the band recorded their debut 7" EP, Tidal Wave, and released it in June as the first record ever to bear the Elephant 6 logo.

The Apples in Stereo, styled as The Apples in stereo, are an American rock band associated with Elephant Six Collective, a group of bands also including Neutral Milk Hotel, The Olivia Tremor Control, Elf Power, Of Montreal, and Circulatory System. The band is largely a product of lead vocalist/guitarist/producer Robert Schneider, who writes the majority of the band's music and lyrics. Currently, The Apples in Stereo also includes longstanding members John Hill (rhythm guitar) and Eric Allen (bass), as well as more recent members John Dufilho (drums), John Ferguson (keyboards), and Ben Phelan (keyboards/guitar/trumpet). The band's sound draws comparisons to the psychedelic rock of The Beatles and The Beach Boys during the 1960s, as well as to bands such as Electric Light Orchestra and Pavement, and also draws from lo-fi, garage rock, new wave, R&B, bubblegum pop, power pop, punk, electro-pop and experimental music. The band is also well known for their appearance in a The Powerpuff Girls music video performing the song "Signal in the Sky (Let's Go)". It aired immediately after the show's seventh episode of season 4, "Superfriends", which was based on the song's lyrics. The band has appeared widely in television and film, including performances on The Colbert Report, Late Night with Conan O'Brien and Last Call with Carson Daly, guest hosting on MTV, song placements in numerous television shows, commercials and motion pictures, the performance of the single "Energy" by the contestants on American Idol, and a song recorded for children's show Yo Gabba Gabba. Band history 1991–1993: The Apples In late 1991, Robert Schneider met Jim McIntyre on a commuter bus in Denver, Colorado. Schneider had recently moved to Colorado from Ruston, Louisiana, and often initiated conversations with McIntyre. When Schneider asked McIntyre what his music interests were, McIntyre named his favorite band: The Beach Boys — a band Schneider was particularly fond of. Realizing that they shared many musical interests, McIntyre introduced Schneider to Hilarie Sidney. McIntyre already had a band called Von Hemmling in which McIntyre played bass and Sidney played drums. With Schneider, they discussed the idea of starting a band and perhaps a recording label. Schneider later met Chris Parfitt, who at the time was also already in a band (which Schneider unsuccessfully auditioned for on bass). Schneider and Parfitt also became friends, however, and toyed with the idea of having a rock band similar to The Velvet Underground or Black Sabbath, with production qualities similar to that of The Beach Boys. Schneider then spent two weeks in Athens, Georgia recording music and spending time with his childhood friends Will Cullen Hart, Bill Doss and Jeff Mangum. He discussed the idea of starting a record label with them (which soon became The Elephant 6 Recording Company). It was also at this time that the name "The Apples" came about, inspired by the Pink Floyd song "Apples and Oranges". The earliest incarnation of the band began to form in 1992 upon Schneider's return to Denver, first between Schneider and Parfitt, both of whom played guitar. The two recruited McIntyre and Sidney during the autumn of that year, practicing material through the winter. Their first few live shows took place the following January, many of which were with the band Felt Pilotes. From February to April 1993, the band recorded their debut 7" EP, Tidal Wave, and released it in June as the first record ever to bear the Elephant 6 logo. 1994–1995: Hypnotic Suggestion and Fun Trick Noisemaker Several conflicts would lead Parfitt to leave the band in early 1994. John Hill, a former bandmate of McIntyre's, would join the band as a rhythm guitarist while Schneider began to grow more comfortable playing lead guitar. It was also at this time that Schneider began to take stronger creative control of the band, shifting its sound from its stronger rock qualities to a spacier pop sound. The band started work on a debut album, but it instead became Hypnotic Suggestion, a second EP. However, after SpinART Records offered to buy the band an 8-track in return for an album, new plans for an LP arose. In mid-1994, after Hypnotic Suggestion, McIntyre would be the second to leave the band, due to a number of personal distresses as well as stylistic changes that arose with Parfitt's departure. Having great difficulty finding a new permanent bassist, the band would rotate a number of frequent bass contributors, including Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel, Kurt Heasley of The Lilys, Kyle Jones, Joel Richardson, and Joel Evans. Jim McIntyre would also occasionally guest on bass. This continued to be the makeup of the band as they toured the country in late 1994, recording the first half of their new album in Glendora, California. In early 1995, the band finished the album, Fun Trick Noisemaker, at Kyle Jones's house (the birthplace of Schneider's Pet Sounds Studio). Now with a LP to support, the band began touring again. Eric Allen, whom the band had previously auditioned as a guitarist after the departure of Chris Parfitt, joined the band as a much welcomed permanent bassist. Late 1995, Schneider relocated Pet Sounds Studio to Jim McIntyre's house. McIntyre continued to be involved in the recording and engineering of the band's albums until the mid-2000s. A significantly different band from the original 1992 four-piece, the official name of the band gradually became "The Apples in Stereo", with the "in stereo" usually somewhat under-emphasized, whether in lower-case or in parentheses. Schneider described this in an interview: "It's very clearcut, actually: we're The Apples, the music's in stereo. It's not actually the band name – it's a step back from it, a band name once removed. We're The Apples, in stereo. Kind of like a TV show, 'in stereo!' That always seemed to be a really big deal, that it was in stereo." McIntyre later remarked, "It's cool the name changed cause the Apples and the Apples in Stereo were really two different entities." 1996–2005: Tone Soul Evolution to Velocity of Sound The band continued touring through 1996, playing in Japan for the first time. Several early recording sessions were held at Pet Sounds for the band's second album, Tone Soul Evolution, but the members were dissatisfied with the quality of the recordings. The majority of the album's songs were re-recorded at Studio .45 in Hartford, Connecticut before the album's release. In 1998, Chris McDuffie joined the band, playing various instruments including organs, synthesizers and assorted percussion. He would leave the band before Velocity of Sound was released in 2002. Several more albums were released by the band through the years, including the psychedelic "concept EP", Her Wallpaper Reverie, The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone and Velocity of Sound; both of the latter of which were progressively aimed at capturing the live sound of the band, which continued to tighten as they continued to perform hundreds of live shows (about 100 a year). In particular, the 2002 album Velocity of Sound rejects most of the psych-pop production sensibilities that would come to be associated with the band, instead featuring stripped-down production and sparse, rock instrumentation. The band members would also continue to pursue careers in side bands and solo projects, with Schneider producing several albums for Elephant 6 artists. Schneider and drummer Hilarie Sidney were married for a time, with a son Max born in 2000. They have since been divorced. The band went on a brief hiatus during 2004 as Schneider released the debut album from a new band called Ulysses and Sidney released the debut album from her new band The High Water Marks; both were released on Eenie Meenie Records. In 2005, The Apples in Stereo contributed "Liza Jane" to the Eenie Meenie compilation, Dimension Mix. It was also around this time that news began to circulate among various websites concerning the band's next studio album. 2006–2008: New Magnetic Wonder and evolving lineup In August 2006, longtime drummer Hilarie Sidney officially announced her departure from the band during the band's closing set at the Athens Popfest music festival in Athens, Georgia. Her replacement, John Dufilho, lead singer and principal songwriter of The Deathray Davies, was announced in October 2006. 2006 touring member Bill Doss of The Olivia Tremor Control also quietly joined the band "officially" as its new keyboardist. John Ferguson of Big Fresh and Ulysses joined the Apples in 2007, also playing keyboards, and wearing a Doctor Who-esque space suit on stage. In December 2006, Robert Schneider appeared on the popular television show The Colbert Report singing the song "Stephen Stephen" recorded by The Apples in Stereo to glorify the show's host Stephen Colbert, to kick off a guitar solo contest between Colbert and Chris Funk of The Decemberists. On February 6, 2007, The Apples in Stereo released their sixth studio LP, New Magnetic Wonder. Finishing a ten-year deal with spinART Records, New Magnetic Wonder was the premiere release on Simian Records, a newly formed record label founded by Elijah Wood. This was followed by a long-awaited b-sides and rarities compilation titled Electronic Projects for Musicians, released on April 1. In 2008, spinART Records went out of business. Rights for all major releases by The Apples in Stereo on the label were subsequently acquired by One Little Indian Records, and have since reverted to the band. In a recent interview, Schneider noted that the band's EPs have yet to have been re-released, but will likely be collected for another compilation. Such a compilation would probably include the re-releases of Look Away + 4, Let's Go! and a number of non-album songs released alongside New Magnetic Wonder. On August 4, 2008, the band appeared again on The Colbert Report. They performed their song Can You Feel It? to promote the release of the Japanese picture disc. In early 2008, their song "Same Old Drag" won in The 7th Annual Independent Music Awards for Best Pop/Rock Song. The same year Apples in Stereo were nominated for Independent Music Awards Pop/Rock Album of the Year. The band members also joined the 9th annual Independent Music Awards judging panel to assist independent musicians' careers. 2009–2011: #1 Hits Explosion and Travellers in Space and Time Yep Roc released #1 Hits Explosion, an Apples in Stereo best-of album, on September 1, 2009. In late 2008, PepsiCo released an advertisement with their song "Energy" off of their album New Magnetic Wonder. In early 2009, Robert appeared on ABC News's segment called "amplified" and gave some short performances of songs from New Magnetic Wonder and a song from his project "Robert Bobbert and the bubble machine" and he described the album as sounding like early 1970s R&B as it would sound played by aliens and emanating from an alien spaceship.He also confirmed that the band was recording their new album at Trout Recording in Brooklyn, New York. In interviews in Billboard magazine and other press outlets, In April 2009, the single "Energy" from New Magnetic Wonder was performed by the contestants on the television show American Idol. The result was the band's seventh album Travellers in Space and Time, released on April 20, 2010 on Simian Records. Described by Schneider as a "retro-futuristic" concept album intended as a time capsule for listeners of the future, Travellers has drawn comparisons to the style of Electric Light Orchestra. The record is the first Apples in Stereo album without Hilarie Sidney, making Schneider the last founding member remaining in the group, although John Hill joined before "in stereo" was added to the name. The band was invited by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival that he curated in March 2012 in Minehead, England. Schneider announced in May 2012 that The Apples in Stereo had begun work on a new album, described as being "a very, very different sort of album." In recent years, Schneider has explored a number of experimental music projects, such as the Teletron mind-controlled synthesizer and Non-Pythagorean scale of his own invention. 2012–present: Death of Bill Doss, hiatus and future The death of Bill Doss, the band's keyboardist as well as the co-founder of fellow Elephant 6 band The Olivia Tremor Control, was announced on July 31, 2012. The cause of death was an aneurysm. Schneider released a statement saying, "I am heartbroken by the loss of my life-long friend, collaborator and band-mate. My world will never be the same without the wonderful, funny, supremely creative Bill Doss." The band went into hiatus in the fall of 2012, after Doss' death and Schneider's acceptance into the PhD program in Mathematics at Emory University. In 2013, Phish started covering the Apples in Stereo song "Energy." In early 2017, Schneider hinted at a new album called The Bicycle Day. He stated on Facebook that "Apples are working on a concept record called The Bicycle Day but it is too deep of a task to finish while I'm in graduate school... it isn't a pop record though ... (Air-Sea Dolphin and my band Spaceflyte with John Ferguson are the new pop projects though)". On August 10, 2017, the Apples played their first show since 2012 as a headlining act at the Athens Popfest music festival in Athens, Georgia with Marshmallow Coast, Antlered Auntlord, and Waxahatchee as prior performers. In 2018, Schneider received a PhD in mathematics from Emory. Band members Current members Robert Schneider - guitar, French horn, lead vocals (1992–present) John Hill - guitar, xylophone (1994–present) Eric Allen - bass, harmonica (1995–present) John Dufilho - drums, harp (2006–present) John Ferguson - vocals, keyboards, panflute (2007–present) Former members Hilarie Sidney - drums, vocals (1992-2006) Jim McIntyre - bass (1992-1994) Chris Parfitt - guitar (1992-1994) Chris McDuffie - keyboards (1998-2002) Bill Doss - vocals, keyboards, ukulele (2006-2012; died 2012) Timeline Selected discography Fun Trick Noisemaker (1995) Science Faire (1996) Tone Soul Evolution (1997) Her Wallpaper Reverie (1999) The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone (2000) Velocity of Sound (2002) New Magnetic Wonder (2007) Electronic Projects for Musicians (2008) Travellers in Space and Time (2010) References External links The Apples in Stereo at Elephant6.com Tractor Beam Management Apples in Stereo entry at Trouser Press The Apples in Stereo at Live Music Archive Interview with the Cornell Daily Sun Step Through the Portal The Elephant 6 Recording Company artists Musical groups from Denver Lo-fi music groups Musical groups established in 1992 Independent Music Awards winners Indie pop groups from Colorado Indie rock musical groups from Colorado Psychedelic pop music groups American power pop groups SpinART Records artists Yep Roc Records artists

C_bb5692211f37444eb499f77b75cc7155_1

Did they receive any recognition or awards?

Did The Apples receive any recognition or awards?

The Apples in Stereo

In late 1991, Robert Schneider met Jim McIntyre on a commuter bus in Denver, Colorado. Schneider had recently moved to Colorado from Ruston, Louisiana, and often initiated conversations with McIntyre. When Schneider asked McIntyre what his music interests were, McIntyre named his favorite band: The Beach Boys -- a band Schneider was particularly fond of. Realizing that they shared many musical interests, McIntyre introduced Schneider to Hilarie Sidney. McIntyre already had a band called Von Hemmling in which McIntyre played bass and Sidney played drums. With Schneider, they discussed the idea of starting a band and perhaps a recording label. Schneider later met Chris Parfitt, who was also already in a band at the time that Schneider unsuccessfully auditioned for on bass. Schneider and Parfitt also became friends, however, and toyed with the idea of having a rock band similar to The Velvet Underground or Black Sabbath, with production qualities similar to that of The Beach Boys. Schneider then spent two weeks in Athens, Georgia recording music and spending time with his childhood friends Will Cullen Hart, Bill Doss and Jeff Mangum. He discussed the idea of starting a record label with them (which soon became The Elephant 6 Recording Company). It was also at this time that the name "The Apples" came about, inspired by the Pink Floyd song "Apples and Oranges". The earliest incarnation of the band began to form in 1992 upon Schneider's return to Denver, first between Schneider and Parfitt, both of whom played guitar. The two recruited McIntyre and Sidney during the autumn of that year, practicing material through the winter. Their first few live shows took place the following January, many of which were with the band Felt Pilotes. From February to April 1993, the band recorded their debut 7" EP, Tidal Wave, and released it in June as the first record ever to bear the Elephant 6 logo. CANNOTANSWER

CANNOTANSWER

The Apples in Stereo, styled as The Apples in stereo, are an American rock band associated with Elephant Six Collective, a group of bands also including Neutral Milk Hotel, The Olivia Tremor Control, Elf Power, Of Montreal, and Circulatory System. The band is largely a product of lead vocalist/guitarist/producer Robert Schneider, who writes the majority of the band's music and lyrics. Currently, The Apples in Stereo also includes longstanding members John Hill (rhythm guitar) and Eric Allen (bass), as well as more recent members John Dufilho (drums), John Ferguson (keyboards), and Ben Phelan (keyboards/guitar/trumpet). The band's sound draws comparisons to the psychedelic rock of The Beatles and The Beach Boys during the 1960s, as well as to bands such as Electric Light Orchestra and Pavement, and also draws from lo-fi, garage rock, new wave, R&B, bubblegum pop, power pop, punk, electro-pop and experimental music. The band is also well known for their appearance in a The Powerpuff Girls music video performing the song "Signal in the Sky (Let's Go)". It aired immediately after the show's seventh episode of season 4, "Superfriends", which was based on the song's lyrics. The band has appeared widely in television and film, including performances on The Colbert Report, Late Night with Conan O'Brien and Last Call with Carson Daly, guest hosting on MTV, song placements in numerous television shows, commercials and motion pictures, the performance of the single "Energy" by the contestants on American Idol, and a song recorded for children's show Yo Gabba Gabba. Band history 1991–1993: The Apples In late 1991, Robert Schneider met Jim McIntyre on a commuter bus in Denver, Colorado. Schneider had recently moved to Colorado from Ruston, Louisiana, and often initiated conversations with McIntyre. When Schneider asked McIntyre what his music interests were, McIntyre named his favorite band: The Beach Boys — a band Schneider was particularly fond of. Realizing that they shared many musical interests, McIntyre introduced Schneider to Hilarie Sidney. McIntyre already had a band called Von Hemmling in which McIntyre played bass and Sidney played drums. With Schneider, they discussed the idea of starting a band and perhaps a recording label. Schneider later met Chris Parfitt, who at the time was also already in a band (which Schneider unsuccessfully auditioned for on bass). Schneider and Parfitt also became friends, however, and toyed with the idea of having a rock band similar to The Velvet Underground or Black Sabbath, with production qualities similar to that of The Beach Boys. Schneider then spent two weeks in Athens, Georgia recording music and spending time with his childhood friends Will Cullen Hart, Bill Doss and Jeff Mangum. He discussed the idea of starting a record label with them (which soon became The Elephant 6 Recording Company). It was also at this time that the name "The Apples" came about, inspired by the Pink Floyd song "Apples and Oranges". The earliest incarnation of the band began to form in 1992 upon Schneider's return to Denver, first between Schneider and Parfitt, both of whom played guitar. The two recruited McIntyre and Sidney during the autumn of that year, practicing material through the winter. Their first few live shows took place the following January, many of which were with the band Felt Pilotes. From February to April 1993, the band recorded their debut 7" EP, Tidal Wave, and released it in June as the first record ever to bear the Elephant 6 logo. 1994–1995: Hypnotic Suggestion and Fun Trick Noisemaker Several conflicts would lead Parfitt to leave the band in early 1994. John Hill, a former bandmate of McIntyre's, would join the band as a rhythm guitarist while Schneider began to grow more comfortable playing lead guitar. It was also at this time that Schneider began to take stronger creative control of the band, shifting its sound from its stronger rock qualities to a spacier pop sound. The band started work on a debut album, but it instead became Hypnotic Suggestion, a second EP. However, after SpinART Records offered to buy the band an 8-track in return for an album, new plans for an LP arose. In mid-1994, after Hypnotic Suggestion, McIntyre would be the second to leave the band, due to a number of personal distresses as well as stylistic changes that arose with Parfitt's departure. Having great difficulty finding a new permanent bassist, the band would rotate a number of frequent bass contributors, including Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel, Kurt Heasley of The Lilys, Kyle Jones, Joel Richardson, and Joel Evans. Jim McIntyre would also occasionally guest on bass. This continued to be the makeup of the band as they toured the country in late 1994, recording the first half of their new album in Glendora, California. In early 1995, the band finished the album, Fun Trick Noisemaker, at Kyle Jones's house (the birthplace of Schneider's Pet Sounds Studio). Now with a LP to support, the band began touring again. Eric Allen, whom the band had previously auditioned as a guitarist after the departure of Chris Parfitt, joined the band as a much welcomed permanent bassist. Late 1995, Schneider relocated Pet Sounds Studio to Jim McIntyre's house. McIntyre continued to be involved in the recording and engineering of the band's albums until the mid-2000s. A significantly different band from the original 1992 four-piece, the official name of the band gradually became "The Apples in Stereo", with the "in stereo" usually somewhat under-emphasized, whether in lower-case or in parentheses. Schneider described this in an interview: "It's very clearcut, actually: we're The Apples, the music's in stereo. It's not actually the band name – it's a step back from it, a band name once removed. We're The Apples, in stereo. Kind of like a TV show, 'in stereo!' That always seemed to be a really big deal, that it was in stereo." McIntyre later remarked, "It's cool the name changed cause the Apples and the Apples in Stereo were really two different entities." 1996–2005: Tone Soul Evolution to Velocity of Sound The band continued touring through 1996, playing in Japan for the first time. Several early recording sessions were held at Pet Sounds for the band's second album, Tone Soul Evolution, but the members were dissatisfied with the quality of the recordings. The majority of the album's songs were re-recorded at Studio .45 in Hartford, Connecticut before the album's release. In 1998, Chris McDuffie joined the band, playing various instruments including organs, synthesizers and assorted percussion. He would leave the band before Velocity of Sound was released in 2002. Several more albums were released by the band through the years, including the psychedelic "concept EP", Her Wallpaper Reverie, The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone and Velocity of Sound; both of the latter of which were progressively aimed at capturing the live sound of the band, which continued to tighten as they continued to perform hundreds of live shows (about 100 a year). In particular, the 2002 album Velocity of Sound rejects most of the psych-pop production sensibilities that would come to be associated with the band, instead featuring stripped-down production and sparse, rock instrumentation. The band members would also continue to pursue careers in side bands and solo projects, with Schneider producing several albums for Elephant 6 artists. Schneider and drummer Hilarie Sidney were married for a time, with a son Max born in 2000. They have since been divorced. The band went on a brief hiatus during 2004 as Schneider released the debut album from a new band called Ulysses and Sidney released the debut album from her new band The High Water Marks; both were released on Eenie Meenie Records. In 2005, The Apples in Stereo contributed "Liza Jane" to the Eenie Meenie compilation, Dimension Mix. It was also around this time that news began to circulate among various websites concerning the band's next studio album. 2006–2008: New Magnetic Wonder and evolving lineup In August 2006, longtime drummer Hilarie Sidney officially announced her departure from the band during the band's closing set at the Athens Popfest music festival in Athens, Georgia. Her replacement, John Dufilho, lead singer and principal songwriter of The Deathray Davies, was announced in October 2006. 2006 touring member Bill Doss of The Olivia Tremor Control also quietly joined the band "officially" as its new keyboardist. John Ferguson of Big Fresh and Ulysses joined the Apples in 2007, also playing keyboards, and wearing a Doctor Who-esque space suit on stage. In December 2006, Robert Schneider appeared on the popular television show The Colbert Report singing the song "Stephen Stephen" recorded by The Apples in Stereo to glorify the show's host Stephen Colbert, to kick off a guitar solo contest between Colbert and Chris Funk of The Decemberists. On February 6, 2007, The Apples in Stereo released their sixth studio LP, New Magnetic Wonder. Finishing a ten-year deal with spinART Records, New Magnetic Wonder was the premiere release on Simian Records, a newly formed record label founded by Elijah Wood. This was followed by a long-awaited b-sides and rarities compilation titled Electronic Projects for Musicians, released on April 1. In 2008, spinART Records went out of business. Rights for all major releases by The Apples in Stereo on the label were subsequently acquired by One Little Indian Records, and have since reverted to the band. In a recent interview, Schneider noted that the band's EPs have yet to have been re-released, but will likely be collected for another compilation. Such a compilation would probably include the re-releases of Look Away + 4, Let's Go! and a number of non-album songs released alongside New Magnetic Wonder. On August 4, 2008, the band appeared again on The Colbert Report. They performed their song Can You Feel It? to promote the release of the Japanese picture disc. In early 2008, their song "Same Old Drag" won in The 7th Annual Independent Music Awards for Best Pop/Rock Song. The same year Apples in Stereo were nominated for Independent Music Awards Pop/Rock Album of the Year. The band members also joined the 9th annual Independent Music Awards judging panel to assist independent musicians' careers. 2009–2011: #1 Hits Explosion and Travellers in Space and Time Yep Roc released #1 Hits Explosion, an Apples in Stereo best-of album, on September 1, 2009. In late 2008, PepsiCo released an advertisement with their song "Energy" off of their album New Magnetic Wonder. In early 2009, Robert appeared on ABC News's segment called "amplified" and gave some short performances of songs from New Magnetic Wonder and a song from his project "Robert Bobbert and the bubble machine" and he described the album as sounding like early 1970s R&B as it would sound played by aliens and emanating from an alien spaceship.He also confirmed that the band was recording their new album at Trout Recording in Brooklyn, New York. In interviews in Billboard magazine and other press outlets, In April 2009, the single "Energy" from New Magnetic Wonder was performed by the contestants on the television show American Idol. The result was the band's seventh album Travellers in Space and Time, released on April 20, 2010 on Simian Records. Described by Schneider as a "retro-futuristic" concept album intended as a time capsule for listeners of the future, Travellers has drawn comparisons to the style of Electric Light Orchestra. The record is the first Apples in Stereo album without Hilarie Sidney, making Schneider the last founding member remaining in the group, although John Hill joined before "in stereo" was added to the name. The band was invited by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival that he curated in March 2012 in Minehead, England. Schneider announced in May 2012 that The Apples in Stereo had begun work on a new album, described as being "a very, very different sort of album." In recent years, Schneider has explored a number of experimental music projects, such as the Teletron mind-controlled synthesizer and Non-Pythagorean scale of his own invention. 2012–present: Death of Bill Doss, hiatus and future The death of Bill Doss, the band's keyboardist as well as the co-founder of fellow Elephant 6 band The Olivia Tremor Control, was announced on July 31, 2012. The cause of death was an aneurysm. Schneider released a statement saying, "I am heartbroken by the loss of my life-long friend, collaborator and band-mate. My world will never be the same without the wonderful, funny, supremely creative Bill Doss." The band went into hiatus in the fall of 2012, after Doss' death and Schneider's acceptance into the PhD program in Mathematics at Emory University. In 2013, Phish started covering the Apples in Stereo song "Energy." In early 2017, Schneider hinted at a new album called The Bicycle Day. He stated on Facebook that "Apples are working on a concept record called The Bicycle Day but it is too deep of a task to finish while I'm in graduate school... it isn't a pop record though ... (Air-Sea Dolphin and my band Spaceflyte with John Ferguson are the new pop projects though)". On August 10, 2017, the Apples played their first show since 2012 as a headlining act at the Athens Popfest music festival in Athens, Georgia with Marshmallow Coast, Antlered Auntlord, and Waxahatchee as prior performers. In 2018, Schneider received a PhD in mathematics from Emory. Band members Current members Robert Schneider - guitar, French horn, lead vocals (1992–present) John Hill - guitar, xylophone (1994–present) Eric Allen - bass, harmonica (1995–present) John Dufilho - drums, harp (2006–present) John Ferguson - vocals, keyboards, panflute (2007–present) Former members Hilarie Sidney - drums, vocals (1992-2006) Jim McIntyre - bass (1992-1994) Chris Parfitt - guitar (1992-1994) Chris McDuffie - keyboards (1998-2002) Bill Doss - vocals, keyboards, ukulele (2006-2012; died 2012) Timeline Selected discography Fun Trick Noisemaker (1995) Science Faire (1996) Tone Soul Evolution (1997) Her Wallpaper Reverie (1999) The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone (2000) Velocity of Sound (2002) New Magnetic Wonder (2007) Electronic Projects for Musicians (2008) Travellers in Space and Time (2010) References External links The Apples in Stereo at Elephant6.com Tractor Beam Management Apples in Stereo entry at Trouser Press The Apples in Stereo at Live Music Archive Interview with the Cornell Daily Sun Step Through the Portal The Elephant 6 Recording Company artists Musical groups from Denver Lo-fi music groups Musical groups established in 1992 Independent Music Awards winners Indie pop groups from Colorado Indie rock musical groups from Colorado Psychedelic pop music groups American power pop groups SpinART Records artists Yep Roc Records artists

C_bb5692211f37444eb499f77b75cc7155_1

What else did they do during this time?

Besides releasing Tidal Wave, what else did The Apples do during 1991-1993?

The Apples in Stereo

In late 1991, Robert Schneider met Jim McIntyre on a commuter bus in Denver, Colorado. Schneider had recently moved to Colorado from Ruston, Louisiana, and often initiated conversations with McIntyre. When Schneider asked McIntyre what his music interests were, McIntyre named his favorite band: The Beach Boys -- a band Schneider was particularly fond of. Realizing that they shared many musical interests, McIntyre introduced Schneider to Hilarie Sidney. McIntyre already had a band called Von Hemmling in which McIntyre played bass and Sidney played drums. With Schneider, they discussed the idea of starting a band and perhaps a recording label. Schneider later met Chris Parfitt, who was also already in a band at the time that Schneider unsuccessfully auditioned for on bass. Schneider and Parfitt also became friends, however, and toyed with the idea of having a rock band similar to The Velvet Underground or Black Sabbath, with production qualities similar to that of The Beach Boys. Schneider then spent two weeks in Athens, Georgia recording music and spending time with his childhood friends Will Cullen Hart, Bill Doss and Jeff Mangum. He discussed the idea of starting a record label with them (which soon became The Elephant 6 Recording Company). It was also at this time that the name "The Apples" came about, inspired by the Pink Floyd song "Apples and Oranges". The earliest incarnation of the band began to form in 1992 upon Schneider's return to Denver, first between Schneider and Parfitt, both of whom played guitar. The two recruited McIntyre and Sidney during the autumn of that year, practicing material through the winter. Their first few live shows took place the following January, many of which were with the band Felt Pilotes. From February to April 1993, the band recorded their debut 7" EP, Tidal Wave, and released it in June as the first record ever to bear the Elephant 6 logo. CANNOTANSWER

Schneider then spent two weeks in Athens, Georgia recording music and spending time with his childhood friends Will Cullen Hart, Bill Doss and Jeff Mangum.

The Apples in Stereo, styled as The Apples in stereo, are an American rock band associated with Elephant Six Collective, a group of bands also including Neutral Milk Hotel, The Olivia Tremor Control, Elf Power, Of Montreal, and Circulatory System. The band is largely a product of lead vocalist/guitarist/producer Robert Schneider, who writes the majority of the band's music and lyrics. Currently, The Apples in Stereo also includes longstanding members John Hill (rhythm guitar) and Eric Allen (bass), as well as more recent members John Dufilho (drums), John Ferguson (keyboards), and Ben Phelan (keyboards/guitar/trumpet). The band's sound draws comparisons to the psychedelic rock of The Beatles and The Beach Boys during the 1960s, as well as to bands such as Electric Light Orchestra and Pavement, and also draws from lo-fi, garage rock, new wave, R&B, bubblegum pop, power pop, punk, electro-pop and experimental music. The band is also well known for their appearance in a The Powerpuff Girls music video performing the song "Signal in the Sky (Let's Go)". It aired immediately after the show's seventh episode of season 4, "Superfriends", which was based on the song's lyrics. The band has appeared widely in television and film, including performances on The Colbert Report, Late Night with Conan O'Brien and Last Call with Carson Daly, guest hosting on MTV, song placements in numerous television shows, commercials and motion pictures, the performance of the single "Energy" by the contestants on American Idol, and a song recorded for children's show Yo Gabba Gabba. Band history 1991–1993: The Apples In late 1991, Robert Schneider met Jim McIntyre on a commuter bus in Denver, Colorado. Schneider had recently moved to Colorado from Ruston, Louisiana, and often initiated conversations with McIntyre. When Schneider asked McIntyre what his music interests were, McIntyre named his favorite band: The Beach Boys — a band Schneider was particularly fond of. Realizing that they shared many musical interests, McIntyre introduced Schneider to Hilarie Sidney. McIntyre already had a band called Von Hemmling in which McIntyre played bass and Sidney played drums. With Schneider, they discussed the idea of starting a band and perhaps a recording label. Schneider later met Chris Parfitt, who at the time was also already in a band (which Schneider unsuccessfully auditioned for on bass). Schneider and Parfitt also became friends, however, and toyed with the idea of having a rock band similar to The Velvet Underground or Black Sabbath, with production qualities similar to that of The Beach Boys. Schneider then spent two weeks in Athens, Georgia recording music and spending time with his childhood friends Will Cullen Hart, Bill Doss and Jeff Mangum. He discussed the idea of starting a record label with them (which soon became The Elephant 6 Recording Company). It was also at this time that the name "The Apples" came about, inspired by the Pink Floyd song "Apples and Oranges". The earliest incarnation of the band began to form in 1992 upon Schneider's return to Denver, first between Schneider and Parfitt, both of whom played guitar. The two recruited McIntyre and Sidney during the autumn of that year, practicing material through the winter. Their first few live shows took place the following January, many of which were with the band Felt Pilotes. From February to April 1993, the band recorded their debut 7" EP, Tidal Wave, and released it in June as the first record ever to bear the Elephant 6 logo. 1994–1995: Hypnotic Suggestion and Fun Trick Noisemaker Several conflicts would lead Parfitt to leave the band in early 1994. John Hill, a former bandmate of McIntyre's, would join the band as a rhythm guitarist while Schneider began to grow more comfortable playing lead guitar. It was also at this time that Schneider began to take stronger creative control of the band, shifting its sound from its stronger rock qualities to a spacier pop sound. The band started work on a debut album, but it instead became Hypnotic Suggestion, a second EP. However, after SpinART Records offered to buy the band an 8-track in return for an album, new plans for an LP arose. In mid-1994, after Hypnotic Suggestion, McIntyre would be the second to leave the band, due to a number of personal distresses as well as stylistic changes that arose with Parfitt's departure. Having great difficulty finding a new permanent bassist, the band would rotate a number of frequent bass contributors, including Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel, Kurt Heasley of The Lilys, Kyle Jones, Joel Richardson, and Joel Evans. Jim McIntyre would also occasionally guest on bass. This continued to be the makeup of the band as they toured the country in late 1994, recording the first half of their new album in Glendora, California. In early 1995, the band finished the album, Fun Trick Noisemaker, at Kyle Jones's house (the birthplace of Schneider's Pet Sounds Studio). Now with a LP to support, the band began touring again. Eric Allen, whom the band had previously auditioned as a guitarist after the departure of Chris Parfitt, joined the band as a much welcomed permanent bassist. Late 1995, Schneider relocated Pet Sounds Studio to Jim McIntyre's house. McIntyre continued to be involved in the recording and engineering of the band's albums until the mid-2000s. A significantly different band from the original 1992 four-piece, the official name of the band gradually became "The Apples in Stereo", with the "in stereo" usually somewhat under-emphasized, whether in lower-case or in parentheses. Schneider described this in an interview: "It's very clearcut, actually: we're The Apples, the music's in stereo. It's not actually the band name – it's a step back from it, a band name once removed. We're The Apples, in stereo. Kind of like a TV show, 'in stereo!' That always seemed to be a really big deal, that it was in stereo." McIntyre later remarked, "It's cool the name changed cause the Apples and the Apples in Stereo were really two different entities." 1996–2005: Tone Soul Evolution to Velocity of Sound The band continued touring through 1996, playing in Japan for the first time. Several early recording sessions were held at Pet Sounds for the band's second album, Tone Soul Evolution, but the members were dissatisfied with the quality of the recordings. The majority of the album's songs were re-recorded at Studio .45 in Hartford, Connecticut before the album's release. In 1998, Chris McDuffie joined the band, playing various instruments including organs, synthesizers and assorted percussion. He would leave the band before Velocity of Sound was released in 2002. Several more albums were released by the band through the years, including the psychedelic "concept EP", Her Wallpaper Reverie, The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone and Velocity of Sound; both of the latter of which were progressively aimed at capturing the live sound of the band, which continued to tighten as they continued to perform hundreds of live shows (about 100 a year). In particular, the 2002 album Velocity of Sound rejects most of the psych-pop production sensibilities that would come to be associated with the band, instead featuring stripped-down production and sparse, rock instrumentation. The band members would also continue to pursue careers in side bands and solo projects, with Schneider producing several albums for Elephant 6 artists. Schneider and drummer Hilarie Sidney were married for a time, with a son Max born in 2000. They have since been divorced. The band went on a brief hiatus during 2004 as Schneider released the debut album from a new band called Ulysses and Sidney released the debut album from her new band The High Water Marks; both were released on Eenie Meenie Records. In 2005, The Apples in Stereo contributed "Liza Jane" to the Eenie Meenie compilation, Dimension Mix. It was also around this time that news began to circulate among various websites concerning the band's next studio album. 2006–2008: New Magnetic Wonder and evolving lineup In August 2006, longtime drummer Hilarie Sidney officially announced her departure from the band during the band's closing set at the Athens Popfest music festival in Athens, Georgia. Her replacement, John Dufilho, lead singer and principal songwriter of The Deathray Davies, was announced in October 2006. 2006 touring member Bill Doss of The Olivia Tremor Control also quietly joined the band "officially" as its new keyboardist. John Ferguson of Big Fresh and Ulysses joined the Apples in 2007, also playing keyboards, and wearing a Doctor Who-esque space suit on stage. In December 2006, Robert Schneider appeared on the popular television show The Colbert Report singing the song "Stephen Stephen" recorded by The Apples in Stereo to glorify the show's host Stephen Colbert, to kick off a guitar solo contest between Colbert and Chris Funk of The Decemberists. On February 6, 2007, The Apples in Stereo released their sixth studio LP, New Magnetic Wonder. Finishing a ten-year deal with spinART Records, New Magnetic Wonder was the premiere release on Simian Records, a newly formed record label founded by Elijah Wood. This was followed by a long-awaited b-sides and rarities compilation titled Electronic Projects for Musicians, released on April 1. In 2008, spinART Records went out of business. Rights for all major releases by The Apples in Stereo on the label were subsequently acquired by One Little Indian Records, and have since reverted to the band. In a recent interview, Schneider noted that the band's EPs have yet to have been re-released, but will likely be collected for another compilation. Such a compilation would probably include the re-releases of Look Away + 4, Let's Go! and a number of non-album songs released alongside New Magnetic Wonder. On August 4, 2008, the band appeared again on The Colbert Report. They performed their song Can You Feel It? to promote the release of the Japanese picture disc. In early 2008, their song "Same Old Drag" won in The 7th Annual Independent Music Awards for Best Pop/Rock Song. The same year Apples in Stereo were nominated for Independent Music Awards Pop/Rock Album of the Year. The band members also joined the 9th annual Independent Music Awards judging panel to assist independent musicians' careers. 2009–2011: #1 Hits Explosion and Travellers in Space and Time Yep Roc released #1 Hits Explosion, an Apples in Stereo best-of album, on September 1, 2009. In late 2008, PepsiCo released an advertisement with their song "Energy" off of their album New Magnetic Wonder. In early 2009, Robert appeared on ABC News's segment called "amplified" and gave some short performances of songs from New Magnetic Wonder and a song from his project "Robert Bobbert and the bubble machine" and he described the album as sounding like early 1970s R&B as it would sound played by aliens and emanating from an alien spaceship.He also confirmed that the band was recording their new album at Trout Recording in Brooklyn, New York. In interviews in Billboard magazine and other press outlets, In April 2009, the single "Energy" from New Magnetic Wonder was performed by the contestants on the television show American Idol. The result was the band's seventh album Travellers in Space and Time, released on April 20, 2010 on Simian Records. Described by Schneider as a "retro-futuristic" concept album intended as a time capsule for listeners of the future, Travellers has drawn comparisons to the style of Electric Light Orchestra. The record is the first Apples in Stereo album without Hilarie Sidney, making Schneider the last founding member remaining in the group, although John Hill joined before "in stereo" was added to the name. The band was invited by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival that he curated in March 2012 in Minehead, England. Schneider announced in May 2012 that The Apples in Stereo had begun work on a new album, described as being "a very, very different sort of album." In recent years, Schneider has explored a number of experimental music projects, such as the Teletron mind-controlled synthesizer and Non-Pythagorean scale of his own invention. 2012–present: Death of Bill Doss, hiatus and future The death of Bill Doss, the band's keyboardist as well as the co-founder of fellow Elephant 6 band The Olivia Tremor Control, was announced on July 31, 2012. The cause of death was an aneurysm. Schneider released a statement saying, "I am heartbroken by the loss of my life-long friend, collaborator and band-mate. My world will never be the same without the wonderful, funny, supremely creative Bill Doss." The band went into hiatus in the fall of 2012, after Doss' death and Schneider's acceptance into the PhD program in Mathematics at Emory University. In 2013, Phish started covering the Apples in Stereo song "Energy." In early 2017, Schneider hinted at a new album called The Bicycle Day. He stated on Facebook that "Apples are working on a concept record called The Bicycle Day but it is too deep of a task to finish while I'm in graduate school... it isn't a pop record though ... (Air-Sea Dolphin and my band Spaceflyte with John Ferguson are the new pop projects though)". On August 10, 2017, the Apples played their first show since 2012 as a headlining act at the Athens Popfest music festival in Athens, Georgia with Marshmallow Coast, Antlered Auntlord, and Waxahatchee as prior performers. In 2018, Schneider received a PhD in mathematics from Emory. Band members Current members Robert Schneider - guitar, French horn, lead vocals (1992–present) John Hill - guitar, xylophone (1994–present) Eric Allen - bass, harmonica (1995–present) John Dufilho - drums, harp (2006–present) John Ferguson - vocals, keyboards, panflute (2007–present) Former members Hilarie Sidney - drums, vocals (1992-2006) Jim McIntyre - bass (1992-1994) Chris Parfitt - guitar (1992-1994) Chris McDuffie - keyboards (1998-2002) Bill Doss - vocals, keyboards, ukulele (2006-2012; died 2012) Timeline Selected discography Fun Trick Noisemaker (1995) Science Faire (1996) Tone Soul Evolution (1997) Her Wallpaper Reverie (1999) The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone (2000) Velocity of Sound (2002) New Magnetic Wonder (2007) Electronic Projects for Musicians (2008) Travellers in Space and Time (2010) References External links The Apples in Stereo at Elephant6.com Tractor Beam Management Apples in Stereo entry at Trouser Press The Apples in Stereo at Live Music Archive Interview with the Cornell Daily Sun Step Through the Portal The Elephant 6 Recording Company artists Musical groups from Denver Lo-fi music groups Musical groups established in 1992 Independent Music Awards winners Indie pop groups from Colorado Indie rock musical groups from Colorado Psychedelic pop music groups American power pop groups SpinART Records artists Yep Roc Records artists

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Did they release an album?

Did The Apples release an album during 1991-1993?

The Apples in Stereo

In late 1991, Robert Schneider met Jim McIntyre on a commuter bus in Denver, Colorado. Schneider had recently moved to Colorado from Ruston, Louisiana, and often initiated conversations with McIntyre. When Schneider asked McIntyre what his music interests were, McIntyre named his favorite band: The Beach Boys -- a band Schneider was particularly fond of. Realizing that they shared many musical interests, McIntyre introduced Schneider to Hilarie Sidney. McIntyre already had a band called Von Hemmling in which McIntyre played bass and Sidney played drums. With Schneider, they discussed the idea of starting a band and perhaps a recording label. Schneider later met Chris Parfitt, who was also already in a band at the time that Schneider unsuccessfully auditioned for on bass. Schneider and Parfitt also became friends, however, and toyed with the idea of having a rock band similar to The Velvet Underground or Black Sabbath, with production qualities similar to that of The Beach Boys. Schneider then spent two weeks in Athens, Georgia recording music and spending time with his childhood friends Will Cullen Hart, Bill Doss and Jeff Mangum. He discussed the idea of starting a record label with them (which soon became The Elephant 6 Recording Company). It was also at this time that the name "The Apples" came about, inspired by the Pink Floyd song "Apples and Oranges". The earliest incarnation of the band began to form in 1992 upon Schneider's return to Denver, first between Schneider and Parfitt, both of whom played guitar. The two recruited McIntyre and Sidney during the autumn of that year, practicing material through the winter. Their first few live shows took place the following January, many of which were with the band Felt Pilotes. From February to April 1993, the band recorded their debut 7" EP, Tidal Wave, and released it in June as the first record ever to bear the Elephant 6 logo. CANNOTANSWER

the band recorded their debut 7" EP, Tidal Wave,

The Apples in Stereo, styled as The Apples in stereo, are an American rock band associated with Elephant Six Collective, a group of bands also including Neutral Milk Hotel, The Olivia Tremor Control, Elf Power, Of Montreal, and Circulatory System. The band is largely a product of lead vocalist/guitarist/producer Robert Schneider, who writes the majority of the band's music and lyrics. Currently, The Apples in Stereo also includes longstanding members John Hill (rhythm guitar) and Eric Allen (bass), as well as more recent members John Dufilho (drums), John Ferguson (keyboards), and Ben Phelan (keyboards/guitar/trumpet). The band's sound draws comparisons to the psychedelic rock of The Beatles and The Beach Boys during the 1960s, as well as to bands such as Electric Light Orchestra and Pavement, and also draws from lo-fi, garage rock, new wave, R&B, bubblegum pop, power pop, punk, electro-pop and experimental music. The band is also well known for their appearance in a The Powerpuff Girls music video performing the song "Signal in the Sky (Let's Go)". It aired immediately after the show's seventh episode of season 4, "Superfriends", which was based on the song's lyrics. The band has appeared widely in television and film, including performances on The Colbert Report, Late Night with Conan O'Brien and Last Call with Carson Daly, guest hosting on MTV, song placements in numerous television shows, commercials and motion pictures, the performance of the single "Energy" by the contestants on American Idol, and a song recorded for children's show Yo Gabba Gabba. Band history 1991–1993: The Apples In late 1991, Robert Schneider met Jim McIntyre on a commuter bus in Denver, Colorado. Schneider had recently moved to Colorado from Ruston, Louisiana, and often initiated conversations with McIntyre. When Schneider asked McIntyre what his music interests were, McIntyre named his favorite band: The Beach Boys — a band Schneider was particularly fond of. Realizing that they shared many musical interests, McIntyre introduced Schneider to Hilarie Sidney. McIntyre already had a band called Von Hemmling in which McIntyre played bass and Sidney played drums. With Schneider, they discussed the idea of starting a band and perhaps a recording label. Schneider later met Chris Parfitt, who at the time was also already in a band (which Schneider unsuccessfully auditioned for on bass). Schneider and Parfitt also became friends, however, and toyed with the idea of having a rock band similar to The Velvet Underground or Black Sabbath, with production qualities similar to that of The Beach Boys. Schneider then spent two weeks in Athens, Georgia recording music and spending time with his childhood friends Will Cullen Hart, Bill Doss and Jeff Mangum. He discussed the idea of starting a record label with them (which soon became The Elephant 6 Recording Company). It was also at this time that the name "The Apples" came about, inspired by the Pink Floyd song "Apples and Oranges". The earliest incarnation of the band began to form in 1992 upon Schneider's return to Denver, first between Schneider and Parfitt, both of whom played guitar. The two recruited McIntyre and Sidney during the autumn of that year, practicing material through the winter. Their first few live shows took place the following January, many of which were with the band Felt Pilotes. From February to April 1993, the band recorded their debut 7" EP, Tidal Wave, and released it in June as the first record ever to bear the Elephant 6 logo. 1994–1995: Hypnotic Suggestion and Fun Trick Noisemaker Several conflicts would lead Parfitt to leave the band in early 1994. John Hill, a former bandmate of McIntyre's, would join the band as a rhythm guitarist while Schneider began to grow more comfortable playing lead guitar. It was also at this time that Schneider began to take stronger creative control of the band, shifting its sound from its stronger rock qualities to a spacier pop sound. The band started work on a debut album, but it instead became Hypnotic Suggestion, a second EP. However, after SpinART Records offered to buy the band an 8-track in return for an album, new plans for an LP arose. In mid-1994, after Hypnotic Suggestion, McIntyre would be the second to leave the band, due to a number of personal distresses as well as stylistic changes that arose with Parfitt's departure. Having great difficulty finding a new permanent bassist, the band would rotate a number of frequent bass contributors, including Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel, Kurt Heasley of The Lilys, Kyle Jones, Joel Richardson, and Joel Evans. Jim McIntyre would also occasionally guest on bass. This continued to be the makeup of the band as they toured the country in late 1994, recording the first half of their new album in Glendora, California. In early 1995, the band finished the album, Fun Trick Noisemaker, at Kyle Jones's house (the birthplace of Schneider's Pet Sounds Studio). Now with a LP to support, the band began touring again. Eric Allen, whom the band had previously auditioned as a guitarist after the departure of Chris Parfitt, joined the band as a much welcomed permanent bassist. Late 1995, Schneider relocated Pet Sounds Studio to Jim McIntyre's house. McIntyre continued to be involved in the recording and engineering of the band's albums until the mid-2000s. A significantly different band from the original 1992 four-piece, the official name of the band gradually became "The Apples in Stereo", with the "in stereo" usually somewhat under-emphasized, whether in lower-case or in parentheses. Schneider described this in an interview: "It's very clearcut, actually: we're The Apples, the music's in stereo. It's not actually the band name – it's a step back from it, a band name once removed. We're The Apples, in stereo. Kind of like a TV show, 'in stereo!' That always seemed to be a really big deal, that it was in stereo." McIntyre later remarked, "It's cool the name changed cause the Apples and the Apples in Stereo were really two different entities." 1996–2005: Tone Soul Evolution to Velocity of Sound The band continued touring through 1996, playing in Japan for the first time. Several early recording sessions were held at Pet Sounds for the band's second album, Tone Soul Evolution, but the members were dissatisfied with the quality of the recordings. The majority of the album's songs were re-recorded at Studio .45 in Hartford, Connecticut before the album's release. In 1998, Chris McDuffie joined the band, playing various instruments including organs, synthesizers and assorted percussion. He would leave the band before Velocity of Sound was released in 2002. Several more albums were released by the band through the years, including the psychedelic "concept EP", Her Wallpaper Reverie, The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone and Velocity of Sound; both of the latter of which were progressively aimed at capturing the live sound of the band, which continued to tighten as they continued to perform hundreds of live shows (about 100 a year). In particular, the 2002 album Velocity of Sound rejects most of the psych-pop production sensibilities that would come to be associated with the band, instead featuring stripped-down production and sparse, rock instrumentation. The band members would also continue to pursue careers in side bands and solo projects, with Schneider producing several albums for Elephant 6 artists. Schneider and drummer Hilarie Sidney were married for a time, with a son Max born in 2000. They have since been divorced. The band went on a brief hiatus during 2004 as Schneider released the debut album from a new band called Ulysses and Sidney released the debut album from her new band The High Water Marks; both were released on Eenie Meenie Records. In 2005, The Apples in Stereo contributed "Liza Jane" to the Eenie Meenie compilation, Dimension Mix. It was also around this time that news began to circulate among various websites concerning the band's next studio album. 2006–2008: New Magnetic Wonder and evolving lineup In August 2006, longtime drummer Hilarie Sidney officially announced her departure from the band during the band's closing set at the Athens Popfest music festival in Athens, Georgia. Her replacement, John Dufilho, lead singer and principal songwriter of The Deathray Davies, was announced in October 2006. 2006 touring member Bill Doss of The Olivia Tremor Control also quietly joined the band "officially" as its new keyboardist. John Ferguson of Big Fresh and Ulysses joined the Apples in 2007, also playing keyboards, and wearing a Doctor Who-esque space suit on stage. In December 2006, Robert Schneider appeared on the popular television show The Colbert Report singing the song "Stephen Stephen" recorded by The Apples in Stereo to glorify the show's host Stephen Colbert, to kick off a guitar solo contest between Colbert and Chris Funk of The Decemberists. On February 6, 2007, The Apples in Stereo released their sixth studio LP, New Magnetic Wonder. Finishing a ten-year deal with spinART Records, New Magnetic Wonder was the premiere release on Simian Records, a newly formed record label founded by Elijah Wood. This was followed by a long-awaited b-sides and rarities compilation titled Electronic Projects for Musicians, released on April 1. In 2008, spinART Records went out of business. Rights for all major releases by The Apples in Stereo on the label were subsequently acquired by One Little Indian Records, and have since reverted to the band. In a recent interview, Schneider noted that the band's EPs have yet to have been re-released, but will likely be collected for another compilation. Such a compilation would probably include the re-releases of Look Away + 4, Let's Go! and a number of non-album songs released alongside New Magnetic Wonder. On August 4, 2008, the band appeared again on The Colbert Report. They performed their song Can You Feel It? to promote the release of the Japanese picture disc. In early 2008, their song "Same Old Drag" won in The 7th Annual Independent Music Awards for Best Pop/Rock Song. The same year Apples in Stereo were nominated for Independent Music Awards Pop/Rock Album of the Year. The band members also joined the 9th annual Independent Music Awards judging panel to assist independent musicians' careers. 2009–2011: #1 Hits Explosion and Travellers in Space and Time Yep Roc released #1 Hits Explosion, an Apples in Stereo best-of album, on September 1, 2009. In late 2008, PepsiCo released an advertisement with their song "Energy" off of their album New Magnetic Wonder. In early 2009, Robert appeared on ABC News's segment called "amplified" and gave some short performances of songs from New Magnetic Wonder and a song from his project "Robert Bobbert and the bubble machine" and he described the album as sounding like early 1970s R&B as it would sound played by aliens and emanating from an alien spaceship.He also confirmed that the band was recording their new album at Trout Recording in Brooklyn, New York. In interviews in Billboard magazine and other press outlets, In April 2009, the single "Energy" from New Magnetic Wonder was performed by the contestants on the television show American Idol. The result was the band's seventh album Travellers in Space and Time, released on April 20, 2010 on Simian Records. Described by Schneider as a "retro-futuristic" concept album intended as a time capsule for listeners of the future, Travellers has drawn comparisons to the style of Electric Light Orchestra. The record is the first Apples in Stereo album without Hilarie Sidney, making Schneider the last founding member remaining in the group, although John Hill joined before "in stereo" was added to the name. The band was invited by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival that he curated in March 2012 in Minehead, England. Schneider announced in May 2012 that The Apples in Stereo had begun work on a new album, described as being "a very, very different sort of album." In recent years, Schneider has explored a number of experimental music projects, such as the Teletron mind-controlled synthesizer and Non-Pythagorean scale of his own invention. 2012–present: Death of Bill Doss, hiatus and future The death of Bill Doss, the band's keyboardist as well as the co-founder of fellow Elephant 6 band The Olivia Tremor Control, was announced on July 31, 2012. The cause of death was an aneurysm. Schneider released a statement saying, "I am heartbroken by the loss of my life-long friend, collaborator and band-mate. My world will never be the same without the wonderful, funny, supremely creative Bill Doss." The band went into hiatus in the fall of 2012, after Doss' death and Schneider's acceptance into the PhD program in Mathematics at Emory University. In 2013, Phish started covering the Apples in Stereo song "Energy." In early 2017, Schneider hinted at a new album called The Bicycle Day. He stated on Facebook that "Apples are working on a concept record called The Bicycle Day but it is too deep of a task to finish while I'm in graduate school... it isn't a pop record though ... (Air-Sea Dolphin and my band Spaceflyte with John Ferguson are the new pop projects though)". On August 10, 2017, the Apples played their first show since 2012 as a headlining act at the Athens Popfest music festival in Athens, Georgia with Marshmallow Coast, Antlered Auntlord, and Waxahatchee as prior performers. In 2018, Schneider received a PhD in mathematics from Emory. Band members Current members Robert Schneider - guitar, French horn, lead vocals (1992–present) John Hill - guitar, xylophone (1994–present) Eric Allen - bass, harmonica (1995–present) John Dufilho - drums, harp (2006–present) John Ferguson - vocals, keyboards, panflute (2007–present) Former members Hilarie Sidney - drums, vocals (1992-2006) Jim McIntyre - bass (1992-1994) Chris Parfitt - guitar (1992-1994) Chris McDuffie - keyboards (1998-2002) Bill Doss - vocals, keyboards, ukulele (2006-2012; died 2012) Timeline Selected discography Fun Trick Noisemaker (1995) Science Faire (1996) Tone Soul Evolution (1997) Her Wallpaper Reverie (1999) The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone (2000) Velocity of Sound (2002) New Magnetic Wonder (2007) Electronic Projects for Musicians (2008) Travellers in Space and Time (2010) References External links The Apples in Stereo at Elephant6.com Tractor Beam Management Apples in Stereo entry at Trouser Press The Apples in Stereo at Live Music Archive Interview with the Cornell Daily Sun Step Through the Portal The Elephant 6 Recording Company artists Musical groups from Denver Lo-fi music groups Musical groups established in 1992 Independent Music Awards winners Indie pop groups from Colorado Indie rock musical groups from Colorado Psychedelic pop music groups American power pop groups SpinART Records artists Yep Roc Records artists